End of School Parties

Well for having just a preschooler I couldn’t believe how busy the last week of school was. We had a great time at Blakeslie’s end of year school party. She is really going to miss her school friends – especially Josh.

We also had a neighborhood party. All the kids brought shaving cream and had a blast. I didn’t think Bean would be into in, but she totally held her own!

Messy Eater

Chip made the mistake of answering his phone and leaving Mayzie with her dinner within reach. Oops!

Well Child Checkups

I had Mayzie’s 9-month and Blakeslie’s 4-year appointment together. They both were stars and are growing and developing well!

Mayzie is in the 20% for weight and 30% for height. (I guess she isn’t such a chunk anymore.)

Blakeslie was in the 10% for weight and 25% for height

Mrytle Beach Trip!

We flew into Raleigh NC and had to drive to Myrtle Beach. Before we started our drive we went and visited Duke and UNC’s campuses. It was a blast – way more fun than I was expecting. Duke is seriously the most beautiful college I have ever seen. Every building was like a castle. We happened to show up exactly at graduation so it was fun to see everyone dressed up and bustling about. I now have much grander aspirations for where my girls are going to school – Go DUKE!

Our trip to Myrtle Beach was AWESOME!!! We truly had a great time, but it was not what we had expected. We thought we were going to a nice quiet beach community. We were way off. Myrtle Beach is 28 miles of total tourist chaos! It was anything, but quiet. To make it even more interesting we happened to book our trip during Bike Week. We had 52 weeks to choose from – seriously what luck! It actually was so much fun to see all the bikes and everyone may have looked a little rough around the edges, but they were all really fun and especially cute with Bean. She would give all the bikes around us thumbs up and say, “Nice bike, dude!” It was seriously amazing how many bikes were in town. The estimates were 300,000 bikes came in for the week. It definitely felt like it - by Friday we couldn’t drive anywhere without being completely surrounded by hogs.

One day we pulled up to get gas and Chip started to sing, “One of these things is not like the other.” I looked up and had to get this picture. Seriously, so many bikes!

We got these metal ties for Blakeslie’s hair. The Biker Chicks wore them to keep their ponytails out of their faces when they ride. Blakeslie thought they were her princess ponies and strutted around showing them off.

The bikes did make for an adventure, but we did have our quiet beach time too. We went to a couple of different beaches, but our most favorite was a very secluded beautiful white sand beach on Pawley’s Island. The sand was so white and fine just like in Cancun and there were more shells than I have ever seen on a beach. We had a blast. Even Mayzie enjoyed the shells and sand – the water, not so much.



The Grand Strand – the 28 miles of tourist chaos had at least 25 different miniature golf places. Blakeslie knew where we were on the road based on which putt, putt we were passing. We had a great time going to her two favorites – Captain Hook’s and Jurassic Park.

We had so much fun going to the Alligator Adventure. It is an alligator habitat with over 1600 alligators. They were all in different parts of the park based on their size. We saw some amazingly big gators and a few albino ones that were pretty cool. They had a feeding session where they throw chicken out into the swamp and feed the big guys – very exciting. We also sat through a reptile show, which was Blakeslie’s favorite and she is still telling everyone about. She got to hold a 3 year old alligator and a 5 foot python. (This is where you close your eyes Mom.) I can’t believe how not wussy she is!

We also got to hold a tiger and a little monkey. Blakeslie loved it!

We took a day trip to Charleston to see the sights. It was such a beautiful town full of so much history. We wished we had more than just one day to spend there. We took a bike taxi to the Edmonton-Alston house. It was a beautiful old house on the peninsula. The homes were amazing – it was fun just to drive around all the little streets. We also took a carriage ride around the city and had a great narration of all the amazing things that happened it Charleston. Blakeslie made a new best friend named Sarah, who let Blakeslie drive the carriage around the block to get the horse Misty her dinner- Bean was in heaven.

Mayzie loved her first time swimming!

We went to Teddy Town and Blakeslie made her very own stuffed animal. She got to pick out its eyes, personality (she says imagination) she helped stuff it and then dressed and named it. Its name is Silly the Great – where do they come up with this stuff?

Our funniest adventure of the week was where we had lunch one afternoon. Keep in mind it is a very long strip of about a million restaurants- more than plenty to choose from. After finishing miniature golf we headed out to find a place to eat. First we headed north and then I found this coupon in one of the travel books.

I read what it said “Voted one of the top 10 places to take the kids in the nation.” –USA Today. Chip said, “Oh I know exactly where that is – it is in a mall not to far from the condo.” So we turned around and started driving south. 1 hour later….everyone is starving and bordering very grumpy…we pull up to this place.

Which was obviously off the beaten path and no where near a mall. We couldn’t believe it, but by this time we were all too hungry to go somewhere else and we had to see why it was such a great place to take kids. The bar was biker heaven and the inside was worse than the outside if you can believe it. To make it worse I had to feed the baby. It had to be the most uncomfortable place to choose to nurse. It was actually such a funny experience, but I gave Chip soooo much grief. Blakeslie told him he had lost all privileges of choosing where we ate from now on. We are hoping that one of the other locations on the coupon was the place for kids because this was not. I told Chip I was writing to USA Today! Of course we survived our adventure with only mild warping of our children’s brains and some good laughs.

We couldn’t resist joining in. Chip really wanted to rent a Harley with a side car so we could all cruise, but we settled for these pictures instead.

Mother's Day Tea

Blakeslie's preschool put on a Mother's Day Tea and program. It was so awesome. The songs were darling and we had fun eating our "tea" and cookies. Blakeslie had perfect manners and was so proud that she kept her napkin on her lap the entire time. (I am so grumpy that the one picture we took together didn't turn out - seriously how hard is it to point and shoot! Oh well, what do you do.)

San Diego

We had quite the adventure in San Diego! I took the girls to the beach house by myself for spring break. We ended up staying for two weeks because I didn’t want to leave. I kept walking around saying “This is heaven!” We played all day together and at night I would watch movies and scrapbook. Chip actually worked on our basement while we were gone and with the help of Troy got the entire thing framed. Great work guys!!!

I planned a lot of beach activities and crafts before we left. We had a whale, mermaid, and pirate day. We also made matching flip-flops and painted a shell frame.

We made lots of treats. Blakeslie loves to make things in the kitchen. However, we certainly weren’t going to eat all of it so we shared it with new friends at the cabana and the guards were sad to see Blakeslie (The Treat Girl) go.

We didn’t even need all the fun stuff I planed because we could have played in the water and sand all day everyday. Even Mayzie thought it was fun to sit out on the beach.

It was so fun to see the Mortensens. They came down and stayed with us and we had a blast all playing together.

One day we painted each other’s toe nails. We had a good time, but my “extra” paint took days to come off. It looked like my feet were bleeding in the sand.

Seriously, it was heaven not having any distraction other than playing with my kiddos. We only wished that Chip could have been there – thankfully we have our beach trip to Myrtle coming up. I know some of you think I’m crazy about my average of one week a month vacationing. I am just already dreading Blakeslie going to real school and having our freedom taken. I have been counting down since we had 30 months and now I only have 15 months. I have to fit in all I can!

Baby Spanish!!!

We finally got a video of Mayzie and her squealing. The first time she started doing this Blakeslie said, “It’s Ok mom – she’s just talking baby Spanish.” I love them both!!!

Snakes!!!

I took Blakeslie on her preschool field trip to the Animal Ark pet store. I thought it was going to be a little corny, but the kids got to pet and touch all the animals. The kids loved it! I was so surprised by Blakeslie’s boldness especially with the reptiles. She was the first in line to pet the gekos and snakes. While the lady was describing the snake Blakeslie was standing right in front of her and the snake got within an inch of her face. I was dying in the back of the crowd trying not to scream. I was so proud of her. All she could talk about for days was the snakes at the pet store so we had to take Dad back to show him. We also restocked her fish tank – Flip, Flop and Steve finally died – we only had Red and Sox left so we got them some buddies.

April Fool's!

April Fool’s was so much fun! Blakeslie totally got into the day of tricking. In fact, she was sad she couldn’t still pull pranks today. Blakeslie kept putting a fake spider all around the house for Chip and I to find and we stuffed a “fake Blakeslie and Mayzie” reading to trick Dad. She thought she was pretty funny! Mayzie’s little joke involved Tootsie Rolls, her diaper and her big sister – I’ll let you figure it out on your own. I made a silly dinner with a meatloaf decorated like a cake, the drinks were Jello, and Blakeslie was totally unsure about her “dirt” dessert. I made her go dig up some dirt from the garden earlier in the day, so she thought it really was mud. She wouldn’t try it until Chip did.

All of you professional cake decorators don’t look at the meatloaf cake too closely. How sad is it that the first cake I ever decorate is made of meatloaf and potato frosting. I actually burned my fingers trying to hold the pastry bag full of very hot mashed potatoes!

What a great day!