Port Aransas 2016

We enjoyed another fun weekend in Port Aransas!  Chris had to work on Thursday, so Reid and Georgia Kate headed down with Grandma and Grandpa and Chris, Rhett, and I joined them on Friday. The kids spent most of their time at the pool and went down the slide about 2,000 times.  They had a blast!  Reid is quite the party planner these days and was so excited to plan a surprise party for Christie's early birthday celebration while we were there.  I was horrible about taking pictures, but a great time was had by all!   

Friends

As we've all had more children and schedules are getting busier, sadly we don't see a lot of our friends nearly as much as I'd like!  We were able to get together with a few groups of friends this summer and meet new additions!

Courtney and I do see each other pretty regularly, but our sisters both had new babies this summer!  We decided we all needed to get together!

Penny, Nolan, Perry, Benjamin, Georgia Kate, Rhett, Reid

We love the Morris/Beemans!  We had a "Perry Party" so that they could spend time with her and the big kids could all play!

Perry, Clara, Reid, Rhett, Craig, Georgia Kate

sweet friends

Kaylon came in from California with her new baby boy, so we had a little high school reunion with those who could make it!  

Nolan, Penny, Georgia Kate, Rhett, Reid, Carson, Caroline, Eliot

This isn't the whole group, but our sweet small group babysitters of two years had their last night with us a couple of weeks ago. They are off to college!  Our kids love Maddie and Makiah.  Here's a group shot with 7 of the 12 kids that play upstairs during our small group time.  

I love all of these sweet kids so much!

swim lessons

I have felt a little guilty because the kids have not done very much swimming this summer, but Reid and Georgia Kate have had lots of pool time this August due to taking swim lessons!  A super sweet mom in our neighborhood taught the lessons in her backyard and she offered evenings.  It made it very convenient because Chris could keep Rhett at home while I took Reid and Georgia Kate for an hour.  We did a total of nine lessons over three weeks. The kids LOVED Ms. Sarah and learned a lot!  Reid gained so much confidence and is basically an independent swimmer now.  My goal for Georgia Kate was to start learning the basics while getting more comfortable in the water and she did just that.   

We played some Go Fish and read books while the other sibling was swimming. :) 

This picture isn't from swim lessons, but I just love my little seersucker babies! :) 

Rhett is 9 months old!

Life with our sweet Rhett Michael just keeps getting better and better!

This is how he felt about posing for pictures this time.   

Although I feel like he's thinned out a little bit, Rhett is still a big boy!  He has moved up to size 4 diapers and wears all 12 and 18 month clothes.  Rhett goes to bed by 7:30 most nights and wakes up for the day around 7:00, with a few middle of the night wake ups as well.  We are really starting to work on those middle of the night wake ups though.  He now takes 2 naps a day.  He's still kind of funny about food.  He loves cheerios, yogurt, blueberries, bananas, and peaches.  Some days, he only eats those things.  I try giving him vegetables like green beans, peas, carrots, squash, or zucchini at some point during the day, but he doesn't always like them.  Rhett has 4 teeth now (two bottom, two top) with another bottom one just starting to poke through.  All of my babies have gotten their teeth so early!  

Rhett can go from laying down to sitting up on his own now and is still army crawling his way around the house.  He has tried to pull up a few times, but hasn't done it yet.  When he is happy or excited he smiles and shakes his head from side to side and he likes to copy our faces.  He's saying "mama" and "baba" (bye bye) and it's so fun!  Rhett loves books.  He likes to dump out the book baskets and roll around on the floor grabbing different books to hold and chew on. :)  He also likes Georgia's baby dolls and gets SO excited when he sees a ball.  

Rhett, you are so very precious to us!  We are so thankful for you!  

Summer Fun: July Edition

July turned out to be another fun summer month!  We celebrated Georgia's birthday and our anniversary and had our 20th annual Preston Surfside weekend among other things!  It is HOT, so we've been trying to stay busy with some indoor outings and activities, some time in the water, and some unstructured downtime at home.  

We celebrated July 4th by attending the Katy Freedom Celebration, swimming at Mumsie and Popsie's house, and then watching fireworks with our friends!  

We've enjoyed some mexican food dinners with friends.

We met friends at the pool a few times...

We went to Gallery Furniture to jump on mattresses! :)

We had friends over to play on the inflatable water slide!

Chris took the big kids to the zoo!  

Reid and Georgia Kate took a cooking class and they made their own pizzas!

We checked out a neat, new indoor play area in Katy.  Reid must have done the zip line 50 times!

Reid (and Pierce and Emery) had a great week at Vacation Bible School!

Both kids had dentist appointments, which qualifies as "summer fun" because they LOVED it! Haha!

We started an official chore/allowance system for Reid.  One of his chores is to make his bed!  

We've made a few trips to the grocery store with the whole family (usually Chris goes alone or with one kid) and realized we now require 2 carts. :)

We've woken up on many occasions with 2 little people in our bed.  One or both of them have been coming down almost every night at some point!  They won't be little forever, so they are always welcome. 

We expressed our creativity with a fireworks craft, cardboard box race car making, and magazine collages...

We made cups of dirt and ate popsicles in the bathtub...

We watched movies in our sleeping bags!

We had a few visits with Perry, but still wish we got to see her more! 

While I know the kids enjoy some planned activities, they are actually homebodies.  We are going to try to stick around the house more in August with a few fun outings sprinkled in.  It will be time for school to start again before we know it!  

Surfside - 20th year!

It's hard to believe, but this July we had our 20th annual weekend in Surfside with the Preston crew!  

These kids were so excited to be at the beach!

The whole crew!

Guinny and her grandchildren

Guinny and her grandchildren + great grandchildren

Guinny and her grandchildren + spouses/significan others + great grandchildren

Beautiful Guinny and her kids

Rhett didn't feel 100% the weekend we were there, so we stayed up in the beach house the whole time, but Reid and Georgia Kate had a blast down at the beach!

Baby loves bubbles.

We were so happy that Alli, John, and Perry were able to come up for a few hours so everyone could meet her!  This beautiful girl holding Perry was our little flower girl 10 years ago.  Crazy.

I love this picture of Alli and Guinny looking through old pictures of all our years at Surfside!  

Reid and Georgia Kate had so much fun playing with cousin Logan (and Landon)!  

Pie Face provided lots of laughs and lots of entertainment! :) 

Guinny, THANK YOU for giving us this gift year after year!