Florida and Alabama

As soon as school ended, we made a beeline for Pensacola beach to relax and unwind.  I can't think of a better way to kick off a summer!

These are beach loving boys!

 

 

 We rented a great apartment in this beautiful house and it was a perfect location with a private pool in back and a family restaurant two doors down.

These boys never get tired of the beach!  And lucky for me, any beach is my happy place.

We loved the laid-back feel of Pensacola and the great family places with playgrounds and sand under our toes.

We did take a quick break from the beach to visit the National Naval Aviation Museum, which was more than worth the trip.

 It had so many planes!  We didn't cover the entire museum because there was so much to see and do.

 

Fresh seafood and new friends...one last dinner to wrap up a great trip!

 Just a few short hours away, we spent the rest of the week at the farm in Alabama.  Ben was dying to get behind the wheel of his favorite truck and he did all the driving he could in the pasture and along the private dirt roads.

 On one occasion, the heat and the bumps rocked someone right to sleep.  Did I mention that Ben's beloved blue truck has no air-conditioning?  And this was a record year for horseflies?

I forgot to take the confetti eggs in March, but I remembered this time!  We left some pretty decorations on our bridge.

 

We enjoyed a pretty fantastic sunset on the porch one evening...

...and while we were sitting outside we found some tiny residents in the bushes out front!  We saw these tiny bunnies for the rest of the week but couldn't quite convince Matt to let us bring them home.

 We also saw some gorgeous sunrises.

The kids had some great luck fishing on the pond.  Ben's whopper beat everything Matt and I caught!

The only family member that was VERY unhappy about our trip was Casey, because our Florida rental was not open to pets.  Not only did she miss out on Alabama (which turned out to be a good thing because those baby bunnies would not have been happy to meet her), she had to spend time at the kennel and eat (*gasp*) dog food.  She spent two solid days sleeping off the experience at home. But she's a dog and we were immediately forgiven!

Another Year in the Books!

We wrapped up the school year with a fun field trip to the Downtown Aquarium with Alex's Challenge class.  It was the most fun I've had on a field trip because I only to keep up with three kids (Logan, Ryan, and Alex) and there was so much more to see and do at the Aquarium than I expected!

The boys LOVED the shark train!

 

Petting the sting rays was lots of fun as well.  Our second time through I realized you could buy little fish to feed the rays, so it was much more exciting.

Lots of energy in this crowd but they were such good kids.

 

Back at school, I volunteered in the literacy library nearly every day to help check in thousands of books.  Alex was happy to pop in and say hello (many times) and I laughed so hard when I saw him with glasses!  Apparently a VIP privilege in his class is wearing glasses frames.  Now he won't stop bugging me to get his eyes checked because he wants his own glasses.

Finally, we had the celebrations of learning.  The second grade theme was the walk of fame and it was just amazing!

My last days with a second grader!!  sniff, sniff...

 

The kids each got up to present their favorite parts of second grade...

 

Alex with his wonderful teacher.  Thank God for women with character and patience who teach our little ones!

Outside the classroom on the walk of fame...you have to read why Alex is a star...

On our last weekend before summer, Ben spent some of his birthday giftcards and was thrilled to find Beatles records.  Once again, I'm convinced this kid was born in the wrong century.

I dragged everyone to the Museum of Natural Science because I was thrilled we got to see the corpse flower bloom.  It only blooms for about a day every 5-7 years and smells terrible...who wouldn't want to experience that?

It was totally worth the trip and after we recovered from the smell, we enjoyed the butterflies, like my very favorite Blue Morpho.

 

The kids just had to get through 2 1/2 more days before their big summer break and I got to celebrate Ben's year in his classroom.  Each kid presented a fun fact about a country he had researched.

 

They also presented maps and each discussed a topic they'd covered during the year.  I was so proud of Ben because he did a fantastic talk about Karankawa Indians.

Ben and his sweet teacher.

They could barely contain their excitement on the last day of school!

A side-by-side comparison of the school year.  Where did the time go?  They look like different kids!

Now it's helllloooooo, summer!!

Ben's Birthday Weekend

 We blinked and a decade passed.  It's unbelievable that our tiny, fragile baby Ben is 10 years old!  We had a wonderful weekend celebrating this incredible boy who has never stopped amazing us.

 

 On Friday, Ben took cupcakes to school to celebrate with his class.  After school, four of his friends came over for some nerf gun battles, xbox, and a sleepover.

I had gathered a bunch of empty boxes to use as forts.

They worked great, but even better later in the evening when the kids had a serious demolition derby.  I should have gotten pictures of that action!

Pizza and cake for the birthday boy!

 Saturday morning found the happy crew (Jack, Ben, Drew, Alex, Austin, Greydan) gobbling down their food so they could play some more minecraft and terraria before the parents came.

 

As soon as the last kid left, we were off to the baseball fields.  Because of another week of rained out games, the end of season tournament started weeks behind schedule.  As a result, it was single elimination and Ben's team lost a real heartbreaker against the #1 seed to end their season. We were proud of how they played and couldn't be disappointed that they all but beat the top team.

Alex's game was up next and they hung in there for an inning or two, but got eliminated as well.

Back home for showers and some more celebrating!

All the grandparents joined us to wish Ben a very happy birthday!

Sunday morning was his real birthday and the gifts were pretty exciting.  An encyclopedia of Chevy trucks for the boy who can't get enough of old trucks!

By far his favorite gift - an incredible camera from Mr. Scott's collection!  It's been lots of fun seeing the pictures he's capturing.

We rounded out the weekend with three more parties!  What could be better than cake and cookie cake?  Krispy Kreme basballs!

Ben's team party was at their sponsor's restaurant.  PDQ generously donated a free meal to each family!

Next stop was our neighbor Gabriella's party at Pump It Up.

Finally, we wrapped up Alex's baseball season at Main Event with some bowling and pizza.

Happy boys with their trophies!

It was a crazy and fun weekend and such a blessing to celebrate our little miracle, who's not quite so little these days.  We cannot wait to see what God has planned for this guy in the next 10 years!

Baseball Pictures

 We spent a wonderful weekend with Scott and Lou Anne during baseball season and we were so excited when Scott sent us some of the pictures he got during the baseball games.

I love, love this one because Alex had the ball and held this pose for what seemed like minutes, waiting to tag the runner out. 

 

 

Assistant coach Matt sending some encouragement to the Pirates!  I think it's a "Ruuunnnnn!" after a hit.

My favorite right fielder!

Thanks for the memories, Scott!

And one of my favorites off my phone (click to zoom in)...Ben sliding perfectly under a tag to score for the Yankees!