Busy week

Our family at the beach.

Our dear friends, Rae Ann & Dan (with their four kids) have been here, explored and will be departing the state tomorrow. So I have a LOT to write about! So put on your reading glasses and let's begin this story of our great week together. For those of you who don't know about Rae Ann let me give you a little background. We've been friends since the first day of our freshman year in high school. We have one of those amazing friendships where months will go by and we'll call and it is like we just talked the day before (which lately is the case since she's a stay-at-home mom and one of my favorite people to talk to). The best thing is our kids - we each have four, she has one son (8 years old) and three daughters (6, 2 and 9 months). So as you can imagine my kids love having them around too, because they each have a playmate.
Dan's Clan arrived on Tuesday and we had lots planned for their visit. Wednesday we awoke and realized that our air conditioner was not working (again!) -we thought it might be the addition of six bodies into our little house but it turned out we had not actually changed the filter in several months (note to fellow homeowners don't forget to change your filter - that was an expensive lesson for us). Dan's and I took our kids to Sea World (Jason had to work). We drove through a LOT of rain and I was beginning to regret the on-line purchase of Sea World tickets when we arrived and the sun came out. We had an almost perfect day to go, it began raining on us again as the end of the day came, but it was actually pretty nice while we were there. Not too hot and not too humid. Rae Ann & I enjoyed watching Shamu while nursing in unison, what a sight to behold. I took the big kids on the Journey to Atlantis - let's call it a glorified log flume - it was a blast! We had such a good time that the kids begged Dan & Rae Ann to let us go again, I didn't have anything to do with it. :) While we were on our second ride down there was 2 year old meltdown so we had to get going. A waited to have her meltdown when we were about 20 minutes from home, we stopped but she didn't want to hear about the time factor. Thursday we prepared for our trip to Port Aransas and played at our local pool. Oh yea and Jason blew up the microwave. He was trying to change the light bulb but didn't realize that the light was on and when he tried to take it out it went zap. Here's a funny side note, Friday as Jason was getting out his microwave oatmeal and getting it ready to put in the microwave I asked in my most innocent voice, "whatcha doing with that?"... hee hee. After that fun we got an early start so that Jason and B could go on a fishing trip. They went deep sea fishing and caught nothing! Poor guys - the worst part was that B got sea sick twice. Jason didn't get a picture of that. While we were in Port A we rented a beach house and had a great time playing on the beach and in the pool.
Everybody in our family had a great time and we want to say thank you to Rae Ann & Dan and their crew for a terrific vacation - let's do it again soon!
Here's some pictures.

2 year olds learning to share.

Lesson #1 - Don't take a two year old to the beach without putting on his sipsuit (as he calls it) because they don't understand the concept of just going to see the ocean.


Lesson #2 - Two year olds find PURE JOY in running in water and mud.

Lesson #3 - Seven year olds don't get it either!

There's a little Baywatch in all of us.

I LOVE this picture!