Sand, Alligators and Other Issues.

I have three hours worth of uploaded photos I could show you. I have beach pictures, silly pictures, food pictures, sister pictures and more. And I'll probably get around to them eventually. They capture the memories of the richness that is life. And we have at a lot of life lately.

Sometimes it is just the writing that feels good though.

Life passes by for us like it does for everyone else at this stage, I'm guessing. Fast. Neck breaking pace.
But the days are a little longer, they stretch a little bit more. This time of year for us makes everything a little bit more savory. Ben is out of school, my work calendar isn't completely insane and we feel the stress evaporate a little.
(Who am I kidding. We live in Tennessee. Things don't evaporate. They melt into a soppy puddle. But soppy puddle just sounds so, uh, soppy. Just like a Tennessee summer!)

There are slow weekends, lazy summer evenings, if anything with a four and nearly two year old can be classified as lazy, that is.
Let's go with a little less scheduled, that's probably more accurate.
We push back bedtime, play outside a little longer, sleep in until the glorious hour of 6:30am if we are lucky, and soak up all those moments that you sometimes rush through ( Don't eat that! It's time to go inside.  Put down the stick! Please stop screaming, the neighbors will call the police. Please go inside. For the seventyhundredth time, no you cannot have another snack before dinner. Put your shirt back on. Get. in. the. house. ) but that really, you know you're going to look back on as beautifully bittersweet one day all too soon.

We are staying in the house, withdrawn from the market and excited about a few decor and renovation projects. So go ahead and throw that lazy comment out the window I guess.
You've been here. You know our issues. Paint! Hammer! Wood!
Help.

I am learning that God's timing is good. That He will put you where He needs you, if you ask for it. And then ask some more. Because once I get there, I still need him to show me what to do, or I'll just wind up spinning in circles.

We went to the beach for a week with the rest of the White family.
One three story house, 8 adults, 5 kids, and a whole lotta laughter.

The house was spectacular, and Ben's parents once again gifted the family with one of life's best riches - memories.
It even had an alligator!! A lot of houses down in the Gulf have one.They come in handy, I guess, and we even let the kids play with it some. They don't get to have one everyday, obviously, so it was a bit of a novelty. They were all a little enamoured.

It was a really relaxing week, (again, four and two year old, so, relative.), so fun and often hysterical.

Kaelyn would stay out in the sand from daylight til dusk if we let her. She is now the proud owner of a tye-died personalized beach tshirt, complete with airbrushed dolphin, and a hair wrap. When at the beach!

Alayna clung like a monkey. "No watuh. No watuh, Mommy."  Asked to go back to the house repeatedly, and only sat in a chair in the sand if we offered up a bag of the ultimate beach snack. Cheetos. My fair skinned babe lounged under the tent with her bag of heaven, until her fingers were completely orange and she figured out that she could also feed them to the seagulls, and then the real games began. Bird! Here! Cracker!! BIRDIE!!!

Kaelyn jumped on a boogie board, left me speechless at the water park when she cruised down the Lazy River all on her lonesome, hopped on huge water slides and came flying down (where is the child that acts traumatized if I get water in her eyes while we wash her hair? Hello?).

 I, along with 4 other family members, got a nice little sting by a jelly fish. Those bad boys don't play, either. They mean biz, and those slimy little tentacles wrapped around my ankles and I'm pretty sure I had very unkind thoughts towards one of God's creatures because, NOT NICE.
Those who were stung thanked all the others who were not for their concern, but no, we did not need anyone to pee on the sting like the Internet suggests. Sand. Scrub. Repeat. We're good. Let's keep things clean and PG on the family vacay. Kay, thx.

Then I look over and my polite little angel of a daughter has dropped her bikini bottoms and announces that she needs to pee, right here. In the water and in front of all of God's glory and other visitors at the beach. I'm sure it was at that point someone had unkind thoughts towards one of God's other creatures, being me, the mother of the child who is now letting nature flow freely. . . I just. I can't.
I can't win them all. Sometimes I just act like I'm not even playing and I don't know where they came from.

Alayna decided the day before we left that getting her toes wet and splashing in the waves wasn't too bad. The magic that convinced her the ocean wasn't full of evil? Sissy, who brilliantly pointed out look! Bubbles!! Bubbles!! (Name the movie.)
She loved riding in Uncle Mike's "big truck", and here is my public apology to the owners of the rental house for the electric bill from the week she was there. Because the three doors going out onto the decks? Alayna's favorite entertainment option of the trip. Open. Shut. Open. Open wider. Shut. Giggle. But it was vacation and I wasn't about to be a killjoy, so I sipped on my morning coffee while she did what drives all good, electric bill paying parents crazy. Vacation. She lived a little. Just not on my A/C bill.


Papaw and Grandmama (brave and generous souls that they are) took the kids to see Monsters U. The big kids went for seafood. Except for Chris and Jill because they're weird, so they eat chicken. But we love them anyway. And then I eat their portion of oysters.

I worked my way through the entire story and half a dozen of the recipes in "Bread and Wine" (if you haven't picked up this book yet, GO. I can't even put it on a shelf. It's on my kitchen counter. I read. I reread. I highlight. And I cook. Her basic risotto. Her Gaia cookie recipe. I'm in love and her name is Shauna Niequist.)

We got back from vacation to a rainy 4th of July weekend, which was fine and dandy with us because we were content to lounge on the couch and make pj's the fashion statement of the holiday. And do fifty three loads of beach-filled laundry. Like sand through an hourglass... so are the number of clothes to be put away.

Speaking of sand, Ben didn't quite get his fill, because he is heading back for more. This time though, we will not be joining him. (Mainly because we aren't crazy gluttons for punishment.) Next week is when Ben is taking his annual week long trip to the sun.

Or La Jolla, California.

I can't ever remember which it is because when I look at the weather forecast I'm pretty sure it's the sun.

I don't know how the grass survives, let alone the group of men going to play 270 holes of golf in a week.

Kaelyn asked me if Daddy was going to have an alligator where he was staying on his trip. When I told her I sure hoped not, that maybe he would see one but he wouldn't get close, she was very upset with me. "But it helps! And it's fun, and he LIKES THEM!"

And then we had a lively, completely dysfunctional discussion about the type of alligator at the beach that has buttons and a door and is fun to ride up and down in a fancy three-story beach house, and that some people refer to as an elevator, and the other type of alligator that can chomp your arm off.

Then she exclaimed to me through saucer-sized eyes with tears that she was never riding an alligator again because she didn't want her arm chomped off.

And that's my stellar parenting example for you of the day.

The end.