Summertime

The month of June ended up being incredibly busy for us.  I had no idea that we were going to have so much going on.  It was a lot of fun but we're looking forward to the upcoming months of taking it easy and hopefully spending some time at the pool.

So here it is, the month of June, in pictures:

 

OUR ANNUAL NEIGHBORHOOD GOLF TOURNAMENT

always lots of fun hanging out with neighbors and getting all the kiddos together while the daddies golf.  Neighbors "sponsor" holes in their front yards and can make the course as silly or as creative as they like.  it's very interesting to see. We finished off the night with a yummy meal together!

 

SWIM LESSONS

this was Grayson's first year taking lessons and he did really well.  unfortunately we haven't had much time to practice all of his skills, but hopefully in the upcoming months...

 CAMPING

We joined Mimi and Papa for a week of camping on their summer mission trip.  This year, they were just 20 minutes from our house at Red Top Mountain State Park, so it was nice to not have to drive too far. 

 

 One evening, Papa took Grayson fishing and he caught his very first fish!

 even Caroline reeled one in!

BABY WILL

After our week of camping, we headed to Greenville to meet Baby Will.  It was so great hanging out with William and Bonnie for the day and getting to hold that precious baby!  Caroline and Grayson enjoyed their cousin time with Abby Ruth.

Mimi and Papa met up with us while in Greenville to return our little Indian chief.  They took him on a special trip to Cherokee, NC to see some real Indians!  He hasn't stopped talking about it since!

 Of course they brought back some Indian gear for everyone!

VACATION BIBLE SCHOOL

The following week was VBS at our church, so Grayson enjoyed taking part in that each day.  

 

Needless to say, the month of June has flown by and these two kiddos are happy to be home!

Our Strawberry Harvest

We have finally been able to enjoy the strawberries that we planted last year.

 They have really taken off in our front yard garden and they are quite tasty!

 (Please take notice of the beautiful front yard fence that my hard-working husband has been building the past few months-we're loving it!)

Grayson loves to take charge of the picking and the washing.

Mmmmmm!!  

Mother's Day 2013

I am so thankful to be the mother of these precious children.  This is the BEST job that I could ever ask for and I wouldn't trade it for ANYTHING!

The life of a child is such a MIRACLE and I am so BLESSED to be able to experience it 3 times! 

 

21 weeks

BABY GIRL Hayes will be born in September.  

We give all the glory to our Lord!!

Mother's Day 2013

Day 5- Art of Animation and Pop Century

Our last day, we woke up to rain. But we headed out anyways to explore the resort across from us--Art of Animation. The rain was off and on throughout the morning.

The kids loved all the statues for the different themes--The Little Mermaid, The Lion King, and Cars.

Grayson especially loved this little playground...

Seashells!

After exploring the Art of Animation, we headed back across the bridge to Pop Century.  We had stayed so busy the whole trip that we hadn't even seen half of what was at our resort.

Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head..

Mickey telephone--look how small Grayson and Caroline look below it!

It pretty much rained the whole afternoon after naps, so we headed to a restaurant for dinner. After dinner, we came back to watch the movie that our resort was showing that night. 

The rain was a bummer towards the end of the week, but the trip overall was so much fun!  I'm so thankful for the first few days of sunshine that we had and all that we got to do!  We will definitely be going back to Disney (hopefully in the near future).  We thought the ages of the kids were perfect--2 and 4- they really did great the whole trip!  

We are so thankful that we had the opportunity to go. Our first-ever little family vacation was truly "magical" !!

Day 4- Caribbean Beach and the Polynesian

 We spent the entire morning playing in the pool at the Caribbean Beach Resort.  They had a great kids' splash area with a pirate ship that had several water slides and a huge barrel that dumped water every few minutes.  I didn't take any pictures, but Chad had taken this one on his phone. Grayson loved it!  Caroline wasn't too excited about it because I was accidentally sitting under the large barrel of water that dumped on top of us unexpectedly.  It pretty much ruined her excitement about the pool.

Oh well...

After swimming, we headed to the Animal Kingdom Lodge for lunch and to take a look at some of the animals that they have in their overlook areas.  So we saw zebras, giraffes, antelope, and ostriches.  Once again, I did not take any pictures for some reason.  

 

 After naps that afternoon, we headed to the Polynesian resort to explore.  Then we rode the monorail around to several other resorts and got off to explore.  We ended up back at the Polynesian and Grayson found these "indians"  that he begged to have a picture of.

 We had dinner and grabbed the famous self-serve Dole whip--please notice the ice cream in Chad's hand.  As I said, it was "self-serve" so he took full advantage of the situation and made sure to get his $4 worth!  I was a little embarrassed but thankful that there was enough to go around for everyone!

 We headed out to the beach area to watch the water parade and the Magic Kingdom fireworks.  It was raining a little so that was a bummer but we still enjoyed watching it all for the second time.

Once we got back to our room, we had a popcorn and movie night since it was raining and we missed the outdoor movie playing at our resort. 

Despite the afternoon/evening rain, we still had a great day!