Siesta Key 2012: Week 1

I'm back to the blogging...now that we are finally adjusting to 'reality' as we know it.  This year's 4+ weeks at the beach did not disappoint.  It was our 9th year.  We loved it!  We really enjoyed the time that Aaron was able to take off from work to be with us.  He made two trips out and Nora absolutely loved when he was around.  He'd take her swimming practically whenever her little heart desired it. (Spoiled.)  I loved that he drove us down there and flew back to drive us back home.  (Double spoiled.)  Car rides are not fun to me, but the trek to Siesta Key is always worth it.  This year we went a couple days early.  We just couldn't take the anticipation anymore.  It so exciting when everyone gets in town!  These weeks were action packed...well if you count beaching it as action.  I do.  So, I am separating the weeks into different posts to keep them somewhat shorter.  Here's week one in pictures:

This year I sewed each cousin (excluding Baby Clark) a backpack out of a towel.  Nora helped me pick a some pool toys, books, & towels to fill them with.  The intention was for each of the kids to carry their own towels & stuff this year.  Not that it really stayed that way.

We drove to Sarasota to stay with the Johnsons on Thursday.  The boys were at Boy Scout camp so we got to spend some quality time with Ruby, Molly, & finally got to meet Clark!  To say Nora loves him is quite the understatement.  Obsessive may be a better word.  On Friday it happened to be "Cow Appreciation Day"at Chick-fil-a.  Of course we printed off our costumes and went.  Surprisingly, Nora was not a fan of the character cows walking around.  She did finally give one of them a high five.  I also got a cute picture of baby calf Clark:

Within the next day the Browns & Deavers arrived amid lots of squealing and excitement. Saturday afternoon it was finally time to check in to the beach house.

Nora & Lucy

We squeezed in a little time of playing at the beach during the sunset.  Aaron had to at least touch the beach before he flew home the next morning!  They played Red Rover & ran around on the beach before it got dark.

(Do you see why Nora loves her Daddy so much?)

Nora running during Red Rover

Sunday was the usual.  Church, naps, eating, & playing in the house.

Uncle KC napping

Lily & Suzy getting snacks with wet nails

Monday brought back our beloved beach life.  This year we didn't have the typical umbrellas or tents.  This year we didn't have crowding under the small amounts of shade or many sunburns.  This year Uncle KC and the kids built 'the contraption'.  It worked perfectly.  It was admired by many and enjoyed by us.  Essentially it is 4 pvc pipes, bungee cords, and a tarp.  I'm telling you it worked perfectly.  It even had dowels for the kids to climb up on, for fun.

Beau looking out

Tuesday was the first of our 4 beach runs for 2012.  This year Nora 'ran' beside me.  I'm not going to say she was a fan.  By the 4th week she actually ran about 1/2 of it and understood what was going on.  She was motivated by the promise of the popsicle and ribbon at the finish line.  

Showing her ribbon

Swinging with Baby Clark

On Wednesday, Ruby turned 8!  After a day at the beach we celebrated her birthday at the mall.  The kids, my Aunt Molly, & I watched Ice Age 4 at the movie theater there.  It was Nora's first real movie.  Let's just say we're not doing that for a little while.  She loved about the first half of it!  It turns out it's pretty difficult to get a picture to even show up in the theater so this is all I got:

Afterwards, we met in the food court for Chick-fil-a and birthday cookie!

It was too hard to figure out when all the beach pictures were taken, so I'm putting them all here:

Elle with her backpack...Nora's perspective

Nora found a funnel in the beach toys and insisted it was a hat.  Not just any hat, it was her special 'take Baby Clark on a walk' hat.  She is so funny!  She wore it lots of times over the course of the month...even running back to find it so she can go walk Baby Clark!

There was lots of lounging around.  Our bathing beauty is a pro at it.

My portrait, thanks to Nora

Still great at the beach naps!

Love the beach reading!

The trick to getting Nora to do anything this year was Baby Clark.  She loves him!

One nice afternoon we were sitting back enjoying the beach while Nora finished a nap.  We weren't sitting under our new tent (the contraption) at the time, we were sitting behind it.  Lo and behold, a total stranger walked up to the tent, took pictures of the beach under it's shade, and left.  A few minutes later Nora woke up, walked to the tent, and started playing in the shade.  No less than two minutes later the stranger walked back with a book and a towel.  She laid her towel out, grabbed her book, sat down beside Nora and started reading.  It was crazy!  Nora kept looking and looking at her but she didn't pay her a bit of attention.  We laughed so hard at how random and weird it was!  I got Nora to come back to me and the stranger still didn't budge or say a word.  Apparently, she was sun burnt and found some free shade.  Strange.

We did a few other things not on the beach as well...

like shop at Target with these two

play with Baby Clark's baby toys

Someone found more nail polish!  (I think she can smell it through the cupboards.)  The good news is there were only small spots on the bathroom rug and tile.  They were cleaned relatively easy with my recently acquired nail polish removal skills.

and did a lot of pool swimming with this little fishy!

Goodbye Beanbag Chair

This post is a little out of order. It took place back in May. It is the story about Nora's beloved beanbag chair and it's final days with us.

Nora loves chairs. She especially loved her hot pink beanbag chair her Gramma gave her for her first birthday. It was her tv chair. She sat in it, snuggled up to sleep in it, jumped and flopped into it, even played games with Daddy in it. Here's a video of them playing with it:

It was a great chair until she discovered the zipper. Over the course of a month or so, Nora would randomly unzip the beanbag chair and spill (aka throw around) some of the styrofoam 'beans'. She would get into trouble, serve her consequence and a week-ish later (after I'd forget about it) do it again. This probably happened 4 or 5 times. The last time she made a huge mess! It took forever for me clean up! Here's a picture of the 2nd to last mess:

Like I said, the last mess she made was BIG! She made the mess while I was vacuuming the crumbs in the kitchen. I couldn't hear the disaster brewing on the other side of the bar. When I saw it we talked, she sat through time out, and I moved her to another activity. I finished up my kitchen cleaning before moving on to the bean explosion. When I walked into the living room Nora had the beanbag chair on head all the way down past her knees. Talk about having a heart attack! I panicked and tried pulling it off of her. She had squeezed herself in so I had to unzip it more. I could hear her gasping for air! Her mouth was filled with the beans! Thankfully, she was fine & didn't inhale any. It sure did scare us both though! Another reason I won't win Mother Of The Year this year! Needless to say, this was the end of Nora's beanbag chair! We quickly said goodbye to it and threw it out! It was a great idea and fun while it lasted, but I wouldn't recommend them for any child under 3! I am so grateful Nora was fine...this girl is becoming quite a handful! I love her!!

We Love Daddy!

Nora & I are so blessed with Aaron. He is a great Daddy & husband. He works really hard to provide for us. He was working in TN & couldn't make it back for Father's Day this year. We decided to celebrate it the next Sunday...Nora didn't mind.

Special card Nora picked out by herself...Cookie Monster!

Daddy's new shirt.  Came with hot wheels for Nora to 'drive' on his back.

He also got a sequel to his favorite childhood book...Another Monster at the End of This Book.

And some favorite sweets!

For dinner we went to Lala & Grandpa Steve's.  We had a special requested meal of Aaron's to celebrate.   It was breakfast for dinner.  We gave Steve a Carowinds refill cup for all his Carowinds trips.  Now he won't go thirsty in all that extreme heat!

I'd say this year's Father's Day was a success!  We love all the fathers in our lives & appreciate them so much!

Mother/Daughter South Carolina Tour

Aaron had a big job in Tennessee and was out of town for 2 1/2 weeks.  We really missed him and had to come up with some things to do to pass the time.  So we took a mini road trip through SC.  Okay, so maybe it wasn't that glamorous.  One Monday evening (June 11th) we drove to Tutu & Rara's house in Columbia.  They live there since Rara is serving in the Temple Presidency for the Columbia, SC Temple.   (For more info about LDS temples click here.)  We spent the night with them and Nora got Tutu all to herself Tuesday morning while I went and cleaned the temple.  It was a great experience for both of us.  Tuesday we ran errands with Tutu until the afternoon when we continued our road trip down to Summerville.  In Summerville, we spent the rest of the week with PeePaw & Uncle Xan.  

My stylin' co-captain

Shortly after we arrived in Summerville Nora hit the backyard running.  It was time to see Chip & the other chickens.

Loving the puddles

Learning to throw scratch

Watching the hypnotized chicken

Every morning she would get up {extra early} and feed the chickens with PeePaw and play with the dogs.

We spent a lot of time hanging out, like we try to do at PeePaw's house.  (It's what he likes to do so we go there knowing that's what we'll do.)  Nora kept me extra busy.  I brought some of her learning time things with us (abc coloring, play doh, paint with water, etc.) to make sure she'd stay out of trouble and have some okay things to get into.  FYI:  mission failed. 

A little info about PeePaw's house:  There aren't any 'extra' bedrooms.  One is Uncle Xan's.  The other is my sweet step-sister, Ashleigh's.  Often when we visit Ashleigh is at her Dad's house or graciously gives us her room and stays in the living room.  Xan's room is also known as the gun-building and/or computer room.  PeePaw has a desk with all his gun-building tools, supplies, & parts in almost half of the room.  The other half is Xan's computer lounge, if you will.  This is another reason we often stay in Ashleigh's room.  Her room, of course, is full of her stuff.  Most of which is very appealing to a two year old, unfortunately.  This trip she proved I can't take my eyes off of her...even while she's napping.  She also proved that if G.Viv is out of town, don't leave it up to PeePaw to baby proof!  =)  The first day's nap she found a pen beside Ashleigh's bed.  She did not destroy anything that wasn't hers.  She didn't even get out of her bed.  She merely tattooed herself from head to toe.

The next day (Thursday) we went to the farm.  We got to see the chickens that live there.  They live in the woods but have an electric fenced in area with their coop, food, & water.  At night, they fly over the fence (to come in) and are safe from predators.  These are pictures of them in the woods and their home base.

After playing hard on the farm, Nora was ready for a nap in her favorite Ashleigh's bed.  I moved everything I thought she could reach from the bed.  I didn't want to dig through Ashleigh's things, but anything I saw that could be tempting...I moved.  I also checked on her periodically through her nap & stayed in the room next door so I could hear her as soon as I heard her.  I hadn't heard her, but decided to check on her.  Mission failed.  Again.  She found a jewelry box type container with nail polish in it.  Not just any nail polish...black and fuchsia.  I guess she figured go bold or go home.  Miraculously, she did not dump or spill any.  Instead she painted herself literally from head to toe.  I count my blessings that she didn't get any on the furniture or carpet.  She did get some on poor Ashleigh's bedding.  Nora knew she was in big trouble as soon as I walked in.  Talk about feeling bad.  Both of us.  To say I'm not getting Mother/Step Sister/Daughter of the Year is an understatement.  I'm sure this happens to others, but I sure have felt horrible about it!  The good news is Ashleigh gets to pick out new bedding!  The other good news, that I keep trying to remind myself of, is that it's just material things and at least no one was hurt.  We do love Ashleigh though & hate this happened to her innocent bed!  Quickly, I went off to Target to get Nora some more things to play with & a big bottle of nail polish remover.

Before

After.  Hours of cleaning later.

On Friday she wasn't allowed back into Ashleigh's bedroom.  She had to take a nap in the sunroom.  After over an hour of watching the chickens & playing she finally gave in & took a short nap.  Technically that's a mission accomplished because she didn't destroy anything, but a fail on the nap front. 

Nora's favorite things at PeePaws are:

Riding her horse

She got her new kitchen from her birthday!

Playing outside with PeePaw & his chickens

Making Xan watch Dora or saying his name over & over

And being the center of attention!

Before we left we squeezed in a trip to IHOP to celebrate Father's Day early with PeePaw.  {And Tractor Supply which may quickly becoming Nora's favorite store.}  We had a great time!