First Day of School

Ben's first day of school was last week. He has been so excited to start 4 year old preschool!

Ben's first day was only 1 hour and parents were able to attend with the kids. Ben's favorite part of his new classroom was definitely the fish tank. His new teacher even let him feed the fish!

He was also able to give his old teachers big hugs. I overheard him tell his best friend that he missed his old teachers so much. So far, he really likes his new teachers. But just like his mama, he's slightly resistant to change!

Ben definitely did not forget our tradition of going to Krispy Kreme after the first day of class! He picked the chocolate glazed doughnut with sprinkles, of course!

Ella was sad to see her brother go back to school, but we have some fun girl time planned for our mornings without her big brother!

For the Grandmas

Ben built 2 sand castles the last afternoon that we were on the beach. When he was finished, he wanted me to take a picture of his finished masterpiece to send to his grandmas!

Perdido Key August 2011

Last week, we headed back down to Perdido Key to enjoy our last week of summer vacation. We were able to meet some of our best friends from Gainesville there for the week, and we had a great time catching up. The Redmonds lived in our neighborhood during our second year in Florida. Although we hadn't seen them in over 2 years, it was like no time had passed. Ben and Fischer remembered each other and had a great time playing together. And it was so nice for me to have Rochelle around every day again. Although now I am really homesick for my Florida friends!

We would hit the beach first thing each morning and the kids would swim the entire time. They were either in the ocean or in the pool. We brought a million sand toys down every day, but they barely got touched! The first few days we were there, the surf was completely calm and the water was very clear. The boys spent all morning fishing with little fishing nets. Ben was determined to catch one, and after 3 hours of trying, he finally got one. It was pretty impressive considering how hard those little fish were to catch. This is also crab season, and Carl caught a few of those as well.

Jeff and Fischer fishing

Snack time! The last 2 times we were at the beach, the kids ate pretzels, goldfish, and grapes for their mid-morning snack. They must consider this their go-to beach snack since they request the same thing every day. It's nothing special, so it's funny how they already get set in their vacation ways!

Relaxing with Daddy!

Ella loved playing with Camille! Especially since it was so easy to make Camille laugh!

Ben swam around the pool without water wings this trip, and he was quite the little fish. He was able to swim across the width of the pool without help and grabbed rings off the bottom in the 5 ft area. Ella graduated to wearing water wings without the life jacket!

The kids are doing their crab impressions while we wait for dinner!

Lunching on the balcony!

Ella's favorite part of vacation was eating ice cream for dessert every night!

She is so easy to please when she has a giant bowl of Moose Tracks in front for her!

We also overlapped with my parents the first day and a half that we were there, and it was fun to see my Dad and Ben playing on the beach together. Dad is one of those who can't relax on the beach with a book, so it was a win win situation for both my mom and myself. She finally had someone to entertain Dad and we had someone to play with Ben!

While on vacation growing up, Dad was always in the water playing with my sister and me. We still remember how other kids would swim over and want to play with us because our dad was so much fun!

We had a great trip and it was the perfect way to close out our summer before our fall activities begin!!