Memorial Day Recap

Highlights to remember:

*Me falling off the porch doing a victory dance (I have a bruise to prove it).
*Running to the store to buy more and more food. (I should have photographed the pantry)
*Not applying enough sunscreen on my children or Maryn. There was a finger print on her face. *Valero 44 oz drinks
*Attempting to run on the beach (much harder than it seems)
*Dallin and his ** juices
*Finding sand in places I didn't know you could get.
*Jamming out to the beach boys in the house.
*Helping John study for his GRE exam. We learned lots of vocab words!
*Realizing how much crap you take down to the beach for 4 hours of fun.
*Our neighbor asking us how we did this with 6 children umm..we had 10.



Day 1

In Texas they allow people to drive on the beaches, this was definitely something new to me since in Alabama and California this isn't the norm. There were cars as far as the eye could see along with some pretty interesting folk.

John and Doug building our barrier

The tide was pretty high which didn't allow us any dry areas for our stuff. Doug and John came up with a cleaver idea and went and bought a shovel. Apparently we were out of the loop because as we were driving in several people had their rakes and shovels out prepping their spot. The boys built us a water barricade which held up for our 2 days of beach time. Nice.

Weston, Luke, Maryn and Abby

The kids had a blast from the get go. We took Mackenzi and the Wirthlin's took Maryn in their car a day early. (The Gordon's had a softball game to attend).

We ended up staying at the beach for about 4 hours and decided to head back to the house to get cleaned up. As if we didn't have enough food already, Ellice and I headed to the grocery store for more goods. We were a little hammered from the sun--can you tell?

Doug was in charge of the burgers for dinner and saw something on the food network he was dying to try. Instead of just grilling the meat normal, he added in some chopped butter, cheddar cheese wrapped in bacon. Needless to say they were delicious. We all agreed if he wasn't a doctor he could pass for a culinary chef.

The Gordon's showed up later that afternoon which made our party complete. They headed to the beach since Maci hadn't gone yet and we all literally vegged on the couch.

Day 2

We are all here!

We headed back to the beach for more fun in the sun and as you can see some of us were a tad sunburned. Sadly, I didn't apply the sunscreen enough times and my children were a little on the cooked side.

Luckily, Greg went and bought a canopy for us to all enjoy which gave us ample amount of shade for the 2nd day. Even Meg came out in a suit. Isn't she such a cutie??

I forgot how exhausting trips of this kind are with kids. It took us literally a half hour or more to set up shop and then add lunches in the mix and the moms were exhausted before it began. The things we do for fun eh?

As if we hadn't eaten enough already... (why is it we eat so much on vacation?) the Wirthlin's made their famous homemade carmel popcorn. Did I mention that we made Cafe Rio pork for dinner prior? It really was to die for. We also brought up the cards to play blitz (some people call it speed). After about 4 rounds I opted out since I really stink at that game. It was fun to see how the competition heated up throughout the night.

Ellice, Dallin, Maci and Mackenzi

Blitz anyone?

Day 3

We had to check out by 10 am so we decided instead of beaching it just to pack up. This photo I must say was a little tricky set up on the self timer. As you can see my children weren't all in it (pre-teen attitude-grrr....and Weston was beyond unhappy. But, we managed to pull it off. I couldn't think of a better vacation to end out journey in San Antonio than to be with our great friends. We had an awesome time!