Coming Soon to a Scrapbook Page Near You...
























I love those pictures and can't wait to put them into photo albums and onto scrapbook pages. The Beach, as it always is, was great fun and the girls had an absolute blast! We have some wonderful memories and on this very early part of Monday morning, I am SO tired!! But happy with all the fun memories we made!

You did notice that last picture, though, didn't you? Kind of a strange one to have in a collection of beach vacation photos? Well, that was our blown-out tire that we had on the way down to the beach. I didn't get a picture of the SECOND blown tire which we had on the way back from the beach! (We lost it in Montgomery and didn't have a spare, since we'd already used it when we had the first blow-out. The girls got a ride home with an uncle, and Gary and his dad stayed overnight until they could get up to get a tire. It took them until 3 on Sunday afternoon to get one and Gary didn't get home until late last night! Quite an adventure!!!)

A few other notes from the beach...

~ You noticed the softball pics I had sprinkled in there, I'm sure. So I guess you need a World Series update too? Well...we got eliminated on Friday about mid-day. We lost our second elimination game in overtime innings (the second of the week!). We had been behind 5-0 through five innings and could never get caught up. Then, in that last inning, we came from behind and tied it 5-5 (Delaney was the tying run!). But then a batter (one of our very best!) struck out with the winning score on 3rd base and we had to go to an overtime inning. The other team scored 5 and we only scored 2 when it was our time back at-bat. So, it was another tough inning and Delaney was NOT happy (she's VERY competitive...kinda like me! lol). But...we got to spend more than five hours at the beach that afternoon so she soon had it out of her mind! But we had a blast just being in the World Series and Delaney had a great series of games with a lot of great play!

~ The most popular beach activities this year seemed to be hermit crab hunting (one day, the girls found 48 of them and were just so excited about it!), snorkeling (you could snorkel out by the jetties and see the prettiest blue-and-yellow fish swimming around the rocks. McKenna especially loved that!), and sea shell hunting. Sydney called them "sea shelfs" and everytime she'd find one she'd say, "Can I keep it? Please?" (of course, we came home with a huge bucket full! lol) I also thought it was so cute when she was showing me ones with spots on them. "Look, Mommy... these are coca-dotted!"

~ The girls got along SO great while at the beach, and that was the most fun of it all! They reveled in staying in the camper (I was afraid they'd get cramped in there together, but I think they thought it was an adventure). Every night, Gary and I were regaled with what I called the McKenna, Delaney, & Scout Dinner Theatre. They'd perform the evening entertainment for us--in one play, Sydney was the fairy princess who turned them into frogs and horses; another night, they did the Booty Dance where they (no kidding!!!) spelled out letters with their bottoms and we had to guess what it spelled (I'm assuming they got this ability from their Pop!); they also performed Extreme Rock Paper Scissors; and in the funniest (most disturbing?) play of the week they performed as Britney Spears (that was Sydney!!), Nicole Ritchie, and Paris Hilton. All I can say is this--I have very creative children who keep us quite entertained!

~ I love Dippin' Dots, grilled shrimp, really buttery movie popcorn (we went to see Harry Potter while we were there), watermelon, and any bowl of seafood gumbo you can order up for me! I just wish I had a big plate of shrimp in front of me right now (I can eat seafood all week long...and longer!).

And now....well, it's back to the Real World! I'm afraid to check my email, because there will probably be hundreds of messages waiting for me (I think I'll wait until the morning to tackle that!); and I have two articles to work on this week! I also have to gather stuff up to register both McKenna and Delaney for school! And McKenna has Color Guard camp all this week! I also hope to finally get back to visiting your blogs; I will try and pop in today to most of them!

Hope you all had a wonderful last week and weekend!! It's good to be home (well...kinda...I sure am missing the salty sea air)!!!