Family time like this makes it all worth it - Beach Vacay - 2012

We rented a beautiful condo on the beach in Gulf Shores, AL. It was like something off MTV cribs. It was crazy nice and accommodated our rather large crew nicely. We each had huge bedrooms with our own bathroom. The view was awesome. It was so nice to be with my siblings, their families and our parents. First beach vacation with all of us since I was 5 years old! The pool was nothing to brag about and our extremly expensive fridge was broken the first 3 days but lets not dwell on the negative:)

What I will remember the most about this vacation was the pure joy and happiness I could see on my mom's face throughout the entire trip. It was priceless. She had all her little chicks around her. She smiled for 5 days straight days. Another memory that I will remember forever is my mom walking down on the sand, with her stick (AKA cain), and walking straight into the ocean to swim with us. PRICELESS.  Of course I didn't have my camera!

Beach lovers!

Quinnie Ray shocked us by loving the beach and sand this year. She LOVED boogie boarding and battling the waves.

Hang lose. Until she got bit (3 times) but tiny jelly fish, she said she wanted to devote her life to surfing. Her idol is Bethany Hamilton - the surfer whose arm got bit off by a shark while she was surfing but she still became a pro surfer. Hassie Clare watches the movie at least once a day. Quinn will watch it with her but refuses to watch the sad parts of the movie:)

Jamie, Quinnie and Nana

Everyone but me and Paisley at the Oyster House.

Jack A Poo, me and Quinnie at Lulu's at Homeport Marina (Jimmy Buffet's sister's place)

Nana, Paw Paw and the grand kids - they all look thrilled don't they:)

Daddy and Hassie Clare muggin for the camera

Jamie spent a great deal of the vacation doing this.

Fred did A LOT of relaxing and enjoying the scenery.

Josie and Uncle Brent making homemade strawberry ice cream. It was YUMMY!

Movie marathon in the living area.

Paisley and Aunt Karrie

Jack and Uncle David gobbling up some fresh steamed shrimp.

Cousins - Hassie Clare and Jojo - this pic warms my heart.

Bathing beach beauties ready to hit the beach.

Surfs up dude. Let's catch some waves.



My sister in law has no idea how pretty she is! Love this pic even though she might kill me for putting a picture of her on here in her bathing suit. Twenty years from now when we look through Hassie Clare and Quinn's blog books you will appreciate this picture. You are gorgeous!



Hassie Clare and Quinn waiting on a wave.

My sweet Quinnie. It tickled my heart how much she loved the beach this year!

I'm not mentioning who this is but don't ya just LOVE blackmail pics of your sister. hehehe

My sister in law and husband don't like each other AT ALL!

Quinn Rayann - 5 years old (almost 6)

Hassie Clare - 5 years old (almost 6)

Nana, Quinnie and Hassie Clare

Nana and Paisley

Nana with her granddaughters

What a fun way to start off the summer! Amazing how smooth it went with 4 families involved AND that we are all family. We made lots of great memories!

thankful for living in the USA and gymnastics

If we lived in China, they would have already taken Hassie Clare away from us and she would be training 18 hours a day at the Chinese Olympic training center at 5 years old. The girl has mad skills. The scary thing is that she is mostly self trained. She will see something on TV and try it. She has had little to no formal training. The most instruction she has received was from a dance school owner that came to the girls school for 45 minutes once a week during the school year and taught tumbling. She was a great teacher but had her hands full with 25 kids, one helper and in tight quarters. Long story short, there are 4 levels - 4 being the highest level. The kids in this class ranged from pre-k to 6th grade. Quinn loved it and received a Level 2 certificate like most of the kids in the program. Hassie Clare was the only kid to get a Level 4 certificate and she is in the pre-k! CRAZY The teacher was always pulling me aside and encouraging me to check into formal training at a competitive gym. I kind of just brushed it off thinking she was too young and it was to much of a commitment.

Hassie Clare

Quinn

End of the year tumbling show - 2012

Quinn, Elaina and Hassie Clare

The girls with their tumbling coach - Mrs. Lori from LRP Studios

 Fast forward a few months and the girls were at camp at this place called The Kids Only Gym. They have a balance beam, uneven bars, etc. Hassie Clare was in heaven. After 2 days of wowing the instructors, a competitive gym in Memphis called us and asked if we would be interested in coming to their gym. This gym put out 6 girls last year on full athletic rides in gymnastics to various Div 1 colleges. 24 girls in the past 9 years. They are not interested in Quinn, which breaks me heart, but thankfully Quinn has no interest in being pushed in gymnastics nor does she want to do anything scary (she thinks the uneven bars are scary). So ... Jamie and I have some decisions to make. Huge commitment time wise and financially. Truth be told ... I'm a "ball" sport person. And God forbid she decided she wanted to be a cheerleader some day.  EEEKKKK  BUT this is her life. Jamie and I have decided that she was blessed with this God given talent, her desire to learn the sport is through the roof and who are we to deprive her of this opportunity. We have decided to make a 6 month commitment and re-evaluate it at the end of the 6 months. I'm shopping around at competitive gyms and meeting with the coach's. If we are going to do this, we are going to do it right! I'm secretly hoping she loses interest by the end of the 6 months and at the same time I'm secretly hoping that she falls madly in love the sport and wants to do it the rest of her life. She told our waitress at Newk's the other day that she was going to be in the Olympics ... but not until she is 13. I'll cheers to that!

PINKY .. our tooth fairy

Hassie Clare is elated to announce that she has lost her first tooth. Quinnie is elated to announce that she has not lost her first tooth and would prefer never to lose a tooth.

HC's bottom right tooth was loose for weeks. She would ask me daily to pull it but I wasn't sure how to tell when it was ready....everyone would tell me that I will know. Finally we both got the courage to go for it. I don't remember all the blood that comes with losing a tooth but good gravy it was a blood bath. Thankfully none of us are bothered by lots of blood.

Our ever so thoughtful tooth fairy responded with a sweet letter that was scented like cotton candy and decorated in puffy stickers… along with $3. She allowed Hassie Clare to keep her tooth under 3 conditions:

1) that she saves the special silver dollar
2) that she donates one of the dollar’s to someone or something in need
3) that she spends a dollar on whatever she wants … except candy

Hassie Clare agreed to those conditions and stored her tooth in a neat keepsake book I ordered for them. She immediately put her silver dollar in her piggy bank, put her spending dollar in her purse and made a baggie for her donation money. Her and Quinn decided they would start saving money to give to St. Jude. Sniff sniff

My only complaint about Pinky is that she left fairy dust EVERYWHERE. Hassie Clare did a little investigative work and traced the fairy dust to a bullseye crack in a back window pane (hole created by Daddy while weed eating). I’ll be vacuuming up large white glitter fairy dust for months to come!

Summer O' Fun

Guess who has taken the summer off from blogging without consciously making an effort to do so? Guess who finally purchased some Cloud space so that I would upload 16GB of pictures and videos from the past 7 months and store them safely (cause pictures make reading my blog so much better)? Guess who has a gob of memories to document and save for my little girls to have when they get older?

I'm on it (updating my blog ... not booze:)!

PS - I'm backdating this blog entry to the day after my last entry so that the correct time frame will reflect on all the new posts I'm catching up on. Do you follow me? The "real" date of this post is 7/11/12 which means I have not posted anything in 6 weeks. So when HC and Q read this when they are all grown up that will be super impressed that I was so on top of everything:) The will wonder how I had time to blog on the day of their birthday or while we were on our first camping trip with no wifi service. Sshhhhh they will ever know! :)

Goodbye Pre-Kindergarten .. hello summer

I totally forgot about the thrill of summer. The giddiness that happens to students the last week of school. I had no idea that I would feel this way also. For 12 weeks I don't have to worry about packing healthy, well balanced lunches, waking up cranky 5 year olds before the sun rises, getting uniforms, socks and shoes ready, signing folders, begging the rest of the parent's in the class for help or money or food ... and the list goes on and on and on. For 12 weeks we get to pretend like we were before they started big girl school. We will all sleep a little later, we will eat ice cream as often as possible, we will bathe as little as possible, we will swim, nap and run around without shoes on for most of the summer. We will stay up late watching movies and eating popcorn, we will go on random adventures around our neighborhood, go on lots of bike rides and we will have friends over for dinner or dessert or both. We will chase fireflies and raise butterfly's. We will go to the beach, visit family in Missouri, go camping a handful of times, go on a vaca getaway with our best friends and their kids. We will have a giant birthday celebration when the girls turn 6 and a romantic celebration when we celebrate our 10 year wedding anniversary. It is going to be a fabulous summer! I feel like everything is right with the universe right now and I'm overwhelmed with gratitude.

Last day of Pre-K (May 21, 2012) Fun Day

First day of Pre-K (August 2011)

I can get over how much more grown-up / mature Hassie Clare and Quinn look when comparing their first day of school to their last day of school. If they weren't so dang happy and ready for Kindergarten I would be a little sad. Another chapter in their life is over. I'm flooded with pride!

My little Hassie Clare bear has changed so much both physically and mentally. She has blossomed socially so much this year and gained a treamendous amount of confidence.  Her gangly, chubby cheeked self morphed into an athletic diva.

First week of pre-K

Last week of Pre-K

Quinnie Ray didn't change that much physically besides getting taller and growing her hair out but she sure changed socially. She had a rough start to the year but bounced back quickly after we got her in the right class. She is such a loyal friend and so much fun to be around. Everyone loves her and wants to be her friend. She is very laid back and easy going. She is turning into quite the book worm also. She was the first one in the entire Pre-K to master all the pre-k skills. She has even started reading a little bit!

First week of Pre-K

Last week of Pre-K

Family Pictures 2012

Since the only other professional pics we have taken were on the girls first birthday I figured it was time to have them done again (better late than never)! The photographer came out to our house so that we could capture the memory of where we lived during this time in our lives.



Jamie (41), Kristi (38), Quinn (5), Hassie Clare (5), Ruby (9)