Our wonderful beach crew!


Cool Will with shades!



Spener holding Mason up in the waves

Grandaddy and Hays

The twins loved the beanbag chairs in the condo!

Will in the shade

My sweet boys

working on a sandcastle!

Mason and the wonderful Spencer

So it only took me a week to get around to blogging about the beach! Overall, it was a really great trip. There were some exhausting moments, but I would definitely call it a success. The drive down wasn't nearly as bad as I feared it would be. The kids were pretty content, slept a good bit and did very little screaming. Leastways, we didn't throw anybody out in a small, south Georgia town, I didn't decide to fling myself out of the car around Vidalia or anything, so that went remarkably well! We took the kids down on the beach the day we got there, and the twins LOVED it. They were crawling into the waves as fast as they could like little loggerhead turtles, and they were just squealing with absolute glee. Unfortunately, they didn't retain that attitude for the entire trip. There were moments when they were just tired of being hot and sandy, but for the most part they really liked it.

Mason, of course, loved it. He had the best time playing in the waves with his daddy and Spencer. Spencer is 12 and he's my mom's best friend's son, and he's pretty much the coolest kid ever. He's smart, funny, handsome, and endlessly patient with Mason. Mason is pretty much Spencer's shadow the entire week, and Spencer never tells him to go away and leave him alone! He spent hours playing in the ocean with Mason, and Mase just absolutely worships Spencer! I tried to talk his mama into letting me adopt him, but she wouldn't. (darn it)

Most years our whole group goes out to dinner together. That takes a long time since there are 15 of us! This year, Matt and I weren't up to the challenge of getting three little ones dressed and ready for dinner, waiting for an hour with hungry kids and getting them to bed hours after their bedtime, so we opted out of dining out! Since my sister and her husband are currently house-poor after purchasing their new home, they opted out with us. So we cooked several delicious dinners with them, got take-out a few nights, and got one evening out when my sister, Paige, and our beloved Spencer babysat the little ones for the annual "grownups night out."

The upside to not going out to dinner was that we got to take Mason to the pier village several times instead of just once. He had a good time poking around in the little shops, playing on the playground and checking out the people fishing on the pier. One night we took all three boys down and saw something I've never seen before on the pier. Now my family has been going to St. Simons for close to 30 years and I've never seen them pull anything bigger than a baby shark off that pier, but that night we joined a crowd that had gathered to watch a fisherman try to wrestle his catch out of the water. We didn't know what he had, but we knew it was BIG. That fella pulled up an 80 pound stingray- that son of a gun was HUGE!!!! It was neat, but also pretty gory. The hook had caught it in the side and it was bleeding profusely. Mason wasn't too upset by the blood, but as we were leaving the pier, we walked by the guys cutting up the stingray for fishbait. That was pretty traumatic for Mason. He kept asking us on the way home why it had to die, and why couldn't they take it to the doctor, and what if its stingray friends were sad? It was hard to explain the circle of life to my sweet, sad little boy.

But that was just one dark spot on an otherwise stellar week. It was exhausting chasing those twins around the beach and hauling down the loads of equipment we needed for a day on the beach. There were times that I felt like we should be getting paid to do this, not paying for it! But mostly, we were just so thankful to be down there as a complete family with three healthy kids. This time last year we had no idea that we'd make it to the beach this summer, we thought it would be at least a few years before we'd make it back. So we were extremely grateful to be there, no matter how exhausting it was!

When we got home, we had the wonderful surprise of walking into a sparkling-clean, beautifully organized house. My mother-in-law was hard at work while we were gone, and based on the amount of work she got done, I'd swear she had some little elves helping her! She cleaned every nook and cranny, organized the kids' closets, finished painting the bathroom that I started before vacation, and bought lots of fun little accessories for the house! I truly can't think of a better thing to come home to, and words can't express how much we appreciate the time, money and effort she put into helping us make our home a beautiful place. And now I'm going to sit on my deck that she rearranged and updated with new cushions for the furniture and a fabulous outdoor rug, and relax!

Giving thanks for a year of blessings

Okay, so I know I'm a loser and should have posted beach pictures, etc. by now, but I've been lazy. I promise lots of pictures and a full report on the beach trip, which was both fun and exhausting. But tonight I just wanted to acknowledge the one-year anniversary of bringing Will home from the hospital. Last July 21st was exciting and terrifying. We were so happy to have our family complete and under the same roof, but we were terrified to have a child with such enormous medical needs who was depending on us to keep him safe and healthy. I could never have imagined then how far we would have come in a year's time.
Will is such a joy. He is smart and funny and heart-breakingly beautiful. He has recently learned to give kisses, and I can't tell you how wonderful it is to be on the receiving end of those! Last year we thought we were going to have such a long, arduous journey ahead of us, and yet here we are blessed with this amazing child who laughs and climbs everything he can reach and crawls around the house calling "mama" and fights with his brother over toys and splashes in the bathtub and loves potato salad more than life itself. I know these are all such normal things, and that to me is the biggest blessing. We get to be normal. We don't have to be scared and worried all the time. Our life with him no longer revolves around doctors and medications and medical equipment. It's just a regular old life, and we could not be more grateful for it.
So say a little prayer of thanks for the boundless blessings given to my child over the last year. He is so lucky and so loved and I am the most thankful mama.

Woohoo, y'all, we are heading to the beach!! We're leaving tomorrow morning for the big family trip to St. Simons and we can't wait. We have this big ol' turtle shell-looking luggage carrier strapped to the top of the minivan because we have to take such ridiculous amounts of stuff with us. And it has taken me three days to get everything packed up! I'm a little nervous about the drive down- we've never been in the car for six hours with all three kids, two of whom are cutting molars. So say a little prayer for us that we get down there without too much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Speaking of wailing and gnashing of teeth, y'all should have seen Mason today after Matt's Aunt Judy came to pick up the dog. (She is taking Tess to her house for the week, God bless her!) . He was SOBBING , lying on his bed, clutching a picture of the dog, crying "WHYYYY???? Whyyyy did you leaaavveee meeeeeeee" This went on for 30 minutes! God help us when the dog actually dies.

Okay, I just have to tell y'all about the cutest thing. Lately the twins have started to become much more interested in each other. They don't play together a lot, but lately they've started playing together with their favorite ball popping toy. Will hands Hays a ball, Hays drops it in the little popper and when it pops out, they chase it down and start all over again. And while they've never shown much interest in each other, the other day I watched Will crawl over to Hays and sit down right up against him. Will's always been bad about pulling Hays' hair, but they past few days he's been rubbing his head instead of pulling his hair. He was doing that tonight and I said, "oh Will that is so sweet. You're being so sweet to Hays. Can you give him a kiss?' AND HE DID IT!!!! He leaned over and kissed his brother on the head! And he did it again later when I told him "Give Haysie a kiss." It was the cutest, sweetest thing. I've always kind of worried that the five months they spent apart in the hospital would damage their "twin bond" but this gives me hope!

Yankee Doodle Dandies

I hope everyone had a fabulous fourth of July. We had a great day. We started it off by attending our town's celebration which included a band, free cotton candy, popcorn, watermelon and lemonade (Mason fully enjoyed all of them!) a farmer's market and some fun activities for the kids. I particularly liked the petting zoo because it consisted of the oddest assortment of animals I've ever seen in a petting zoo. There were two chickens, three goats and a guinea pig. Strange, but hey, how often do you get to pet a chicken?

After that I got to enjoy an afternoon out with my best friend, Alyssa, who came down from Atlanta. We had fun going out to lunch and shopping. It was actually my second day in a row of lunching and shopping. My sister came down to visit Friday and we went downtown for lunch and shopping with our youngest sister. If I keep this up, I might become a "lady who lunches." Yeah right! But I've gotten to do a pretty good bit of shopping too. Matt's mom kindly offered to finance a bathroom redecorating project (not to mention a new slipcover for the playroom) and she and I spent Thursday morning buying paint, new towels and ordering the coolest shower curtain ever. I'm about halfway done painting the bathroom and I can't wait to put everything together. Matt's mom and I share a love of home decorating, and I really appreciate her doing such a nice thing (especially since my decorating dollars have run out!)

We thought about taking Mason to the fireworks last night, but he was a tired puppy, and I didn't feel like braving the crowds. So Matt got sparklers and little fireworks that spin around and burn different colors, so we had our own little fireworks display in the backyard. Mason had so much fun with the sparklers and he kept telling me "stay on the deck, Mommy so you don't get hurt!" At one point, Matt almost set a plant on fire with a firecracker and Mason said, "That plant was on fire just like Jesus!" It took me a minute to figure out that he was talking about the story of the burning bush! Good to know he got something out of bible school.