beach trip!

Last week we headed down to Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida for our "annual" beach trip with Will's family. Since we didn't make it down there last year, this was Maggie's first beach trip. It was a fairly short, mid-week trip this time around, but we had a good time nonetheless and Maggie enjoyed seeing Mimie, Pappy, aunt Katie, cousin Gage, and "uncle" Kris. She didn't really like the ocean, but she did like playing in the sand in the shade. On the very last day we were there, we finally got her comfortable enough walking in the sand and playing in the shallow tide pools. She absolutely loves seashells, so she would find a good seashell in the sand, say "wash it", and scamper down to the tide pool to wash the shell off. There were also teeny, tiny fish in the tide pools that Will would catch in his hands, but not before Maggie would say "come here fishies!" It was pretty cute, but unfortunately I left my camera in the house that morning so I don't have pictures or video of it.






One of the nights we were there, we strapped some headlamps on the kids and went down to the beach looking for crabs. Here are a couple of pictures of Gage (in front in the first photo) and Maggie practicing their caving skills before we went out.


Despite having a toddler to chase around, plus being 7 months pregnant and not able to take the heat and humidity of coastal Florida for too long (or being able to bend over very comfortably!), I did manage to sneak away from the house for short increments of time for my favorite beach activity, shark's teeth hunting. It definitely wasn't my best effort, but not too shabby for a total of just a couple hours of hunting.

Sorry for the blurriness of the next photos...Will and I went out early one morning to see the sunrise, and in the first photo you can see one of the two dolphins that were playing in the water that morning.




And here's Maggie relaxing with Lexi, one of her two favorite beagles.

showing off for the camera

Maggie loves to help me with the laundry...here she is in action, as well as showing off some fancy moves for daddy.

more bed & Elmo

Maggie's been enjoying her new bed, and she's mastered the steps. So far, she stays in bed and doesn't get out and wander around, which was what I assumed would happen at naptime and bedtime. She loves climbing up there to flip through books throughout the day.


With temperatures pushing 100 degrees for the past several weeks, and me getting quite large and unable to stand the mid-day heat and humidity for more than about 15 minutes, we've been hanging out inside a lot during the day. Maggie has become enthralled by Sesame Street...particularly Elmo, Cookie Monster, and Grover. Thank goodness for DVR! She really likes to hold her Elmo while watching Elmo. I never thought I'd know this much about Sesame Street as an adult...I find myself humming some of the songs as I'm doing things throughout the day! :-) But she loves it, and she actually is learning something (she can repeat the alphabet and can almost count to 10 on her own already...just skips 3 and 4), and it gives me a chance to sit down with a glass of water and rest my back and feet.

big mamma, big girl bed, & big eggs

I'm now at 28 weeks and am filling out quite nicely (this picture doesn't quite show the full extent of my bump). :-)

And Maggie is now 18 months old and is becoming quite the little chatterbox. She is even starting to speak in 3- and (occasionally) 4- word sentences ("pretzels are salty!" and "apples are crunchy sweet" are two of her favorite sentences). Every day her vocabulary seems to increase, which is amazing and so much fun. We also decided to go ahead and move her to a "big girl bed" (a twin bed, custom made by Will) this past weekend and move the crib out of her room and into baby girl #2's room. It's only been 2 days (and I don't want to jinx anything), but so far she's been just fine with the transition. We peeked into her room this morning before she woke up, and she was just too cute to resist...we had to get the camera out! She looks so tiny in her new, big comfy bed!


And on a completely different note, our white chickens are laying every day now. One of them is laying big, full size eggs and the other is still laying small eggs. But so far the big eggs have all been double yolk eggs (top and bottom in this picture), which is pretty cool.

little garden helper

Will snapped a few quick photos last weekend of Maggie "helping" me out in the yard. She spent about 15 minutes taking dirt out of this pot, then putting it back in. (And the video shows how we get her favorite pose - mouth wide open - when we're taking pictures.)