Fourth with Framily 2016

Our guests, The Paulk's arrived Friday just before lunch. We headed down to the beach to enjoy the beautiful weather. Stella was excited to fly her Anna (Frozen) kite she received the last day of VBS. The kids played for a few hours before Donald got to the house. He showed up around 6:30 and Stella and I were there to greet him.  Stella was super happy to see her Daddy after two weeks.

Alex over here getting in workout in...

The girls thought this was hilarious!

Saturday I made pancakes, bacon and fruit salad. 

We also got a new dishwasher. It's name was Melissa. I cooked and she washed. In actuality, we did get a new dishwasher. Our old one broke right after we bought the place here but we didn't make it a priority to fix it. Donald and Alex installed the new one on Monday or Tuesday but it never got ran until after our guests left. 

Saturday afternoon was spent on the beach, but down at 3rd instead of 6th. We wanted to get away from the crowd of Toucans and the public bathroom that we figured would be pretty busy with it being so close to the holiday.
Melissa and I took the kids back home early that evening while the guys stayed down on the beach visiting with Karen and Allan (our cool friends from Atlanta who have a place 3 blocks from us).

These next two photos are courtesy of Melissa and are so perfect! Maybe next year we can enter them in the MB photo contest.

We fixed them an early supper, then we rode the kids around on the golf cart for a little while. 

Ethan and his ladies. 

When we got back to the house they piled onto the floor and had a little movie time before bed. 

The adults had intentions of eating Mango Marley's for supper, but when I called to place the order they said they weren't taking any more orders. So we opted for 40th Street Pizza. Too long of a wait. Our third choice, and pretty much last choice given the hour was Crazy Beach Pizza. We dined on cheeseburger pizza at 10:30 at night.

Sunday, I made two quiches for breakfast to fill us up for a day on Crooked Island.  We made sandwiches and put the boat in at Tyndall and rode out from there.  The water was calmer and cleaner and we enjoyed the day out there. Stella practiced swimming by copying Izzy's moves somewhat, but the adults did manage to be pretty lazy.

On the way back to the ramp I got some good snuggles. I'm pretty sure if we'd been on the boat just a few more minutes Stella would have been out for a while. Izzy did actually fall asleep but got woken up when we got off of the boat.

Then, the kids all took a bath together and isn't that what Summer at the beach is all about?!

Supper was a group effort. Melissa fixed tacos with all the fixins' and we had those with black beans that I'd fixed in the crock pot and Donald made spicy grilled street corn. So good!  

Monday we spent the day back on the beach. The water was clearer than it had been in a few days, but still not perfect. The kids were getting tired of each other and it was beginning to show. The whining and fussing was becoming more frequent and more irritating. They definitely seemed to be in competition with each other.

The kids nearly had a meltdown just before we served them supper. We'd stayed on the beach until the sun set, then Melissa and I cleaned up and broke down the tent while the the guys kept the kids entertained in the ocean. Supper was pretty American, what I called a summer camp supper-grilled hot dogs, chips, boxed mac and cheese and chocolate pudding. I classed it up a bit with turkey dogs, dill pickle relish, Annie's organic boxed mac and cheese and Simply Jell-O (more natural, less ingredients, less artificial stuff) chocolate pudding. Donald trashed it up with canned hot dog chili, cheese and raw onions. Guess who didn't get any kisses that night after all those raw onions?!

Tuesday was the fourth. Melissa and I were up early to do the Sandy Shoes 5K. 

Complaint number 1-it wasn't on the beach. I mean, live up to the name and let me run on the sand, damnit. Complaint number 2-it was sooooo hot and humid. We finished in 45:40. Oh and apparently people were passing out. I admit, I was close to that when we finished. I did NOT feel good when we ran under the finish line. I was dizzy, my head and chest were pounding and I felt as though my face was on fire. Not exactly awesome. 

Donald walked in while I was trying to recover on the floor, looks at me and says, "Wow! You look like crap!" Thanks, babe.

(The rest of the week I had flu symptoms in the evening for a few nights-chills, freezing cold, then super, sweaty hot hours later.  I was so exhausted and had no energy for days. I actually didn't wake up feeling decent until Monday morning. Turns out, after talking with my chiro and reading up on what heat can do to the body I had severe heat exhaustion and dehydration. I probably could have withstood a visit to the ER along with an IV and if I experience this next time I will.) 

I did recover from the dizziness, however the headache stuck around. That afternoon it was almost to the point where I couldn't keep my eyes open they hurt so bad. I finally had Dr. Paulk adjust me on the beach and nearly instantly had relief from the eye pain and a tremendous amount of relief from my headache. 

Finally! Nappy time on the beach. She slept for quite a while. Actually the only reason she woke up was because I handed her off to Donald before I peed through my chair into the sand. 

Love these moments! 

That evening, we had fish tacos (grilled cobia) for supper and more grilled corn. Don bought a case of it from a farm on the way down, so we had no shortage of it.

After supper, we stuffed Stella's ears with foam ear plugs and put her Finding Dory headphones on top of that to keep the foam plugs in, as well as provide an extra layer of noise protection.  Stella's pretty much always been funny about loud noises, but she's especially not fond of fireworks since some jackass set them off about 6 feet from us the week after she turned 1 at my cousin's birthday party.  These stayed in briefly, then she felt comfortable removing them. I'd bought glow sticks a while back and gave them to the kids when we walked onto the beach. They basically paid more attention to them than the actual fireworks. Next time I'll hold off on the glow sticks until afterwards.

Yeah, this is the best picture we could get. Donald tried several times, but each time she would blink with flash.

Wednesday, we woke up to doughnuts from MB's Sweets and Treats. I chose a maple bacon one. Delicious! The Paulk's checked out right at 11 am (hehe). The rest of the day we were pretty lazy. We did some straightening, then watched Trolls since it was miserably hot outside. Donald took Stella to see Trolls at the theater when it was on, but it was my first time watching and it was cute. Plus, Stella loved singing "Can't Stop the Feeling" and dancing to it since it was the finale song for her dance recital. This was such an awesome holiday weekend with great friends.