Having a tiny baby to care for meant that this summer was going to be pretty low-key. Our lives revolved around Ella's schedule. We tried to get out of the house once a day, but we kept our expectations pretty low.
Swimming lessons were the highlight for a month:
All the children moved up at least one level. On the first day, Andrew made me doubt myself for signing him up--he cried and cried the WHOLE time. It was agonizing to hear him wailing from across the pool, but they ask the parents to keep their distance, so I obeyed :) I was determined not to have to experience that again the next day, so I tried a bribe: the Wii. I told him if he was happy at swimming lessons, he could play the Wii. Well, that sure did the trick! He cheerfully got in the pool, chatted up his teacher, and said "BYE! Thanks for the lesson!" when it was over. I was stunned by the transformation. Of course, he came right over to me and without missing a beat asked, "Can I play Wii?" He is too much. We had our ups and downs over the course of the lessons, but overall we were proud of him for sticking with it and being brave.
Ella came along for the ride each day and enjoyed a little Vitamin D while we waited each day.
As our last hurrah for the summer, I decided to be brave and drive down to see our cousins in their new house in Southern Callifornia. Originally, Brad was going to drive down with us for a long weekend, but I knew that wouldn't be long enough, so I got up the courage to drive by myself with the four kids. We were very blessed on the trip down. At our first stop, I fed the baby and we did bathroom breaks. I figured we'd be stopping again soon, so I didn't worry about filling up the car with gas. Well, the baby was sleeping, and the kids were happy, so I kept on truckin'. In no time, we were almost there. Then the baby got fussy, and Andrew got sick, but "the horse could smell the barn" as they say, and I decided we were just going to get there as fast as we could and not stop again. The kids settled down again and we made it just fine. I think everyone was shocked that we made the 6-hour drive on one tank of gas. Hehe
We must have been having too much fun to take many pictures, because these are the only ones I got of our whole visit. The kids loved searching for sand crabs (at least one snuck into pockets and came home with us). Other memories:
• the beatiful "Peter Pan" library with a huge pirate ship on the inside!
• swimming at the pool
• picking raspberries--we filled lots of containers with HUGE berries
• GNO--every night (!) with Natalie while Tyler entertained and educated all the kids
• Beach Day and Cafe Rio
• And this weird one:
Caleb woke up with a totally swollen face on Sunday morning. This doesn't even look like my child. It was very weird. Some allergic reaction or something? Good thing he was a good sport and just laughed it off. He was back to normal the next day.
