Thunderstorms

It is rainy season in Florida so I guess the thunderstorms are to be expected. This is what the sky looked like for a fair portion of yesterday (and seems this morning too!) Didn't bother Raleigh one bit, she still wanted to go to the beach. We did let her, but when it started thundering and lightening, we headed in.
While Raleigh swam quickly in the pool, Aiden slept. So cute!
We came in, changed our clothes and headed away from the rain....to John's Pass. We had a nice lunch and bought Raleigh a couple little things (oh how she loves her surprises! Grammy dosen't mind buying them either!) We had ice cream too!

Guess someone caught a shark....what a wierd sight this was out on the boardwalk.
I guess it's a good thing we don't live on the beach. Apparently the pressure to keep up a good beach worthy body is even affecting the birds. They have made a switch to calorie free sweetner - and don't they look so svelt? Good choice birds, good choice.
Today, since it is raining, we are heading off somewhere to do some shopping. Hopefully this afternoon the weather will be a little clearer and Raleigh can hit the beach again!

Beach Update Tuesday...

More fun today! Raleigh swam like a fish for most of the day. We are teaching her how to be a bathing beauty as you can see! Little man Aiden went in the pool too. He kicked his feet and seemed to enjoy it. After he took a nice snooze in the shade. What a life, right??

Beachin it!

We've been taking Raleigh out each night to collect sea shells. The weather is really nice in the evenings and no risk of sunburn. Raleigh of course thinks every seashell is BEAUTIFUL even the broken ones. We have a whole bag of her treasures collected so far. We discovered these little "baby clams" that burrow down into the sand when the waves come in. Raleigh thought those were wonderful. She exclaimed "I LUUUUV BABY CLAMS!" SOOOOO cute.
Here we are under our "tent"....Raleigh giving kisses.
And of course we tried, yet again, to get a cute pic of the two of them. Let me tell you I have at least 40 pictures of the two of them.

First Day of our Beach Vacation

This is a view down the beach and then from the ocean looking back at the condos. This was our little "beach camp" from yesterday - although we kept it up all day long we never went back after lunch. Raleigh just wanted to swim in the pool.

Raleigh LOVES the sand. We knew she would since she is CRAZY about her sandbox at home. She definately does not get that from me. I really dont like getting sand on the blanket and seriously don't like getting it on me. I had to resign myself to the fact that with two kids, sand will be everywhere!! Raleigh was laying in the sand making "sand angels (I think she saw someone on TV making snow angels - hey, this is a heck of a lot warmer so we'll take it!) And she even decided to stick her face in the sand. Silly girl!

Aiden stayed in the shade. He seemed to enjoy the fresh air and roar of the ocean. So much so that he actually fell asleep out on the blanket under the umbrella. It was SOOOOO cute! This was the best I could do at getting the two of them in one picture. They are both such wiggle worms. Raleigh is the speck off to the right with the white hat on.
Daddy took Raleigh in the ocean. Not her first time, but probably the first time she can remember. She didn't like the waves AT ALL. He finally had to carry her in. And, as you can see in the last photo, she came tearing out trying to beat the waves from getting to her feet!

Raleigh officially has a tan now. HA! She didn't get burned at all (yay for SPF 50!) But you can see where her swimsuit was.... what a little beach bum.

Speaking of Raleigh- I think it is time for everyone else to get up. They bought a new tent for the beach today, and we need to go stake claim on our little plot. Interestingly enough the people who left their beach tents and chairs folded up on the beach got TICKETS from the beach police this morning (I saw him writing them). I had no idea there were even law enforcement units on the beach. I guess there is crime everywhere, right?

OK, time to go wake up little miss princess.

At the Beach

We arrived last night at Indian Rocks beach where my parents have rented a condo for the week. Raleigh has been absolutely excited and dying to get here since sometime last week when we started preparing her that we were coming. She has gotten her beach toys out every day and tried to "get going" with them only to hear us tell her she had to wait. As you can imagine, when we arrived she wanted nothing to do with eating dinner - so that was a MAJOR chore - but she just loved getting to the beach. She collected a whole bucket full of shells for her sandbox at home (with grammy, grandpa, daddy, and mommy's help of course). She is quite the shell inspector - looking for "daddy and mommy shells" and "little tiny baby shells." Too funny.
Aiden has bee an angel, of course. He did sneeze a big mouthful of green beans on me earlier - but that's another story!


We'll update more tonight with some pictures of Raleigh in the ocean! She was scared, but enjoyed it eventually.

6 months old...

Ok, so I've not been good with updating. Life has been very busy. I have pictures from Nonny and Poppy's visit that I still haven't posted (mind you that was almost 2 weeks ago!)...but I promise I will get to them. We are heading into my two week break, and that means a little bit of free time. The week of the 4th we are headed to the beach, so I definately won't be getting anything done then...anyhow, I guess I shouldn't make excuses.

Aiden is 6 months old! Hard to believe time has gone by so quickly! He's a big boy, growing fast, and almost sitting up (I fear his huge noggin is affecting his balance!) No teeth yet - just buckets upon buckets of drool. He is almost out of the 6-12 month clothes...especially in onesies and rompers. He also laughs (which I will have to post a video of, it's so cute!) and smiles all the time!

Raleigh is doing good too! Swim class has been a huge success - she can now dive down and get rings off the bottom of the pool. She LOVES swimming! Even if she is never good at it, I'm so happy that she likes it and isn't scared of the water. I think her last class until August is next Monday! That means another GOLD MEDAL (oh how she loves those!!).

I promise, more pictures to follow!

UPDATES, Finally!

Well, Aiden turned 5 months Monday. I can't believe time has gone by so fast. It seems like just yesterday he was a newborn. I assure you he is growing by leaps and bounds. He loves to be in the exersaucer and his hand eye coordination and motor skills are amazing - much better than I recall Raleigh's being at the same age! He is my little snuggle bug too! He LOVES to be picked up, and just smiles away the moment you get near him. It's so cute! He can roll over, but chooses not to. Way to be an independent thinker!

Raleigh is potty trained, although we still have accidents. We discovered the other night that she dosen't like to sit on the potty if she's wet (like right out of the bath). So much so that she pooped on the floor to avoid it. GROSS, but funny - especially since Chris had to clean it up. She still wears a pull up at nap and at bed time....but 85% of the time, those are dry when she wakes up.

She had her bicycle put on hiatus for a couple weeks, because of the potty accidents. Finally today I decided to take her back out. Now, keep in mind Chris is digging up our front yard to pour cement and make our driveway wide enough for two cars....so little miss Raleigh - so obsessed with herself decides to watch her FEET while she pedals. If you have ever tried this, you know it dosen't work well. She pedaled right off the sidewalk and off the "clif" where Chris dug out the grass (florida grass is very thick!) and tipped her bike over. There she goes FACE FIRST into the dirt. She got a mouth full of dirt, and scratched her sunglasses (this is devastating, I assure you!) AND, the princess bike got dirty. We cleaned everything off and she got right back on. I was tempted to take a picture of her with dirt all over her face, but it just seemed mean when she was so upset.

Needless to say, things have been pretty much the same around here for the past month. With work, there isn't much time to do a lot of exciting things - and we've had doctors appointments and all that fun "real life" stuff to take care of. I've been really busy on ebay listing like crazy, working hard to earn some money to pay off our bills. This is one of my new goals - we need to start saving for retirement, since neither of us will actually have any - and in order to save we need to be free from credit card debt. Of course with the accident we racked up a large sum of credit card debt since we had nothing in savings...so I have gotten very motivated to get my ebay sales going and earn back some of what I have spent! I also joined (or re joined really) a few ebay related sites - I posted affiliate links on the blog - if you are thinking of selling Here COmes the Stork and Seller Sourcebook have really changed my entire approach and helped me become more successful - I'd recommend them in a second to anyone!

I guess that's it for us. I'm hoping to update a little more frequently. Seems like things just snowballed out of control there for a month or so.

We are eagerly anticipating seeing Nonni and Poppy next weekend!!! YIPPIE! Can't wait!