Summer continues to march on with its ridiculous hot temperatures and we've been doing our best to entertain ourselves without completely melting.
Mark and I celebrated our 7th wedding anniversary on the 9th with a dste-night to a yummy restaurant in Chapel Hill. It was so nice to enjoy a leisurely meal with each other for the first time probably since Mark's birthday back in March. Sadly, I totally forgot to take a picture of the two of us. I'll work on that next year! Just so thankful for the 7 wonderful years of marriage we've been blessed to share thus far!
This year, since Mark was off Wednesday and Thursday, we decided to celebrate our nation's birthday at Smith Mountain Lake with some of my family. Usually we stick around home to do stuff locally, so this was a fun change of pace. Fourth of July is pretty big up there and we had a wonderful time. The fireworks show was pretty late, so we had a couple hours to kill beforehand.
We checked-out the boats
We spent the last week with Mark's family for our annual beach week at Topsail Island and the week was filled with the brim with lots of fun things. Here's what we were up to:
First, we had to start things off with some pre-beach preps. Besides the usual packing of everything we own, Eli and Dada had a quick boogie-board lesson in our kitchen.
There was a lot of playing in the sand. Eli especially loved using his construction equipment to make roads and dig holes.
Sandcastle Building
Deep ocean-front discussions in PJ's
Beautiful Sunrises
A Visit to the Aquarium to find some sharks
A Little Kite Flying (A Shark kite, naturally)
I think we wore him out!
We spent the Father's Day weekend with some of my family at LakeNear again this year. It is always nice to be up there, where Eli can run around inside and outside the house and just be a little boy in nature. The weekend was pretty laid back and that was alright with us. On Father's Day we celebrated the Dads of our group by making a yummy breakfast, going on a hike/swim at the park, and finishing the day off with a yummy dinner from the grill, ending with a dessert of homemade blackberry pie (picked from the bushes on the property). Eli thinks the world of his Dada and I'm sure baby #2 will feel the same way. Our kids are blessed!
Playing with the water-table on the back-porch (little turkey refused to smile with his eyes open)
Reading Mark's new book from Eli about dads who never grow up. Ha!
A little skinny dipping in the Lake = priceless Father's Day memory! We love those sweet cheeks!
After much thought (and harassment), well over a year of it, I've decided to continue updating our blog. We have many family and friends who are spread out all over the place these days and it's just an easy way to share our lives with them and keep a little "record" for us too. So, here's a few updates on what's been happening.
Eli's been growing like a weed. He'll be 3 in a few short months and I'm blown away each day at how quickly he's turning into a little boy. Mark and I are loving every moment of this crazy time!
Mark continues to work hard to enable to me to stay at home with Eli and I am so thankful for that. I'll admit, some days I find myself longing for the routine of "the workday" but then I quickly realize what stuff I'd be missing out in these early years of his life.
And finally, we are also anticipating a little bit more change around these parts...
If you didn't catch the shirt, Eli is going to be a big brother sometime around January 1, 2013. I'm 12-weeks along and everything looks great. We are thrilled about this and look forward to quite the new year!
Recently, Eli and I met the newest addition to my side of the family, my younger sister's lab/golden/german shepherd mix puppy Chaya. The two of them together were quite entertaining and Eli loves any and every "Dawwg" he meets. While we were together, Chaya practiced her tennis-ball fetching skills and I think Eli enjoyed fetching the ball just as much as she did! We can't wait to play with both of them again soon!
