One last hoorah!

First Day of Kindergarten is tomorrow! I knew we needed to do something fun today, as our last official day of summer break, so I was very happy when Jaime called and suggested going to the beach.

The boys always have lots of fun playing in the water, digging holes and tunnels, eating sandy food (no matter how much we try to avoid it), etc. Luke was being so funny today. He just wanted to crawl around in the sand, and then stop and lay down in its warmth.




A fun new thing about Luke is that his kisses have changed from a slobbery thing where he opens his mouth and says, "ah ah" up against your face (which was cute) to real honest-to-goodness "mmmm-uh" kisses. And he likes to give these kisses to everything; toys, animals, even a tree today. Of course, I like it best when I am the recipient of his kisses. I love that he gives a whole bunch in rapid succession. It's the best!

Too much of a good thing?

This summer has been the summer of the watermelon. I should have been keeping track of how many watermelons we purchased in the last few months. A conservative estimate would be 20 (we would typically buy 1-3 melons in any given week, but perhaps we might have missed a week here and there.)
95% of these 20 or so watermelons were consumed by Cole. As he has told many of you, watermelon is his favorite food "you could ever put in your body". He started off the summer consuming one average-size watermelon in 2 days, but now can eat an entire watermelon in just one day.
Clay and I have been a bit concerned about these watermelon "binges". I've done some research on watermelon. It's packed with minerals like calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, and sodium. It's a great source of vitamin C, vitamins B1, B2, B3, and B6, folic acid, and beta-carotene. It has even more lycopene than tomatoes, which gives it it's red color. It's antioxidant's fight off free radicals in the body. It can prevent asthma, diabetes, colon cancer, and arthritis, to name a few. And it is very cleansing as far as bowels go. It has been named as one of the 10 healthiest foods.
So does the phrase, "too much of a good thing" apply here? I haven't come across any adverse effects of consuming large amounts of watermelon, so maybe it's just a good thing.
Cole does share his watermelons with Luke sometimes. In this picture, Luke was playing with a pen cap and started using it as a tooth pick for his watermelon.


It's always good to laugh at yourself when you're acting silly.

And good to offer some to others.

Of coarse Cole isn't going to object. (I really do dress my boys. I can't remember why neither of them were dressed here.)

And here's Cole with the best food ever!

Cousins gotta' hug!

My sister Stephanie came to visit. It was a nice, long 3 week visit, and it flew by so fast. I don't even have a picture to show for it. Part of her face, however, is in these pictures. She, and the two little boys pictured here (Connor and Luke), are very cute.

You know you're exhausted when...

You fall asleep like this!

Oh how we love cousins!!!

A wonderful benefit of living close to Clay's parents is that lots of their children travel from far and wide to visit them during the summer, meaning we get to spend time with the visitors too. We have loved taking advantage of this and getting to meet new cousins. Brad and Kristine and their 6 kids were the last ones to visit.

We had a great time playing with them at Live Oak Park. The older boys were so sweet to play with the little kids!


We went for a walk and came across this tree. It's kind of creepy to me for some reason. It would seem that a woodpecker made little holes all over it (and this tree was HUGE) and then a squirrel came along and used the holes for acorn storage!


The kids had fun un-doing some of the squirrels work.


Cole loved playing with the kids in the pool. Again, the older boys were so nice! They were sharks while the little ones were fishermen.



Luke isn't much of a swimmer. He prefers playing with the animals, especially the newest little tabby cat.