Beach Pictures

Almost to the beach, they were so excited they couldn't help but suck their thumbs:

Finally at the beach waiting patiently for Mimi and Pop to meet them for lunch: 

Gracie was so tired when we finally got to our house that she fell asleep on the couch and yes she is actually sleeping in this picture

 

This is the view from our porch:

 

Gracie loves the beach and the ocean:

 

Spending time with Pop:

 

Here is Gracie strutting her stuff on the beach:

 

Hayden getting ready to build sand castles, isn't she beautiful:

 

Holding hands and running on the beach together, Hayden is the best big sister:

 

Working hard on that sand castle:

 

She has excellent balance and here is the perfect picture to prove it:

We are HERE!

Well, we are at the beach and it is beautiful!  We had an excellent drive down, we actually left our driveway at 4am. Yes that is correct, we had the car packed and ready to go last night, so all we had to was pick the girls up out of the bed and put them in their car seats and head out!  We made it in exactly 6 hours and that included stopping one time for breakfast.  When we got here we met Mimi and Pop for lunch and then got the keys to the house, however when we got to the house the cleaning lady had just arrived, so we couldn't get in just yet.  That was completely okay though, because we had a swimming pool, hot tub and the ocean that we could use right then.  We all got in the pool and played for a little while and then we took the girls down to the beach! 

Hayden was running towards the ocean, she was so excited...She kept saying "Just look Mommy it is so pretty."  I wasn't too sure what Gracie's reaction would be, but she absolutely LOVED it, she got knocked completely over twice and come up laughing and then face planted into the water the next time and still got up laughing! 

I haven't taken any pictures yet but don't worry there will be lots to come!  I am looking forward to a wonderful week!

Packing for the BEACH

I spent last night trying to get everything packed up and ready to go, which was interesting with lots of help from my girls.  I let them help for about 10 minutes and in this 10 minutes Gracie managed to unpack everything that I had already folded and packed.  Hayden on the other hand wants to take everything in her room... for example she is taking 10 pair of shoes and 15 swim suits, yes that is correct 10 pairs of shoes and 15 swim suits!  She even picked out the dresses she thought were the cutest for her to take pictures in, she is such a girly girl.  Gracie is also taking 15 swim suits, but lots of hers are hand me downs from Hayden, but they are all still in great shape and are adorable!  After the 10 minutes of help I put them in my bed with milk and turned on the Wonder Pets and they seemed to enjoy that until it was time for Gracie to go night night. 

I think I pretty much have everything ready to go except for the few things that can't be packed until the last minute.  We are planning on leaving around 4am on Sunday and travel until the girls wake up again and hopefully that will be around 7:30 or 8am, then stop and get some breakfast.  Hopefully, this will work and then they can watch a movie for the rest of the trip. 

I am so excited about the beach, it is going to be so much fun for us.  I can't wait to see what Gracie thinks this year, last year she was crawling all over the beach.  The ocean didn't seem to bother her last year either, so hopefully she will like it this year too!

This is all I really need to pack! Right?

Silly girls playing dress up, Snow White and Sleeping Beauty striking a pose:

This table and chairs are supposed to be for baby dolls only, but Gracie loves to use it herself:

and this baby bed is supposed to be for baby dolls too, but Hayden was pretending Gracie was her baby:

Who can go Underwater?

The girls had lots of fun at Kim and Artie's house on Saturday.  There was lots of swimming and Artie has a camera that is waterproof, so they were able to take some pictures of Hayden underwater.  Kim tried to get one of Gracie's face underwater but it just never worked out, but that is okay there are still lots more times to try this summer.  I still have the first one that was ever taken of Hayden underwater on my refrigerator and she was 2 1/2 years old in that picture. 

This is the first underwater picture of Hayden:

This was Hayden last year:

Look at this sweet little face:

and this sweet little face:

I am pretty sure she was after Artie in this picture:

Gracie showing off her floating:

Look at those pretty blue eyes and doesn't she look so grown up:

Getting the diving sticks off the bottom of the pool:

Sitting on the bottom of the pool posing for a picture...I LOVE THIS ONE!!!

Show Off

This is Gracie swimming!  She is really doing an excellent job this year and she was showing off just a little bit on Saturday.  I love this video, I think I have watched a thousand times this morning! It is hard to believe that last year she wasn't even crawling yet and mostly sat in her pink stroller eating snacks, drinking juice and taking naps...and this year she is a little girl ready to go and try to keep up with her big sister.  I can't wait to see what she thinks about the beach next week.

Good Job Little Girl!



Click here to view this video

Father's Day

This year for Father's Day Mimi and I decided to take the girls to have professional pictures done.  Let me just say Gracie is not at all impressed with taking pictures for people she doesn't know.  She would not smile for anything, which my Mom says she gets honest because I used to do the same thing every time they took me to have pictures taken.  I have finally realized that the more you try to make a child take pictures the worse it makes it, so when she wouldn't cooperate I got in the pictures too and then I would sneak out from behind and hide to see if she would break down and smile. She still wouldn't smile at all but we ended up getting some pretty priceless pictures of her anyway.  Hayden was all smiles as always, she has always been very photogenic and takes the best pictures.  Needless to say there are a lot more pictures of Hayden than there were of Gracie, but that is okay.  They wore two very simple but very cute dresses, Hayden's dress was blue and Gracie's was white.  I also took one of Hayden's uniforms for next year at GWA and had her picture taken in it, which as soon as Mark seen it he said my baby is really going to big girl school next year! 

Mark was very excited about his pictures for Father's day and he was even more excited about his surprise from Hayden...She wrote him a card all by herself and it said... I LOVE YOU DADDY!  She was so proud of herself, she kept telling me "I know Daddy is going to love my card". 

On Saturday we celebrated Father's Day at Kim and Artie's house.  It was so much fun playing in the swimming pool all day and eating the feast of food that Kim and Artie prepared.  I think they planned on the whole neighborhood coming over to eat, there really was tons of food and it was all delicious.  They even had homemade banana ice cream!  Gracie really showed off how well she can swim and go underwater.  It is hilarious, when she goes underwater it really looks like she is about to do a front flip.  It is so CUTE!  Hayden of course was all over the place playing with Aunt Kim.  We had two very tired little girls when we left.  Oh and Hayden spent the night with Mimi and Pop on Friday night,  that was also part of Pop's Father's Day present and she did make him his on card by herself too that said... I LOVE YOU POP!  She had lots of fun at Mimi and Pop's house.  Gracie stayed at home with Mommy and Daddy, she is still very much a Mommy's girl so maybe when she is a little older she can go spend the night too!  I think Pop was very pleased with all of his gifts!  Happy Father's Day Pop, We Love You!

I also want to say that Mark is truly the best husband and Daddy ever! He loves his little girls more than anything in the world.  He loves spending time with us and he works very hard to give us everything we need!  I love you so much and I appreciate everything you do for us!

Hayden and Gracie also wanted to help with the blog today, but Hayden said they don't know how to type so I told her to tell me what they wanted to say...

Dear Daddy,

I love playing with you, swimming with you, staying at home with you, eating egg sandwiches for breakfast with you, waiting on you to get home so we can play outside, going out to eat for lunch, snuggling on the couch until I fall asleep, helping you cook dinner every night, going for buggy rides, watching TV with you, riding in your red truck, and hunting with you with Sue and Rowdy.

I love you Daddy,

Hayden

Dear Daddy,

Pop(Popsicle), Rowdy, Ride, Swing.  She doesn't make sentences yet but I know that you will know exactly what she is talking about!

I love you Daddy,

Gracie

Happy Father's Day!

Me and the girls, just look at Gracie's face:

This was the best one of them together...

This is my favorite of her...

Take a look at what Gracie thought...

I still can't believe she is 4 and she is starting big girl school in August...

This is Gracie at home taking pictures...

Sliding and Diving

Today we went swimming with Nana and Steve at one of my friend's house.  It is one of my friends that I  grew up with.  It was fun to talk about all the things we did as kids and lots of the things I had even forgotten about.  Bridget has two little girls also, Lyla is 5 and Katie is only 2 days older than Gracie, needless to say they had the best time together.  When Hayden saw the swimming pool she was in awe, it had a slide and a diving board.  She was so excited, in fact she went straight to the slide and went down before I even knew it, so of course I made her do it again so I could take a picture and she was diving off the diving board by the end of the day.  Gracie was really tired, so she only played in the pool for about an hour and Katie isn't really a big fan of the pool yet, so they played with baby dolls and played on the swing on the porch.  It was kind of nice because it gave Bridget and myself time to catch up.  After lots of swimming in the pool Lyla and Hayden ended up having a blast in Lyla's bedroom, I honestly have never seen such a mess in one room but they had LOTS of fun!

Mommy they have a SLIDE:

Nana and Hayden, ignore the water spot...This is the first time I have seen my Mom in the pool in probably 15 years, she is actually a good swimmer:

Going down on her belly:

Diving off the diving board or at least trying too, but I have to say for her first time she did awesome:

Gracie absolutely loved this swing, in fact I think we may try to find one for her birthday.  I really like this picture of them getting to know each other:

Kicked back, taking it all in:

Dress Up

While I was on the phone with Mimi this afternoon, I noticed that the girls were playing dress up in all of Hayden's ballet clothes.  Gracie was very pleased with her outfit.  Mimi said she wanted a picture for her computer at work, so I decided these would all be perfect.  Hayden actually dressed Gracie in her outfit and even though you can't tell in the pictures, she has 2 hair bows in, a bracelet from Aunt Vickie and a magic wand.  I couldn't help but laugh when I saw them!  They are always making me laugh, I love you two little girls!!!

She was so proud, she looks great in leg warmers, you can even tell she is saying CHEESE:

CHEESE:

I absolutely love this one, this is probably one of the best pictures of them together:

Look on her arm, this is the bracelet from Aunt Vickie, they love these things and she was showing her Daddy her outfit and beautiful smile:

Memories

We had a great weekend.  We spent the whole weekend in the pool, I bet you can't guess where at either, at Cy and Nichole's house.  Hayden and Gracie love going over there and swimming.

We spent all day Saturday in the pool, it was too hot to even get out, and then had some yummy hamburgers for dinner.  Gracie is doing so good, she now will put her face in the water if you tell her to go underwater.  When she does it she keeps her eyes open so all you can see are those big brown eyes just looking around under the water. We started telling her to kick her feet while she was swimming underwater and she tries really hard and it is so funny because her little hiney comes right up out of the water...I can remember when Hayden's little hiney would come right up too.  It seems like just yesterday we were teaching Hayden how to swim and now she is a little fish.  She is all over the pool and she can dive and even swim on the bottom of the pool.   She was diving really well this weekend, she would make Cy get out and dive with her.  I think he had fun too!  We were all like little kids in the pool...It was so much FUN!  Cy also took a video of Gracie going underwater but I forgot to tell him to email it, so I will have to post it later. 

It was so hot on Sunday we decided to go back to Cy and Nichole's and swim some more, which made Hayden and Gracie very excited.  They were even more excited when they found out that Bella, Kierstin and Mark Brantley were coming also.  Hayden and Kierstin stayed in the pool the whole day.  Bella did a great job jumping in the pool and learning to swim. Gracie showed off all of her new swimming skills, and Mark Brantley had a good time splashing around on the steps. They all had such a good time, it made me think back to when I was little and just how much fun it was to swim all day with friends.  I enjoyed watching Hayden and Kierstin play some of the same things that I did when I was little...like racing across the pool and seeing who could do something first and my favorite thing jumping in and then swimming to the ladder to get out just to jump right back in. 

I also compare Hayden and Gracie all the time, not in a bad way.  I am always pulling out pictures to see if they look alike at this age.  I guess most of you know that Hayden looks just like her Daddy and I personally think Gracie looks like me, even though for the last couple of weeks I kind of think she is starting to look more like her Daddy too!  Although Hayden doesn't look like me, I think she acts more like me, which could be a good or bad thing, I'm not sure!  Gracie acts more like her Daddy, she is outgoing and likes the entertain people, well that is after she warms up sometimes she can be a little shy at first.   It is so much fun going back and looking at all of Hayden's baby pictures.  I could sit for hours just looking at all my pictures and let me tell you we have thousands of them. 

I thought everyone would enjoy some old pictures...

Teaching Hayden how to swim, Hayden is 18 months old in this picture, I swear it seems like it was just yesterday...

Teaching Gracie how to swim, she is 21 months old in this picture...

This is Hayden, showing off how well she can float.  I can hear Mimi now..."Just look at that girl":

This will always be one of my favorite pictures of Hayden, and I am hoping to get one just like it of Gracie this year!!!  We leave for the beach in one more week and then I will really have lots of pictures to share and compare.