Since the weather has been nice, we have been out and about a lot lately. With our out and aboutness come the the regular questions and comments about our "large" family. The one that I get most often (as a follow up to "Are they all yours?") is "....And you're HERE? Wow, you're brave!" It's true that staying home would be so much easier and cheaper. But we really want our children to live life, learn new things and experience this wonderful world that we live in. We can't do that staying home. Yes, everywhere we go is at least an hour away and we usually stop to feed the baby and feed the family and look at big turtles crossing the road and let the kids pump the gas and pack changes of clothes and jackets and the baby carrier and bring lots of snacks and a few umbrellas. A five minute pit stop is just that......five minutes, for each person. And the van is a disaster of cracker wrappers, apple cores, books, jackets, memorabilia and french fries every time we get home from somewhere. Seriously, I see to it that my van gets cleaned out every day.
The word "trip" is all relative. When I was little, we took "trips" once a year (if that). For these kids, it's a weekly occurrence, but they call it "going somewhere fun." To them, a "trip" involves an airplane and a rental car. I'm not saying this to give my kids a guilt trip. I just want them to know how very blessed we are.
Friday we went down to see Laurette. She was doing so much better. I was very pleasantly surprised to see her sitting up in bed eating when I went up to her room. We knew that it was meal time when we arrived, so I went to check on her before we brought the whole family in. She recognized me, said hello and asked if the kids were there. She finished eating, we visited for a while, then we took her outside. She hasn't been out doors since she's been in rehab. She still tires easily, so we didn't stay out long, but she enjoyed it.
She loves being with the kids.
Here is Laurette with her "boy with the big eyes."
She is such a beautiful person, inside and out. We love her so much.
On the way to Hills Beach, we saw this big friend crossing the road. So of course, we had to stop and learn something. I've done some research to try and identify it, but haven't been able to yet. Anyone else know what kind of turtle this is?
And since we were just minutes away from the beach (again), we had to go and enjoy it for a while. We just happened to arrive as the sun was setting. It was neat to experience the beauty of watching it go down, down, down. (I thought of Savannah today.) We never get to see that because we live in a forest, so that was a rare treat for us. The kids were amazed to see it actually disappear. Aren't sunsets so very magical?
When we first walked on to the beach, we came across this.....
.......Mike and I knew that someone made it for us. Because we are in love like that.
Then of course there was the sand diggin', crab catching, pier hopping, shell finding, clam observing and boat watching kind of stuff.
And this one....she poses on command. Because she's cute like that.
KKS
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