Summer Pics, Round 2

I haven't showed you any summer pics lately, so here's a few. Note: these are from before our vacay to So. Carolina. I'll put up some from vacation soon when I get pics from other family members.

Enjoy!

Noah is trying his first bite of rice cereal! His sister wanted to do the honors...
Notice...most of it is not in his mouth...


Dylan is really getting good at holding her brother now, and he's all for it!


Spending some time at the Kalona pool when we went to Iowa to visit Jason's sister Mo's family. Dylan starts to show us what a true waterbug she is! She wanted to jump off the side of the pool into your arms the whole time!


Some auntie Mo-Mo time for Noah - he loved the zero depth pool. SO cool in those shades, man.


They had new kittens in Iowa! Dylan was attached and asked me every day if we could take one home. "Can we have one to my house, momma?" She held them gently around the belly ("not the neck!")... most of the time.


Noah is starting to crawl! He was scooting around a bit in Iowa in this picture. But So. Carolina sealed the deal. He's a crawler! Let the babyproofing begin.


Dylan is becoming quite the little girl. She just looks so old in this picture to me. She has so much curly blond hair. I could just eat her up! Well for that matter, both kids are pretty delicious these days. :)

house with a view...

We currently are inhabiting a GORGEOUS beach house on Folly Beach in South Carolina - about 10 min. south of Charleston. AMAZING. We are having the time of our lives with my family and the house is perfectly set up for our needs. Each family has their own little suite with a jack and jill bath, two bedrooms (one for parents, one for kiddos), and a master suite for my parents. The main living area is a huge great room with a massive kitchen, large living space (with plasma TV...who says you don't need to watch 'So You Think You Can Dance' on vacation) and 10 seater table. We have porches spanning the backs of both stories of the house.

Now get this. The house in ON the beach. Like walk out the back door and you are in the sand dunes. It's so beautiful. We walked in on Saturday evening and looked through the back windows to the most amazing view of sand, water and peace. NATURE! It is amazing and so fun.

Our days are spent on the beach, of course. Dylan is a waterbug and is having an amazing time splashing, digging, throwing sand, jumping waves, etc. Sometimes I have to pinch myself as she runs up from the water with a bucket in hand, looking so much like a commercial for special summer family moments.

We ate at the Folly Beach Crab Shack last night and Jason and I split a big bucket of crab legs! Those of you who don't know, crab is one of my favorite foods, if not THE favorite. It was succulent, melt in your mouth delicious and I enjoyed every bite.

Noah is enjoying the vacation as well. He is army crawling around the wood floors like nobody's business. He sleeps pretty well on his stomach under a tent on the beach, and the one time I took him in the water, he just wanted to nurse the whole time, and he kept getting interrupted by the waves splashing all over him.

Now, I'm currently enjoying the A/C while the kiddos are all asleep. It's a scorcher out there, so we're taking a breather...

on the road again...

We've been logging miles. This past week we put exactly 1000 miles on my mom's van as we toured a triangle of Wisconsin, Iowa and Illinois. We first headed to Marshfield, Wisconsin for the Rhodes family reunion. It was great fun and I (and the kids) got to meet some of Jason's other first cousins we had never met before! We did lots of swimming, eating good food, chatting, playing sports (not so much me as Jason and the other dads and kids), and just being together. It was wonderful.

From there, we headed down to Kalona, Iowa to spend three days with Mo, Dwight and the kiddos (jason's oldest sis and fam). SO FUN! They have a gorgeous new home which we fit right into. We spent some time at the Kalona pool, the Iowa City mall, and Jason worked the IMS basketball camp.

Traveling with 2 kiddos was really quite a blessing compared to what it could have been. They were amazing. Dylan was mostly occupied with music, snacks and books. Occasionally I'd try to pull out a new activity or puzzle or something, and it was quickly boring to her. Next time I'm just going to bring 100 books along (for the record, I did bring about 30 and it was not enough). Noah was awesome and slept record amounts of time, and then he would wake up and we wouldn't even know it - he'd be looking around, hanging out and just chill. He did eventually get sick of the car on each trip - crying on and off the last hour or so of each trip. But considering we were in the car a total of about 20 hours all 3 legs, it was pretty impressive.

Now, we're at home for a few days - Matt, Emily and Olivia Rittenhouse were just visiting for awhile, and Mo and the kids come to Chicagoland on Monday. We'll be out in the burbs hangin with them most of the week.

It's getting sort of depressing for me that it's august. Jason is of course home and it's AMAZING, but I'm starting to get all sad about him going back to school and that our uber-family time is drawing to a slow close. :( I need to take some deep breaths and realize we still have some time.