Vacation...those were the days

SUNDAY was our first full day of vacation.  We started by having a church service where David shared a message he had prepared on the way over, it was very good.  As soon as our church service was over we packed lunches and headed to the beach.  We stayed there for several hours.  I was hoping that Emily would just peacefully fall asleep in my arms and we'd be able to spend the whole day there but she must have not gotten the memo because she ended up eventually getting cranky and sad and needed to take a nap.  We went in and put the the girls down for late naps.  Mimi made a pasta dish for dinner, it was very good.  We had family devotions again in the evening and talked and played games.

MONDAY was another full beach day.  The girls slept in until around eight or nine and we got dressed and headed right out.  Monday was also Jay's Birthday so we got to spend the whole day with the Birthday boy!  I think Haley must have decided to be nice to him this week as a Birthday present because they did not have very many fights.  They must have made a truce at some point and I missed it or something.  We were at the beach for most of the morning and some of the afternoon.  Then I went in and put the girls to sleep and I think David stayed in with them while I went to the beach.  Something like that, I think I went back out without them but I'm not sure.  We also spent a little bit of time at the pool.  In the evening Carly and Kimberly were in charge of dinner and they made a great Birthday dinner of brats, burgers, hot dogs, macaroni and cheese, a fancy salad, and potatoes.  Haley was thrilled to have a hot dog, she ate a bunch.  The dinner was in honor of Jay's 2nd Birthday and Ellie's first which is on the 18th.  Carly made an ice cream cake for dessert and Kimi made a vanilla cake with chocolate icing.  Kimberly had a game up with pictures of Ellie from the past year and we had to put them in order.  I ended up tying with Aunt Rin and Caleb and the tie breaking was whoever could guess the time that Ellie was born which I won.  Just as I was starting to glory in my win, Kelly returned from putting her kids to bed and revealed a better score, I think she may have even gotten them all right!  Ellie is a very clean little baby and she was not super excited about getting herself dirty with her cake.  It was hilarious, I've never seen anything like it because instead of just ignoring it, she was trying to push it off of the high chair tray!  Emy started flailing her arms and legs as soon as she saw dessert so after taking off a slice or two of Ellie's cake (I think Kelsey wanted to eat that particular cake, haha) she let Emy have a go and she put a bit of a dent in it.  I think she just got super dirty though, I'm not sure how much of it she actually ate.  I thanked Kimi because now I don't feel like I have to do one for Emy's Birthday!  Monday evening we had devotions and then played games and went to bed.  I will be writing Jay a Birthday tribute soon!

Birthday dinner.  Haley wasn't wearing a hat because the elastic part got stuck on her and she got snapped in the face with it, oops, haha.

Fun at the beach

From left to right: Haley, Ellie, Kelsey, Calla and Emy.  You can tell it's Emy by the mouthful of sand she is trying to eat

Playing with the boogie boards

These girls all had matching bathing suits.  These are all the cousins minus Jay, Clark, and Maya

TUESDAY we slept in and then headed to the beach.  I think Emy was actually tired this day and I put her down for a morning nap and David stayed in and played games while Haley and I just went.  Then David brought Emy out when she woke up.  This may have also been the day when Haley didn't really sleep for her nap.  One of the days we put Haley down for her nap and she played in her room for almost three hours.  Um, random Haley.  After naps we brought the girls back out to the beach and had some more fun.  It was good we did because this was the last super nice beach day.  Most of the other days were only partially nice or just downright rainy.  The girls have so much fun at the beach.  Emily is a little bit of a problem because she was constantly putting shells in her mouth and seemed to always be eating sand.  They both loved the water and were thrilled whenever anyone took them out into the waves.  They were constantly asking people to take them out, I know Mimi and Rin got suckered into it the most.  Emy made me nervous a lot because she would crawl out into the water and just keep going, she definitely didn't realize it was getting any deeper.

At dinnertime we came in and made rice and salsa for the dinner we were making with the Fentons.  We made pork tacos with Mexican rice and chips and salsa.  We thought it was a pretty big success although Josh Fenton and Pops had diarrhea that night.  I'd like to think they were just dehydrated but I apologized just in case...   We had a bunch of extra people for dinner because Grandma and Grandpa had arrived along with two of Rin's friends from college.  Later that night the pastor's wife also arrived (doubling as the florist) along with the best man and his family.  We stayed up late and played Dutch Blitz.  I won but it was close, I think either Kelly or Kimi were about to win too.

Tomorrow I'll try and write about the wedding festivities!

Aunt Kelly holding Emy, I think Emy got held by almost everybody on this vacation.  Hmm, maybe her mother wasn't being attentive enough or something, oops.

Sitting and waiting for church to start