More of the beach...

We loved having a whole week with BB&G.

Bates and Annie

The easiest place to put them and keep them still!  

Caroline loved going in the triplets' room every morning to "help" get them up. 

C also loved the sand this year, but not so much the ocean.  

I love watching storms come in at the beach

Girl time

She might not like the ocean, but she could stay in the pool all day!

Annie prefered hanging under the tent at the beach and looking cute for pics.

Happy 60th!

My mom turned 60 in June and many months ago my brothers and I started planning a trip to the beach to celebrate.  Two things my mom loves most: the beach and her family.  That made it pretty easy when debating what we should do for this special birthday.  

Our last family beach trip all together was in 1999!  How crazy is that?!  We have had many family trips to other places, but for whatever reason someone is always missing at the beach.  So,  along with celebrating Mom, the main point of this trip was for everyone to be there.  And sadly, Matt's deployment (that was supposed to end in May) was extended until August.  Matt and Natalie were missed greatly, but we will just have to go back again soon!

Sitting still was hard enough and looking at the camera was just not happening for these munchkins.

My favorite views

This picture makes me laugh at Annie.  She looks like a little sailor.  

For mom's birthday dinner night, we did a low country boil.

Beautiful Mom.

We put together 60 reasons we love mom and our favorite memories together.  After dinner we took turns reading the list and reminiscing all the memories. 

Such a fun night!

One more post to come with a few more beach pictures...

June and July phone pics

Most of our day to day life is captured on my phone.  

Here are some summer highlights so far...

(If you follow me on Instagram a lot of these are repeats)

I love this pic.  To me it is a perfect picture of joy, childhood, and innocence.  

Cookie Monster gets boo boos too.

We have only had ONE wedding this summer.  While I love weddings the little break has been nice.

First time swinging

Young love

Graham + Annie

Free Chastain concert to see the Four Tops and The Temptations.  

Such a fun night! 

Nothing beats the heat like popsicles and the sprinkler

Best buds

Coldplay

Maybe my favorite night of the whole summer

A big spill down the steps :(

Lots of sister time

JP turned 32

I have a whole separate post coming soon about this, BUT someone has been having trouble going to sleep/staying in bed at night.  John found her at the bottom of the steps sound asleep at 10:30 last night.  

3rd Annual Mimi Camp

Usually just Caroline heads to Mimi camp in the summer.  This summer I really lucked out though!  It is my first summer not working, so Annie went for her first Mimi camp in early June and I had some time with just Caroline.  Then next week, Caroline is going to go for a couple days and I will have some time with just Annie.  

BUT at the end of June, I went to Bham with both girls.  Isn't my mom the best!?  She loves us well and we had a great week.  Just in the last year (when I stopped working) I have made several trips to Bham for about a week at a time.  It is such a treat and works out well when John has to work long hours.  This trip was the best though because Mom was out of school for the summer too.  We stayed busy and  hit up some of our favorite places.

The Zoo

Caroline loves flamingos (probably because they are pink).

Splash pad at the Zoo.  Caroline is very shy around new people and in new places.  It probably took her 30 minutes to warm up to the splash pad.  She would run around it (not touching or running through a single fountain) over and over and say "I did it!"  Once she got comfortable, she did finally get wet and run in the fountains.  Mom and I couldn't stop laughing at her.  

Story time and some reading at the Library.  

(If you live in Bham and have kids you must go to the Vestavia Library story time.  It is the best one and I always make a point to go when in town).

As usual, Annie was absolutely exhausted at the end of everyday.  

We went to the pool a couple days

We loved seeing the English fam, but missed Lindsey!

And we had some great visits with my grandmother and aunt.  

7 months

This little munchkin is so much fun and such a happy baby.  This is one of my favorite stages.  She loves to smile and laugh.  When Annie smiles real big she scrunches her little nose and smiles with her whole face.  She especially loves to laugh at Caroline and Caroline loves to make her laugh.   

Annie is pretty much on the same sleeping and eating schedule as last month.  Except, if we are home, she will go to bed at 6:45pm otherwise, it is usually closer to 7:30.  She loves all baby food and I am very grateful for this easy transition.  I have been giving her a sippy cup of water to play with after meals (just to introduce it and get her used to it), but she has not started drinking from it yet.  Someone told me to do this with Caroline and it was great.  I never felt like I had to force the sippy and it never seemed like a big deal to drink from it.  She just made the switch one day.  For now, Annie is content playing with it.    

She is loving sitting up all on her own now and she is getting pretty good at rocking back and forth on her hands and knees.  She can also scoot backwards to anywhere she wants to go, but otherwise, not crawling yet.  

Annie seems to be social, fun, and a little adventurous.  I know the day will come where she has stranger anxiety, but right now she will let anyone hold her and goes to the church nursery or a babysitter without thinking twice.  

Her favorite thing to play with/chew on is John's running watch. 

Everyone (and I mean everyone) says she looks just like her Daddy and we think so too.  

Here is a little video clip I took last week of her sweet giggles.   

A Change

It drives me a little crazy when people do this and at the same time I have been debating whether or not to do it for forever.  With that being said, as my girls get older and I use this blog more and more as a scrapbook for our family I am going to make it private now.  New friends, old friends, friends of friends, and family you are welcome to keep reading.  I just want to make sure the ins and outs of a lot of our life are kept safe and not published to the whole world.  I hope this will only make this online keepsake for us more special and personal.

So, I think this is how it works...leave a comment or email me at leighphelps@gmail.com if you would like to keep reading and I will add you.  Thanks so much!

Hope everyone had a Happy 4th of July!