About 25 years ago, we would vacation at my aunt and uncles place in Wild Dunes, an island just north of Charleston. I distinctly remember playing in the pool and ocean with all my cousins, singing along to the guitar player during happy hour and that is the place all the cousins were given nicknames that still hold today. Flying Ryan, Josh
B'gosh, Court the Snort, Ash
Badash, Bad Brad and since nothing
rhymes with Kristin, they said what do you want your nickname to be and apparently I liked ducks at the time and said Kristin the duck and it all these years later my cousins and aunts and uncles still refer to me as
kristin the duck!
Those were happy memories but my aunt and uncle sold their place a long time ago and moved to Houston and we haven't been back, that is until last weekend when we went back with our neighbors for 4 days. We were looking for somewhere close for a couple days that had a pool and beach and this was the perfect place. We had a 3 bedroom condo on the beach with a small community pool.
As I have mentioned before, Ella likes to do things on her own time when she is ready and that was no exception when it came to the pool and beach. She usually loves the pool and loves playing in the blow up ones but it has been since Christmas when she was
in a real one and that one was heated and indoors so almost a year since she has been in an outdoor one and she wasn't too sure in the beginning. She was very happy sitting on the steps playing with her toys.
And then getting a little more brave trying the next step, with a secure hand on Tracey of course.
And once she decided she was ready, she was off. She would climb to the second step and leap off into Mike's arms. (I have it on video and will post that later.)
She learned this pool thing can be fun. We tried using the arm
floaties but she decided she is not ready for those yet and quickly pulled them off. She stills prefers to swim with mom and dads safe arms around her. We start swim lessons again at the Y in a couple weeks so I am hoping after that maybe she will try swimming on her own with the
swimmies.
When there are 5 little girls all under the age of 4, there is some loud craziness going on for sure and some
girly girl time. Ella had her first experience with wearing princess heels this weekend. Wesley is a pro at wearing with big sister Addie loving all things princess and they even had a stage perform on with the fancy shoes.
We did have some beach time as well but just like the pool, Ella had to ease into it. Ella and Wesley were very content just shoveling sand into the bucket.
She actually did better than I thought about keeping her hat on. She can take it off herself but she kept it on a pretty long time. But I wish she would keep some sunglasses but she is fine with just squinting.
She never loved going into the water herself but she did love it when Mike or I would take her in and "bounce" in the waves and splash it. The water was perfect
temperature, not too cold and not too hot.
Who needs to play in the ocean when you have
Froot Loops??
After some naps for the little ones, we decided to have an early birthday celebration for Wesley. She doesn't turn 2 until July 3rd but they will be away visiting family on her birthday so we decided to celebrate at the beach.
It is always a safe bet when it comes to chocolate
frosting to just eat it in a diaper and not ruin any clothes. I don't even know why we have the cake for the kids, we should just
scoop some frosting on a plate and they would be happy.
Happy early Birthday to our Best Buddy! Can't believe this little ones are going to be 2 already.
I think this is the only time all weekend we could get them all sitting and eating quietly at the table. The power of sugar.
Check out the nice view from the balcony. Ella and Allie are giving each other a hug. Ella loves giving everyone lots of hugs.
Family pic. Ella and Daddy both sporting their Vineyard Vines!
After dinner and dessert, the girls would all have movie night. Ella loved it and now every night, she ask for movie movie???
Like I said, she loves to give hugs. Before each nap time and bedtime, she would
have to go around and give each of the girls and Jaime and Tracey a big hug. She gives some good hugs.
Trying to get all the girls still still and pose for a picture is no small feat. Here are four of them minus Wesley. They look like they could all be sisters or cousins.
Our attempt to get all of them, not sure what Ella is doing but I think she is trying to pick up her monkey.
Our final night, we all went out to dinner at an amazing seafood restaurant. I enjoyed some of the best shrimp and grits and Mike got some lobster. Earlier in the week, all of the girls had gotten together to make the Dads a special short for Father's Day. We gave them the shirts at dinner.
They had a great deck that was perfect for the kids to run around once they got antsy sitting at the table.
It was pretty hot and humid and check out Ella's curls! I have never seen her hair curl so much and it was the cutest thing. I love seeing her sweet curls. Last summer she was still pretty bald so this is the first time we have seen her beach hair!
Adam and Mike sporting their new shirts. It is an outline of the Dad's shoes and then Ella's footprint inside and says "Hope to fill your shoes one day." On the back, we just let them paint freely. Ella had the best time painting, using all the different colors.
On this hot night, a p
opsicle sounds good to me.
Ella and Wesley learned a new trick on this trip, how to cheers with their drinks. They liked to cheers their
sippy cups and juice boxes and even their
popsicles.
And then we even give our best buddy a taste of our own
popsicle.
Whenever you have 5 kiddos in a house, it is a loud and there is not a lot of sleep happening but it was definitely a trip with lots of fun and lasting memories. We are so lucky to have such great friends where all the kids and adults get along so well. And Wild Dunes was just a special as I remembered from all those years ago.
(Shirts optional but bows required at Ella's kitchen!)
Unfortunately last week Ella came down with this nasty summer virus going around. She came down with a fever Tuesday afternoon that lasted 3 long days and a couple sleepless nights. But no other symptoms besides high fever and just feeling very tired and not eating. You know she is sick when all she wants to do is sit on the couch and watch movies and not eat a thing. She did have some moments of feeling better but mainly we just hung out at home and played for 3 days. And we found lots of new fun toys, like Daddy's sunglasses!
By Friday afternoon, her fever finally broke and she got some of her energy back and was back more to her old self and actually wanted to go outside and play. (And not soon enough, if I watched another Mickey Mouse show or watched Tangled again, I might have gone insane!) And by playing, it means carrying around Mom's purse and act like she is going shopping. I think we may be in lots of trouble in the future.
It was a good thing she started feeling better because she had some big visitors come visit us this weekend, Uncle Court, Jennifer (or Fer-Fer as Ella's says) and Emma doggie. Ella LOVES Fer-Fer and Emma but is not too sure about her godfather! On Saturday, she wore the shirt that Uncle Court bought for her almost 2 years ago, her first Vineyard Vines polo and we were so excited it finally fit, we tried to get a picture of them together in their Vineyard Vines. But you can tell from Ella, she wasn't too keen on getting a picture.
Even though she thought he was a little scary (don't worry I did too growing up), she liked to tease Uncle Court. All last week before they were coming, we would say who is coming this weekend and she would say "fer-fer and court." But once he arrived, she refused to say his name. She would look right at him with a huge smile and say "fer-fer" and laugh. When he would leave the room or was out of ear shot, she would say his name to us but never in front of him! It became the running joke of the weekend. On Sunday, she came around a little more to Uncle Court and would actually sit next to him but still wouldn't say his name!
But again, it was nothing like her bond with Fer-Fer!!
And if Mommy gives her lots of tickles, she will even sort of cuddle and laugh with Uncle Court! Progress people progress.
I love when I capture a moment between these two. Ella was all about her Daddy this weekend. They got to hang out all Saturday morning and she wanted him all weekend.
When she was sick, all she wanted was Mommy all day and night but once she was better, she was all about her Daddy. It is huge for her to share her favorite juice box and check out that expression she has, too funny. Like, she is thinking "hmmm, hope he doesn't drink it all!"
We had a major breakthrough this weekend, the swing. Ella loved her infant swing, was in it all the time, would sleep for hours in it and then once she started sitting up and moving around, she wanted nothing to do with any type of a swing. We would try and swing every time we went to the park and she would scream and try and climb out so we just decided the swing wasn't her thing and that was fine. But on Sunday, she decided she wanted to try it again and we put her in thinking she would last 6 seconds but to our astonishment, she loved it! Kept saying "high high" for us to swing her higher.
She must have been in there for close to 20 minutes and loved every second of it. We had to drag her out of the swing so we could go home or she would have stayed all day.
On Monday, we went to another park that also has a splash ground and usually Ella runs right to the splash area to play but this time, she ran right to the swing! Kids are so funny, I guess they can change and surprise you all the time.
So, that was our week, a little of fever and hanging out at home and then a little bit of that like loving swings and running from scary Uncle Court! 
