Florida Part 2: Beach, baby!

I loved our mornings and evenings in FL. They began and ended in a very similar fashion: air mattress follies. :) Holden slept on an air mattress in the living room each night. Aunt Allie was supposed to be sleeping with him, but she quickly learned just how much he kicks and hogs the bed, so she ended up above him on the couch each night. Holden loved his special time with her, watching Disney channel or movies and chatting before he drifted off to sleep and she talked on the phone with her boyfriend. :) Hunter slept in a pack n' play that I stuck in the walk-in closet in the bedroom that Jay and I were in. But he thought the air mattress was his own personal bounce house! He would go crazy when he saw it, leaping and climbing, giggling and drooling, bouncing and shaking his head back and forth like a wild animal. He is my wild child. Sometimes Holden found this amusing, and other times not so much, like when Hunter would attack him. I also included a shot of them in one of their many sets of matching jammies.

We loved the time we spent on the beach! The pictures below are comprised of several different days there. And yes, this is after I minimized. I am not very good at it, clearly. Hunter loved the sand, just like Holden did when he was this age. There is not much I can think of that is cuter than a diaper-clad toddler bear-walking across the sand. He got it everywhere: face, hair, mouth, diaper...a hot mess by the time we had to clean up to go back to the condo. Thank goodness for the spouts to rinse off up near the beach entrances! Which he did not appreciate. I love how concentrated his little expression is in some of these pics. He would pick up sand/shells and just sift through it with his fingers, or try to figure out what was going on with the sand between his toes. Little beach bum.

Grammy and Papa and Aunt Teresa bought the boys shovels and pails and other beach toys for their bdays, which were perfect gifts. They got put to good use during the week! Holden loved running to the water, filling his buckets, and dumping the water out in the sand to create moats and castles. He also loved to dig. One hole was so deep I said he must have been trying to get to China, which is a phrase my mom and dad used to use. He looked at me like I was crazy and said, "Mommy, China is NOT near the beach!" Ha! He was a very busy boy.

Our friend, Jason, who is 15, was wonderful with the boys, especially Holden. They built castles together, played, and he even let Holden bury him AND tolerated the fake boobs we made him while he was buried! He is such a great kid. Holden really misses him now that we are home.

Jay being Jay...love the one of him multi-tasking by feeding Hunt-man a bottle while talking on the phone. Great arm-rest with the beach ball. The modeling of Hunter's hat could make a GQ magazine, don't you think? ;) He did tolerate an awful lot of sand...all over him...as the boys climbed and dug and used him as their beach decoration.

Holden's "best friend," Aunt Allie. She is so wonderful to the boys and was a huge help during our vacation. She is young enough to be a lot more fun than Mommy and Daddy, but old enough to help take care of the boys. We love you, Allie! As Memaw says, "Holden and Allie go together like peas and carrots." To quote the great Forest Gump.

My boys and me. I was in HEAVEN with them on the beach. I could move there tomorrow and not think twice!

Busy little Mr. Holden. I loved watching him enjoy himself. I don't think he slowed down once...except maybe for a Dr. Pepper break like the one in the collage below. :)

Hunter generally stayed put near the towels, playing in the sand. But on a few occasions, he would just take off all of a sudden in a mad crawl to explore! He was so determined to get wherever he thought he was going. Once he invaded a couple of cute teenage girls laying out. Jay was the one watching him, and didn't realize quite how quickly he can go when he puts his mind to it. Let's just say the girls were awakened from their tanning slumber with some wet, drooly sand on their tummies and a curious little guy grinning at them! Luckily they thought he was cute. :) He really wanted to crawl all the way to the water, but we had to stop him because there were so many seashells that they might have cut his hands and feet.

Some miscellaneous beach moments.

Finally, I had to include Mike and the seagulls, although it was way funnier if you were there. Holden and Allie decided to put Cheese Nips around him while he was relaxing, so that the seagulls would come prey upon him. (You can see them doing this in the collage of him and Aunt Allie.) He was very good-natured about it, and started throwing crackers to the birds himself. He did not realize that Allie had also perched a cracker on his hat! You can see it in the picture below to the left. The birds got bolder and bolder, and he had no idea that it was there until a seagull actually landed ON HIS HEAD and snatched it!!! You can see it coming to roost in the picture below to the right. We were all laughing SO hard at his bewildered face when he turned around and said, "Did something just hit my head?!"