July 30th- The Beach

I am slowly putting up the pictures from our vacation. This July 30th. We went to the beach and the kids had a blast! They really wanted to come back.

At this beach they have this fountain area where you can have fun or wash off the sand before going to you car. It is really nice. Mason was a little hesitant in running through the water. He really doesn't like to get his face wet. But after I encouraged strongly one time, he really got into it.

I love this picture of the boys pulling Daddy into the water.

We played in the sand. Aussie and I were making a really cool castle with a nice moat but the tide came up and destroyed it. So then we just started making big humps of sand as fast as we could before the tide would come.

Mommaneze- a new language

This made me laugh this morning.

Aussie said," No wonder Moms and kids can not understand each other because Moms speak Mommaneze."

Chinese Class and American Girl Party

Today Aussie had his first class in Chinese for the year. He was very excited to learn that he moved up to grade level 2. Gramma bought this cute Chinese outfit for Aussie for his birthday. He proudly wore it today to class. Several people were impressed and commented on it. Now the tennis shoes were not my idea, but Daddy told him to put them on so he could run around in the gym during that time at school.



Daddy takes Aussie to Chinese class on Saturdays and I keep the other 2. Today I dropped Ashley off at a birthday party and Mason and I hooked up with Daddy and Aussie for lunch at Chic-Fil-A.





The birthday party that Ashley went to was an American Girl party. The invitation said you could dress up if you wanted to. Ashley was TOTALLY into that! She picked Samantha. She picked out her clothes and everything had to be almost exact. Then she said, I will need a long dark wig with curls. HA! Sorry baby girl, I'm not buying a wig.

Some of the girls didn't dress up, so as you can see here and in the group picture above they pretended to be dogs.

After the party Abby came to play at our house for a little while. They play so well together. It's really convenient that her Mom cleans their church and their church is about 4 minutes from our house. Really we could probably do this more often.

And I don't want to leave out my Mason! He was pretty bored today. Ashley had something to do and Aussie had something to do and he didn't have anyone to play with. But he was very excited to find his Pokemon "Bedew" in the back of the car. He had been looking for it for a few days.

July 31- Last day in Florida

We had planned to come home on Thursday, but there were several things we didn't get to do or see. So we decided to stay a few more days. This was on Friday the 31st, our last day in town. We took the kids downtown St. Augustine.

These are part of the original gates of St. Augustine.

This is an old wheat mill.
This is the New Bridge of Lions (I think).

They had a new "welcome" center there. It was really nice and cool.

We ate at a yummy seafood place. I of course got a cheeseburger, which was really good. And the fries were really good too. But guess what? They were cooked in the same oil as the shrimp. And yep! I'm allergic. I took some Benadryl. I kept having weird flare ups all day.



The kids held out their hats and hummed a little tune. Unfortunately they didn't get any money. They just weren't loud enough or I'm sure someone would have stopped.

It was hot so we didn't stay outside long.

We then took a little trip out to Ponte Vedre to the AAA out there. I got each of the kids triptiks so they could follow the map all the way home. Along the way back we went by one of the places Greg used to work as a kid. We didn't stay long because there was a big storm coming.

We went back to Greg's parents house. And we took a several pictures around the property.
Greg had talked about taking a canoe ride with the kids. And I am almost always up for a canoe ride, but after he told me that I think it was his sister just recently saw baby alligators back there. And after last year when Greg got frightened because he thought he saw a shark, which luckily turned out to be a dolphin. I said, NO! We are not taking our children out there when there are alligators known to be close by. NOPE! NO WAY NO NADA! It's beautiful but I'm not going to take the chance of me or my family being alligator food.

Then a dear friend of the family came by to see us before we left. She wanted pictures of us. My children were VERY cooperative!

And we said good-bye to Karley and Shaina.

That evening was supposed to be a restful evening before heading out in the morning back to Nashville.

BUT...I had a bad allergic reaction. My mouth was swollen. And my throat felt like it might start to close. So I decided around 1AM that I better go to the hospital. So Greg took me. By the time I got in there I know I looked miserable.

OK do this: Put your bottom lip out like you are sad. Now roll your tongue up over your upper lip. Now go look in the mirror. That is probably close to what I looked like. I could barely talk. They got me in immediately. They hooked me up to an IV. The doctor said luckily we treat all allergic reactions the same way, since I didn't know what I was allergic to. Some of the medicine they gave me made me very loopy. I felt like I was going to fall out of the bed. Apparantly this concerned the nurse and she started working really fast. I'm not sure why. But Greg came over and helped me so I wouldn't fall. The medicine made me sleep, but it was still hard to go to sleep because there was someone SNORING loudly. I couldn't see the person so I was very frustrated that I couldn't kick him or throw something at him! And I think I would of in that state of mind if I could see him.

Anyway I was given an epipen for emergencies and sent home around 5ish. I didn't think Greg would go, but he slept until 9AM and we left for our 14 hour drive home.

On our way home, I put a piece of gum in my mouth and had a slight allergic reaction. Oh my Goodness it was the GUM! No wonder I had flare ups all day. I had been chewing it all day. I bet that combined with the french fries cooked in shrimp grease is what put me in the hospital.