home away from home

I love nothing more than spending vacation with my family.  Life could not get any better than being able to spend my undevided attention on our fam, (and have a beautiful place to do that while vacationing...) starting the day waking up to my precious girls snuggling between my husband and I (after they have run in from their room), followed by a warm cup of french vanilla cream with splenda and a hint of coffee while watching the sun rise with my girls from our balcony. This is the most breathtaking moment I have as I try and answer the "why's" to a three and (almost) two year old about the sun rising.  Not only are they curious, but they too are just as amazed as I on the beauty of the colors painting the clouds and reflecting on the ocean. 

Chaysie watching the sun rise... note the scratches on her nose where she fell yesterday off the bed, onto the corner of the table, and down 3 feet to the floor- (her nose bleed for quite some time after- which in the end looked as though someone had been masacred- and with all the crying, i'm sure the neighbors thought the same) poor little thing!

We enjoyed this moment as long as we could until reality hit that they would only last so long before becoming bears without any food in their bellies... so the sun rose, we ate, and the day went on...

and what a day we have had!

Chayse has an obsession with airplanes... so we took her on the Blue Angels cruise, which goes over to watch the Blue Angels practice. And she was not the only one mesmorized!!! You'll see why...

they were so close! and right over our heads!!

some dolphins surfaced up to see what all the racket was!

and of course, it wouldn't be a vacation (for us) if we didn't go to the beach or pool...
in this case, the beach was a little too hot, so we opted for the bay instead!

and of course, we felt right at home with the usual "streaker"...

I'll be back with more from the beach!

fun with the fams

First and foremost... CHAYSE DID GREAT WALKING INTO HER CLASS TODAY!!! YYAAYYY!! No tears were shed at all!! (which made it harder on me than I thought it would, when I realized she didn't need me anymore...) but at least she did great!!

On another note...
This weekend was jam packed with family- on both sides of ours.
First we had a family reunion where the girls enjoyed making new friends, seeing family, and swinging like always!

To top off the family filled weekend we took pictures with Ryan's side of the family.  This turned out much better than expected knowing the girls were extremely exhausted (which always translates to terrible cooperation)!
These pictures were weeded out of the several (more like hundreds) we took... and these shown are as good as we were able to get!!

These are some of my favorites I was some how able to capture!

And of course I had to take advantage of the extra hands and probably the only opportunity (for a while I'm sure) to get some good pictures of us and our family!!

and finally a good picture of Ryan and me!!

I love this one of Chayse! Its probably the best picture I have that sums up her wonderful personality! She loves accessories (this necklace she snagged from Gigi's neck), being dressed up, climbing on things (like this stool which was being used as my camera's tripod), and best of all, she's always laughing and so happy (for the most part)! I love this picture! I just want to gobble her up!

 So, now, just to entertain you with what all we had to go through for some decent captures! It's amazing they turned out as well as they did!

and that's all she wrote... it was all over after sloan took off! Although, they did do very well under the circumstances (and all the bribing, reasoning, distracting,...)
Take a long look because we will probably not have any more family photos taken for quite some time!