Uncle Garrett

It has to be hard to be one of the "single kids" on family vacation.  Especially when your week starts off being awakened early Monday morning to the juke box next to your room blaring "I Bet You Think This Song is About You." (Mason came running up the stairs at about 7 am yelling, "Mom!  There's a juke box and I figured out how to turn it on!")

 

Luckily, Uncle Garrett is what we like to call a good sport :)  He got up early every morning to spend time with the kiddos at the beach; he let the kids spend a good 20 minutes covering him in stickers; he let them bury his whole body in the sand; and best of all, he played endless games of chase, as seen below: 

At the Beach

Best Buddies

Aviva and her cousin Ben are so cute to watch together.  I've never seen two kids their age pay so much attention to one another.  When Ben sees Aviva he comes straight for ready to cuddle her and kiss her.  This of course often results in him man handling her.  Even still, whenever Aviva sees him coming she starts bouncing up and down with a big toothless grin on her face.  She has also inadvertently learned how to retaliate by pulling his hair when he puts his head in her lap.  In the photo below, Aviva had been playing with the toy when Ben came over, scooted in between her and the toy, and then basically sat in her lap so he could play with it.  She had a smile on her face the whole time.   

They're Starting to Outnumber us

The more cousins we have, the harder these pictures get.  This was as good as we could get today:  

We're just happy we got them all in one shot.  Probably a better one is this shot from earlier this week:

  Here are a few others I like:

Aunt Shauri and the Really Great Wangdoodle

Aunt Shauri has been reading The Last of the Really Great Wangdoodles to the 3 oldest kids all week.  The children in the story have special hats they wear to Wangdoodle Land, so for Shauri's kid activity she had them all make hats and then she organized a wangdoodle scavenger hunt.  It was far and away the best kid activity of the week.  

Sleeping Like a Baby

Max had a hard time staying in bed last night.  We thought we finally had him.  An hour later I ran downstairs to grab something and saw this:

The "It" Factor

We are in the Outer Banks (in North Carolina) right now with all of my siblings and their families.  It is my very favorite vacation in the entire world.  We rent an enormous house about 500 ft. from the beach.  We spend all day in the pool, at the beach, and eating good food.  Everyone is assigned to plan one kids activity and one adult activity (which led to this last year) after the kids are in bed.  

On Sunday we decided to have "church" at the house.  We had a brief adult meeting, and then we had primary for the kids.  We set a chair up and Mason and Katie gave talks standing on top of it.  When they finished, Max insisted on climbing on the chair and giving his own talk.  We didn't understand much more than "A - MEN!"  

Travis was in charge of singing time, so he had all the kids take turns coming up front with him and leading everyone in their favorite song.  When it was Max's turn, leading wasn't quite enough.  He made Travis get off the chair he was sitting in so he could stand on it and sing a song all by himself for everyone.  

Something tells me when he is old enough to participate in the adult activities he will have no trouble following in his father's footsteps.