gulf shores night one

basic young family gulf shores reunion agenda as follows:

wake up! eat! beach! pool! eat! games! eat! games! beach! fight about the american revolution! eat! games! sleep! 

rinse! and repeat!

a few pics from our first evening tour de la plage:

gulf shores day one

sandy. salty. sunscreened. and wet.

a week at the beach

smile and we'll give you candy!

bene, eli, dallin, afton, derek, danton, caleb, wesley, luke, soren, and summer holding samuel.

the girls.

part of the bru cru.

more gulf shores shenanigans to come.

is a berry berry berry fine house

you know, it's probably time for me to quit schlepping my giant camera out to the fields to snap pics of the fam picking raspberries. it's not new. it's not exciting. it's never really much different each year than it was the year before.

but it's just one of those things. 

it's one of those touchstones. 

it's one of those photographic gauges of the relentless marching on of time. 

of our time.

the raspberries stay the same. the dry dirt and the bushes and the crates and the boxes and the buckets. even the pnw sky is usually its cloudy, shady, angry, stormy summer self.

but the kids, man, those kids just won't stop changing.

summer girl, pictured here finally as tall as her mother.

(not pictured here: me giving her bunny ears. which immature shenanigans she did not care for at all.)

the first trip with all four kids here.

to the temple

on tuesday in the last week of july, afton was able to attend the seattle washington temple for her very first time to perform baptisms for members of our friend christina's family. she wanted to be with just mom and dad for her inaugural session but has since gone a few more times with her sister and friends. 

afton loves the temple for its quiet, for its clean and beautiful interior, and for its peace and calm. 

pierced hearts

notice anything different about my two girls?!

back in mid-july, summer and afton (and lydia!) finally fulfilled a life-long dream of getting their ears pierced. 

they had a great experience at pierced hearts tattoo parlor in downtown seattle: picked out their handmade implant grade titanium crystal studs (pink for summer! iridescent lavender for afton! silver for lydia!), went back and sat in the big purple piercing chair, and then had giant sterilized needles poked all the way through their earlobes. 

summer had a slight panic when she saw the needles (she REALLY hates needles), but decided ear piercing was something she wanted and pushed through like a champ. 

ta-da!

happy belated birthday to me

 

i spent my birthday hosting a pretty raging* pool party for middle school girls.

so yeah, i'd say i'm thirty-eight now.

*raging except for the fact that i served sparkling water instead of soda, from which middle school girl pool party faux pas my reputation may never recover.

the kids are all right

this.

is going to be a great year.

to the kids! who continue to show up and show off the best of what we can do and the best of who we can be.

and to all of the grown-ups out there taking care of the kids:

thank you. 

and good luck.

eighth grade!

seventh grade!

fourth grade!

second grade!