Recovery and Preparing

We spent the first part of last week recovering from all the wedding stuff. Now is is time to get ready for vacation. Jackson has veen very excited and kept asking how many days so we made a little countdown calendar. He marks it off first thing every morning.

On Saturday, I headed to Wal-Mart and spent two hours getting all of the stuff for our trip. We are trying to bring most of the food we'll need since we are getting in on July 4th and do not even want to attempt the grocery store down there that is really busy even on non-holidays. I also get little surprises to give the kids during the 16 hour drive down to Florida. And then there is all the other random stuff. I was glad that I didn't have the kids for that trip. Andrew took them out to the ranch and they had a good time out there. He sent me a few pictures from his phone and I have to admit, they made me a little nervous.

That night it cooled down a bit so Andrew decided to break out the guitar and play outside. He and the kids did a little recital for me.

I couldn't keep Ellie out of this "outfit" most of the day. You would turn around and she would have her dress off and her ballerina skirt on. We would have to plead with her to get her dress on whenever we would go outside, but then she would sneak back in and put it on again.

Sunday morning, Jackson and I were sitting in the family room when I heard some scratching at the back door and this is what we saw.
He stayed there for awhile- at least long enough for me to get my camera. Later we went to church and then headed to my parents because Kaitlin and Zane were back in town. It was so nice outside and the kids got to go swimming. We had dinner with Zane's parents and watched some of the raw video footage from the wedding which was neat to see. Then the kids shot off some fireworks with my dad. Today was another beautiful day so we made sure to take a walk and then after lunch I needed to get some billing done for the office, so I set up shop on the patio while the kids played. They soon got bored so I brought out some sidewalk chalk, paintbrushes, and buckets of water. After a little coloring and "painting" the kids found a new way to use everything. They would dump the buckets of water on the ground, color on it with the chalk, and then use the paint brushes to spread everything around. Soon they were running and jumping through all of it. They were having such a good time, I felt bad ending it to put Ellie down for a nap. I did let her stay up a little later though. We had to clean up with the hose because they were a colored mess. Check out Ellie-just makes me laugh. That is chalk all over her underwear and rear.