July 4th Beach Trip 2014

Like always, we went to the beach with Matt's entire family for the week of July 4th.  This year though, Uncle John and Aunt Dana didn't get to go because they were expecting Baby Oakley any day.  Part of the family rented a house on the beach and the rest of us stayed at Matt's grandparents house.  Everyone had their own space which was SO NICE!  It was also super nice that we could leave all of our beach stuff (chairs, tents, etc) at the beach house and just take our towels and wet clothes back to Oma and Opa's house each day.

We really only had 1 day of bad weather when Hurricane Arthur came up the coast and we had hard rain all day.  We found an indoor putt putt and took the kids along with Matt's parents.  Apparently so did the rest of the people at the beach because it was crowded in their but a much needed break from sitting around and watching it rain all day, plus it checked one of our "must do a the beach" boxes :)

If Brayden saw a soccer ball come out on the beach, he would walk up to the game and just stand there watching until someone would pass him the ball.  He never forced his way in, but waited patiently to join the game (sometimes he would wait 5-10 minutes which for a 5 yr old is a long time!)  One guy (probably college age-ish) came up to Teresa after he and his buddies had played with Brayden for a while and asked how old he was.  Teresa said that he guy was impressed with his skills considering his age.  

Lilly decided to "help" pack her suitcase :)

BB in the ocean...never seen before!

Ball on the beach...football, soccer, and baseball were all played on the beach this year

BB, Lilly, and Ron

Brayden and Sid - the found several random soccer games to join throughout the week

Evening walk on the beach

Mamie, Lilly, and I decided to walk to the very end of Sunset Beach.  It is a LONG way!  It got dark on us and a creepy guy followed us part of the time, but it was worth it.  Supposedly, there are lots of sand dollars on the other side of the jedi (which you can only get to during low tide).  Brayden and I will have to make the trek one day when he can handle the longer walk.

Beach at sunset

Devil's Purse that we found on our long walk

and washed ashore jellyfish

Family football game on the beach one evening - Aunt Lynn, Brayden, and Matt vs BB/Ron, Sid, and me.  It was fun, but exhausting!

Family at the Pelican's game - a family tradition

Will and Charity

Oma and Opa

Ron and Lilly - she thought he was hilarious!

Lilly and Aunt Lynn - the only 2 "true" Enzor girls in the family!

Silly boy

Long nap on the beach

Football game in the surf

Happy Easter - 2014

We spent Easter this year at my parents house.  The kids had lots of funny dying eggs and hiding them...they are both really good about finding them!  All of my pictures of the kids hiding/hunting eggs came out really dark.  It didn't help that it was rainy and cool so we didn't get to spend much time outside hiding eggs!

Grammy & Paw's house - winter 2014

The kids and I went to my parents house for a few days in January.  It was relatively warm outside (50s), so my dad and I took Brayden down to my dad's hunting land.  He had recently had the lumber cut off of it due to sever storm damage last summer and I wanted to see what it looked like now plus Brayden had never been to my dad's land.  The land has huge rocks/boulders to climb over and lots of critters so I knew Brayden would enjoy walking around.

Brayden did really well walking all around...we probably walked 2-3 miles over fairly rough terrain and up hill a bit.

My dad also has his skid steer stored down on the land and Brayden got to drive it around a little bit. 

Christmas 2013

The weekend before Christmas we spent celebrating with Matt's extended family.  We always have a lot of fun with them...they are a crazy bunch!

We started with Christmas breakfast at the Farmer's Market Restaurant with Oma, Opa, Aunt Lynn and the cousins and then came back to our house to hang out.

Then Papa and Grandma Nita came for a late lunch.   The weather was beautiful...70s in the middle of December, so we spent a lot of time outside.  The boys played football and ran around.  It was so nice!!

Christmas Eve, we went to the Children's Service at our church.  Brayden VERY reluctantly went on stage during the children's singing (don't worry...he didn't sing at all).

Very fuzzy but he was willingly up on stage

Afterwards, our friends came over for dinner.  Then we sprinkled reindeer food, put out our milk and cookies and the kids went to bed.

Putting out reindeer food

and milk and cookies!

Christmas morning, the kids got up and found that Santa had come!

Santa Came!!!

Lilly got a kitchen with all the food, dishes, etc and Brayden got a sleeping bag and new legos!

Inspecting her new kitchen

We had a quick breakfast and then the kids jumped into unwrapping gifts!

After everything was straightened up, we got dressed and headed to Grammy and Paw's house for a few days.

Santa's helpers at Grammy and Paw's house

Family photo

My wonderful parents

Kids anxiously awaiting present time!

Silly Lilly!

The Saturday after Christmas we spent at Nana and BB's house.   Brayden and BB played a lot of foose ball (sp?)

Lilly got a new princess castle!

Christmas 2013 Festivities

Yeah...I am WAY behind with the blog.  This post has been written for several months now but I was looking for a particular photo and have given up.  I must be dreaming that it ever existed...

As always, we had a very busy Christmas season this year.

We started by letting the kids help with the decorating the tree which is always fun for everyone!  Brayden understands how to put the ornaments on the tree (i.e. not all in one spot), but of course, Lilly has no idea.  Brayden was really good about helping Lilly get her ornaments on the tree without making her mad.

The following weekend was Matt's office party.  We always go to his office party because we don't ever have a chance otherwise to dress up and go out.  In the past, the parties have been at fancy places in downtown or fancy country clubs but this year it was at the office.  I have to say, the ladies who did the decorating did an AMAZING job!  We had a great time and look forward to next year's party!

One of Brayden's friends, Zach, his little sister Meredith, and mom came over and decorated gingerbread houses with us.  Meredith is a few months younger than Lilly so I made small gingerbread houses out of graham crackers for the girls.  The boys made full size houses out of the kids.  Everyone had a great time and ate way too much candy!!  Unfortunately, I was too busy helping the kids to take many pictures during the decorating, but the finished products turned out quite good!

Brayden was very detail oriented

Lilly was very focus on the task at hand.  She did eat about as much candy as she put on the gingerbread house!

Lilly's Gingerbread house

Another view of Lilly's

Then we had our traditional small group cookie decorating party for the kids on the 15th and then that night we all go sitters for the kids and the adults got together for a fun night. 

The weekend before Christmas, one of the other moms from daycare and I threw a party for 8 or 9 of the boys in their class.  This group of boys has been together for 4 years now and have gotten to be pretty good friends.  The theme of the party was "The Polar Express".  We planned on letting the boys watch the Polar Express movie, do a craft, have hot chocolate, do a "Who am I?" game, and do a gift exchange.  Of course, it was 70+ degrees on December 22, so all the boys wanted to do was play outside!!   We were able to get them inside long enough for an ornament craft, hot chocolate, and the gift exchange.  For the gift exchange, we did a Frosty the Snowman Pass the Gift Left/Right story.  Amazingly, our 5ish year old boys, get very confused with this and we ended up cutting the story very short!  Otherwise, the boys were running around outside having a blast!

 The same friend that took our family photos back in September came over one night and took pictures of the kids in the Christmas PJs in front of the tree.  Despite very uncooperative kids, I think the pictures came out really well!

When they were still cooperating :)

Note sure what Lilly was doing, but it looks like she is trying to dance!

I love this one of Brayden :)