nobody puts baby...

....in a dog crate?!?  Haha.  I do have to say she put herself in there and continues to do so.  She went in there on this particular day to eat her cookie.  Maybe she was trying to prevent the rest of us from taking it from her??  Oh and these are from a few weeks ago at the beach house.

some ocean city fun

We have had some serious fun so far in Ocean City even though its only been a few short weeks.  We got a total steal on the adult bikes and baby seat.  And my cousin gave us the bike trailer (thanks Michelle!!) and we have been cruising the whole town.  Its been awesome!!







You better believe I will be trying these ones again, this was the best and only decent picture I got in the boat.  I want a year picture for a comparison.


We have done this cutout picture now a few times and these dorks love it.  We walk by and they run into the park to go put their heads through the holes.  Jim was with us this day so I hopped into the picture.






They jumped back into the boat for some "swag" pictures.  I don't know how this whole swag thing started but my kids are obsessed.  They throw up their swag signs and make weird faces.  We keep telling Brady I invented swag just to annoy him and it totally works.  We even made our wifi network name "Mom invented swag" haha.








The baby doesn't have a ton of words but you better believe she knows how to say "swag".  Hahaha






Our first week at the beach house I took the kids into town on Thursday morning for the town's fun day.  They do it twice a week and it was great.  They had pony rides, balloon animals, and face painting.  I wasn't sure we would get to everything but we did.  Here they are showing off their face paint and balloon animals.

we bought a house!!

4 short weeks ago Jim made my dreams come true and bought us a beach house.  Like seriously at the top of my life bucket list is to live at the beach, and now that is my reality.  Granted its a part time (for now, haha) but still so freaking amazing.



It started back in the spring with Jim getting a bit of a bug for some change.  We looked at some houses here that were bigger or had a pool or more bedrooms, but quickly realized it didn't matter how much money we spent I would still want to make changes.  So on a whim we decided to take a look at the shore and found out that we could in fact afford to buy something there.  We went down a few times to drive around and then I spent a long day touring houses in Sea Isle and Ocean City and very easily decided this one was "the one!!"

Its so cute and tiny and perfect for us.  Its just 2 small bedroom and one bathroom (which, holy cow, only one toilet is stressful because someone always NEEDS it).  There is amazing front porch which gets the most use, a great back porch, parking, and an insane amount of natural light which is pretty much the icing on the cake since I love natural light.  Oh and we are the upstairs unit of a two unit property.

Here are some pics from my phone...
Front porch


Front porch other direction...






The bathroom which is so tiny its nearly impossible to take a picture of it...


My bedroom...




Back porch...




And a quick video tour...

Emerson is 2!!

Obviously these are from a few weeks ago, but I couldn't NOT post them.  These are from her actual birthday day, August 14th.

We started the morning off with some birthday donuts and Pap even made an appearance.  He called at 7am that morning to check in and he was out getting coffee so I told him to stop by and he did.  The kids wanted to know who else was coming to the "party" and didn't get why no one else was coming.  Ummm, its not a party, Pap just happened to call on the exact right day at the exact right time.

We sang to her and she opened her gifts.  We don't usually do presents like this but she is everyone's favorite, haha.  The big kids each bought her a barbie, barbie from Harper and Ken from Brady.  I found a treasure box with chapsticks in it and she went nuts over that.  And lastly I refinished this baby doll furniture I have had in storage for a few years.  It came from Jim's grand mom's house and I love how it turned out.









We were all amazed at how well she blew out the candles, haha.




She really wanted to eat the donut but was getting so angry that her hands were so messy.  Jim is fired from donut buying.












Then that evening Mimi and Pap stopped by after work to sing HBD to Emerson.






More singing!!  More treats!!