C's shoe obsession

Caroline has a serious obsession with shoes. I am constantly finding them hidden all over the house (yesterday I found one in the frying pan I pulled out to make dinner.)

She has loved Jack's blue Crocs for a long time. Yesterday I remembered that SuSu gave her a pink pair for Christmas, but they were huge then. Guess what?? Now they fit!




She's been wearing or playing with them nonstop. She does this weird thing where she puts them on her hands and hops/crawls like a bunny.

"It's hilarious!" - Jack

See the last ~10 seconds of this video. Ridiculous!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Happy (official) 4th birthday (party) Jack!

Today we had Jack's official (and last!!!) birthday party at Pump It Up, a local bouncy house place. It was pretty awesome. I wasn't sure exactly what I was getting for my money, but it turns out that they got almost 1.5 hours of private bounce time (amazing!), plus pizza, balloons, goody bags, and cake. All the kids had a blast and even the adults did too. Gigi was our very special event photographer for the day, and she got some great pictures of everyone having so much fun!

All the kids had to watch a safety video first. Ha. Not one paid any attention...
except Jack.

Nerf guns?! YES SIR.

Basketball with Dad and Riley.

These slides were INTENSE. Even the adults flew down. I had on extra slippery shorts apparently,
so I flew over the protective barrier at the end of most of them. 

She hated it at first, but then she LOVED it.

Molly was the only one brave enough (and heavy enough)
to go rock climbing. She did awesome.

Riley, Maddie, Jack, and Molly all turn 4 within 6 weeks of each other. 

Nate flew down too!

Jack hitting Riley (a pretty common occurrence) caught red-handed.

Maddie happily sliding.

Her brother Lucas too!

Jack's buddy Riu from school sliding too. I promise he was smiling!

OMG.

Double OMG.

Caroline found the cars and she was all set. She loved them!

Penny is such a rebel! Going down on her tummy, a big no no.

We've made good friends with our new neighbors next door. This is Cassie
loving the slide too!

Baby car traffic jam!

Look how big Bailey has gotten!

Super sweaty boy. I guess this means "great success!"

They had a projector that you could play games on. The kids LOVED it. 

This looks bad, but I promise...

she loved it!

The only picture of all the kids.

The silly face one...after Caroline got up.

Cake time in the king chair!

PIZZAAAAAAA....

Present time at home. Phew. We are all worn out!

It was a super fun day! We all did a lot of running, sliding, jumping...and we took good naps :) Thanks Gigi for the great pictures!

the end of our endless vacation

I'm finally back at home, on a real computer, and now I can actually write instead of just uploading pictures (related note: typing extensively on an iPhone is for the birds.) Anyway, this is our third summer taking an extended vacation to Georgia. We do it to let the kids spend quality time with their grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, but also to give Justin some uninterrupted work time...and to get out of our non-air-conditioned house in the summer in California. This trip has been a big hit, even though sometimes it seems like it really does last forever! 

We ended our stay by spending a week at the Crosby condo at Seagrove Beach, FL. We were blessed with great weather (although the waves were quite rough, neither kid seemed to mind.) We attempted some Mommy-and-kids pictures before Daddy arrived...

yea...no.

Big shoes to fill.

 We spent a LOT of time in the pool. Jack is a little fish, and Caroline just likes to run laps around it!

These are kind of out of order, but Justin joined us at the end of the week for a
weekend vacation for him. The kids were THRILLED. Like, seriously, I've never seen
them so happy. How come they don't get that happy for me?? Hmmmmm...

She does lots of tricks now. "How big is Caroline?" "SO BIG!"

We tried for a smile. Turns out she's just as stubborn as her older brother.

One of my favorite ever of the four of us!

Jack's Crosby family birthday.

I love this one, especially because you see Gigi's camera PLUS Caroline's binky in the foreground :)

Epic. Fail.

Caroline got to show off her first bikini.

This is Ninja Shark. He also had friends in Ninja Monkey (Courtney), Ninja Tiger (Ryan),
and Ninja Dolphin (Caroline.)  

LOVE. THIS.

Yea, so she's getting her massive molars in. Poor girl. It leads to lots of expressions
like this when she's grinding her teeth.

YUM. FIBER.

The best of the worst.

Okay, sometimes they are really cute.

She must have run 3.93 miles each time we went out to the beach. I needed to give her
my FitBit to wear!

They took a lot of baths at the beach. Mainly because they both got sand in
places that I didn't even know existed. Poor Caroline. She was a MESS!

Spaghetti night on the beach. YUM.

Story time with Gigi!

Right when Daddy got in from the airport. The kids were OBSESSED.
Neither one would let him go for even a minute.

Random pretty double rainbow!

That's Justin and Jack trying to learn to body surf.

Of course a big hole was necessary.

More cake.

Rainy day = poker! This was right before I got a concussion. Yes, really.
Thankfully I am fine now...

wait, what was I talking about?? ;)

She leaves a trail of destruction everywhere she goes.

Good thing she's cute.

Her hair! Cracks me up.

Ninjas!

Caroline and I left the beach early to get back to Valdosta to start packing. We were lucky enough
to hit standstill traffic on I-10 --- this was a picture of where they'd closed the entire interstate at the
accident site. Luckily we know some people in Tallahassee, so we stopped for macaroni and hot dogs...

Uncle Colin entertaining our little traveller. 

Guess who won't sit still for pictures? 

BOTH OF THEM.

Happy girl getting ready for a LOOOOONG trip home to CA!

Look. At. All. Our. STUFF. NO JOKE.

Our cousins Logan, Cody, Callie Rae and Aunt Sandra came to help us at the airport.
It was awesome! They helped us carry everything AND entertained the kids. Thanks, guys!

So after one flight, dinner, running around, only one nap....
someone was really ready to get on the plane and go to sleep.

After a LOOOONG delay at the gate in Atlanta, the kids FINALLY
passed out. 

Someone slept on the floor the whole flight. Shh, don't tell Delta. 

We finally made it home late (LATE! at 4:30am EST, 1:30am PST) on Wednesday morning. Jack immediately went back to school (he was so happy!) and celebrated his birthday there. Today, we are having his party at the bouncy house place. Pictures to come soon! Thankfully Gigi, our resident professional photographer, is here with her equipment to help us celebrate. Ta ta for now!