July 2011, part II: The Beach!

I love the beach. Thankfully, so does the rest of my family. This love developed every summer of my childhood when my family took a week-long vacation to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Living in Long Beach spoiled me and now that we live in land-locked Missouri, I'm quite sad that we can't go to the beach for an afternoon.

This past summer our family went with my parents, sister, and nephew to the Outer Banks for a week. It was wonderful. It was relaxing. It was just exactly what my gigantically pregnant body needed to rest for a week!

There's not much more to say; the pictures speak for themselves. I didn't get many pictures of the adults on the trip, but we all had a really great time!

July 2011, part I

In July we spent about three weeks in Virginia. My mom flew out to St. Louis at the beginning of July and she and I drove back to Virginia with the three boys. (Well, really four. At that point I was about 30 weeks pregnant and so Zach definitely took up some space!) We spent a week in my hometown before Jimmy met us for the rest of our vacation.

Here are the boys helping Gran Gran in her garden. Her garden is significantly smaller now than it was when I was a child, but I think that's because she does it for fun now instead of feeling like she has to!



The last of the potatoes. If you have never had freshly-harvested potatoes you are seriously missing out. They are absolutely, hands down, a completely different creature than the tough-skinned Russet potatoes you can buy in the store.
Same goes for tomatoes. A home-grown tomato tastes nothing like its grocery store counterparts. When I went to college I was, for the first time, subject to eating mostly store-bought produce. I didn't know how good I had it growing up on the farm, eating home-grown produce year round until I didn't have that luxury anymore.

And a picture of Toby because he's cute :)
Earning his keep.
Out on the farm with my dad :) They *love* to go see the cows and see how close they can get to them (which is not very....cows don't take kindly to loud, crazy boys).

July 2011 Parts II (the beach!) and III (visiting Jimmy's family) coming shortly!

Brothership

Instead of a post on June, you get a post about Brothership. (This is due to the fact that I uploaded all of the pictures I have from June into this post without realizing I didn't have any more pictures from June.)

What is "brothership," you might ask? It's a term Nathan coined. Brothership: It's like friendship, but for brothers. So here are some pictures of brothers having fun!

Sorry, Zach. No brothership pictures with you yet. But don't worry, they will come soon I'm sure!

Breakfast cookies

Y'all. I just made some really good things I found on Pinterest called Breakfast Cookies. Click here to be redirected to the blog with the recipe. I used dried cranberries in place of the coconut (because I didn't have any coconut) and coconut oil in place of the canola oil because it's better for you, and I like the taste of it A LOT. They would be really good if you added chocolate chips. :)

Brilliant Idea!

*Note: The scenario is not 100% hypothetical.*

Scenario: Woman has baby in early fall. Woman needs some new winter pants because never having had a baby so late in the year, she doesn't have any postpartum pants that fit. Woman buys one new pair of pants. A few weeks later, pants are slightly too big--still OK but a smaller size would probably be better.

Brilliant Idea: Stores that encourage weight loss by letting you exchange a larger size for a smaller size (within a certain time frame)! For example, you buy a pair of pants. If you need a smaller size within, say, 2 months, you can return them to the store for the smaller size. Obviously this makes no financial sense, but it would be a great encouragement to people to get healthier (if they need to lose weight to be healthier).

I have a lot of good ideas that will never make me one penny, much less be a get-rich-quick scheme! If someone rich wanted to fund my good ideas, I would forever grateful. :)

Flying a kite in Forest Park

One evening back in June we took a family picnic (of pizza) to Forest Park, a huge park here in the city of St. Louis. It was a windy afternoon so we took the opportunity to fly a kite. It was fun! (And I was pretty gigantically pregnant so I was the designated photographer.)

This boy loves his costumes