Our Beach Vacation

We spent all last week at the beach with the Hayes'. Every other year the Hayes' rent a house at Cape San Blas. Cape San Blas is an isolated peninsula in the Gulf. We enjoy it because there aren't many people on the beach and there isn't much within a thirty minute drive. We just spend the week doing nothing. This was Gracie's second vacation at the beach and of course Ash's first. We quickly found out that our daughter is true "beach bunny." We had to beg her to come inside. She would just sit and dig sand into a bucket, then dump the bucket to just dig again. It was an endless cycle. Gracie also had a blast with her cousin Cassidy. We got tons of great pictures that it is so hard to pick which ones to post.

Gracie's beach drawings. She was so proud of each one. I'm not sure if we should tell her that they all got washed away by the next day.

Aiden just hanging out in his sling. He immediatetly fell asleep when he heard the waves roaring.

Gracie trying to cover herself with sand. Boy did she have to take a long bath that night.

Aiden watching his sister and cousin running around the beach. He loves to watch everyone.

Our traditional family photo at the beach!

Gracie and Cassidy at sunset. The sunset was gorgeous.

Lil' Miss Copy Cat

Here is a video from this past weekend. Everything Cassidy did, Gracie was sure to follow. We really need to get a "real" slide for the pool.

ABC's in the buff!

I finally got lucky and a video loaded for me. This is Gracie singing her ABC's. She is so funny especially when she gets to LMNOP. She is also amazed by my camera. Anytime it is out and she does something camera worthy she was to see it on the back before moving on to anything else. Sorry for the fact that she just got out of the shower. She only likes to sing on our bed after a shower and might I add normally butt naked. For our viewing audience I was able to keep the towel on her until the end of the video.

Fun by the Pool!

We had a blast this weekend by our pool. Gracie loves to swim or rather paddle herself around with her swimmies. (We took a few video clips with the camera, but I just can't get them to load. I'm not sure what I need to do that I'm not doing, but hopefully I'll figure it out soon.) Cassidy was over swimming with Grandpa, and when Cassidy is around Gracie does whatever she does. I think it is so funny to watch our little copy cat in action. I think that by the end of the summer Gracie will be ready to take her swimmies off. She can swim very short distances right now without them, but it is so nice to just slap the swimmies on and not worry about her in the pool.

Life with two, two and under!

I honestly think being a working mom is easier than staying home. Today is only my third day off for the summer and I already feel like pulling my hair out. Gracie is for the most part potty trained, or so I thought. She has gone the past month with maybe three accidents. The past three days she has had about three dozen "accidents." Yesterday I was in the bedroom folding clothes. Gracie was in her room playing or so I thought. She comes around the corner with a hand full of baby wipes. The wipes are covered by none other than poop. I stayed calm and asked her what happened, of course she responds with, "I pooped." She took me to her room and showed me where she pooped. There was a small spot on the floor I had to clean, but for the most part she cleaned up the mess herself. I guess I can't ask for much more, but it seems like when Ash is feed and just about to give me a few minutes of downtime I hear "I pooped, " or "I tee-teed," and of course Gracie is no where near the potty. I'm sure once we begin to establish a good schedule things will begin to calm down. I don't want to put Ash on a schedule until we get back from the beach and right now Gracie and I are having to work around him.

This is just another example of my day. I didn't notice this until Gracie was napping, but she decided to decorate one of our pool chairs with stamps. I guess she thought they were really cool looking stickers or maybe she wanted to mail the chair to a far away place.

Oh, good news for the beach! We traded in our Pilot for an Accord. The gas getting to the beach in our Pilot would have killed us, plus we lowered our payments. Brian got a us a great deal on the car we couldn't pass up. He better have gotten us a good deal since this is the third car we have bought from him in the four years we have been married. This is the fist 4 cylinder car I have ever had, but I absolutely love it. It is like being 16 again.

Gracie also has a new car. She inherited Cassidy's old battery powered Jeep. If you notice in the picture she is sitting in the middle. That was the best we could do. She is used to Cassidy driving her around, so she was confused why we wanted her to sit in the driver's seat. After pushing the gas petal a few times and not knowing what to do next, she quickly decided her old push around bike was much easier to deal with.

Mother's Day

I know Mother's Day was so last month, but I thought I would start my first blog there. We had Ash dedicated on Mother's Day. I spent the whole week before working on his outfit. I smocked Gracie an outfit when she was dedicated, so I thought I would continue the tradition and make him one. I got the pattern out of an old edition of Sew Beautiful magazine. I couldn't find just the right gold color for the insert and bindings, so I decided to dye the material in tea. It was much easier than I thought it would be and the outfit turned out gorgeous. I can't wait to put it in the fair this year!

Gracie was so excited that morning because we told her she could go with us to "big" church. She wanted to wear her Easter dress, (I made that dress also.) which she calls her princess dress along with her clop-clop shoes. Thank goodness the church has carpet or she would have tried her best to "clop" them as loud as she could all the way down the aisle at church.

After chruch we went and ate at my parents house. Since everyone was there we took pictures. We finally got a picture of four generations of Musselwhites. Gracie and Ash are so lucky to have three great grandparents that love them very much.

Welcome!

Welcome to the Hayes family blog! We have finally broken down and decided to blog. We figured this would be a great way to stay in contact with friends and family. Since today is the first day of my summer vacation, (whoo hoo) I will hopefully have the time to devote to blogging.