Beach Holiday

Evie's getting better and better at swimming since she has two hours in the pool every day during camp, but that certainly wears her out!  In fact, I found her like this the other night:

She is on the floor under her big girl bed, with her toddler mattress on top of her.  I find this a little inexplicable, but I've learned better than to question the motives of a five-year-old.

Evie and I left on Friday for Destin to visit my brother's family.  Evie was so excited about getting to see her cousins and go to the beach.  And we have gone to the beach almost every day.  Yesterday I talked the kids into going to the pool instead where I could have a little shield from the sun, which just fries me.  I don't get a nice beautiful tan, unlike my daughter.

But let me back up.  We left Friday morning at about 7 am after a stop for donuts.  As we were getting into the car, a moth got in and Evie said to it, "Moth, you want to come with us to Florida?"  I guess it did because we couldn't get it out of the car.  I hope it didn't have any family.

We stopped for lunch at a Chick-fil-A in Birmingham where Evie played on the playground while I ate.  She ate her lunch in the car and took a nap while we went through the rest of Alabama and she was all ready to go to the beach as soon as we got to Ryan and Aimee's house.  Aimee's former coworker and her family were there too and they had just bought an enormous inflatable swan so after saying hi and hugging everyone, we all got our suits on, grabbed various beach gear, including the swan, and made our way to the beach.

Three cousins, ready to tackle the gulf

Evie is always trying to catch birds

We were so excited Tia was here for part of our visit

Uncle Ryan is pushing Evie in the blue floaty while Will rides in the boat and Addie sails the swan.

Here are the girls riding on the swan, being guided by Tia and Aimee's coworker's son

We've more or less spent our time hanging out, playing, and swimming.  One night Will lost a tooth, and that reminded Evie of the last tooth she lost so she was telling Ryan and me all about it.  Ryan and I were sitting on opposite sides of the kids' room, so Evie had to make sure she delivered her monologue to all sides of the room - it was like a theatre in the round performance - very animated.  At one point she even picked up a ball and held it out and started talking to it like Hamlet's "Alas, poor Yorick" speech.

Evie was pretty comfortable in the water.  At one point we were on the sandbar and Evie kept wanting to go out further, but Ryan and I kept telling her that was too far and is where the sharks are.  She didn't care, she kept wanting to go.  So we made a spoof of the "Moana" song, "How Far I'll Go":

I've been staring at the edge of the water
For the last fifteen minutes
Wanting to go way out there.
I know my mom keeps saying, "Daughter,
That's where all of the sharks are!"
But I really don't care.
I'm a five-year-old, I can do what I want,
I have my own inflatable swan,
But my mom keeps holding me back,
Doesn't she know I want to go?

That was as far as we got, but I thought it was really good.  We finally convinced her that it wasn't okay for her to go out that far, but she did keep asking for us to not hold on to her.  Fearless.

Evie also cracked me up with her interchanges with Aimee's dad who they call "Baba".  He is staying with them until he finds a condo to buy there since he just sold his house in Texas, and Evie predictably felt immediately comfortable with him.  He's great with kids and Evie's great with adults, so it was no surprise they hit it off.  Baba told me one morning that he was upstairs doing crunches and Evie asked him, "Baba, are you trying to get up?  You just do this." At which point Evie got on her back and rolled over onto her hands and knees. "You roll to the side and then push up and TADA!", she threw her hands over her head.  Later she taught him how to swim.

Evie amused me later when I told her I was getting a very little bit tan and she gasp and said, "You're becoming one of us!"

We just got back from fireworks, which we caught by happy accident.  They were lighting them from the beach and we parked in a lot between a lot of condos so the sound echoed off of the buildings which made a pretty cool impact.

We've had an absolutely wonderful time and Evie has asked me every single morning why we have to go back home.  I keep telling her because we need to go back to our house, but I don't think that answer satisfies her very much.

We took the kids to see "Despicable Me 3" yesterday

Happy Fourth!

Will and Evie enjoyed sharing a seat and helping Ryan and me play a table top game

Fireworks from Uncle Ryan's shoulders

Will and Baba went to the other side of the parking lot to get a better view and let Will's shrieks of joy at the explosions be a little farther away from us