Yet another day at the Beach

It rained this morning so the kids and I worked on a project together. My niece, Lauren, is raising money to aid in the preservation of the right whale so we made some colorful notebooks for her to sell.
In between the rain, we played pickleball. We don't have a court here, so we drew one with chalk on the end of the road. No net and not an actual court, but it will do for now. When we thought it had cleared up enough, we headed over to the beach. Austin took his cast net:We were the only ones on the whole beach and the reason was, it was soooooo windy that you could barely stand up in it. The waves were really high. He was stubborn though and insisted on trying. You can see his chair has blown over:Ace didn't seem to mind the wind either. He really loves the beach, wind or not.
Tonight we went out to eat at Whattaburger. We discovered this restaurant when in Port Richie and haven't found another one until here. We really like their burgers and their onion rings.

We've had a few near misses with my family this past week that have been disappointing for me. First, Ambir called and said my sister Sarah was there in South Florida and could we make it down. We were a good eight hours drive away at that point and she was leaving the next day. Then our niece Audri called yesterday and told us she was in Orlando to see the mouse. We were so bummed to be so close, yet not close enough to warrant a drive over there just to see her for a day. I hope she had a great time while here, and hoping next time we get to see her.

Projects Day

While Austin played pickle ball today, I decided to take some time to do some crafts. I made some more notebooks and a few mint tins with scrapbook pictures inside.

Projects Day

Almost every time that Liv and Gabe would visit our house, we'd ask what they wanted to do and 99% of the time one of the requests would be "projects". It didn't really matter what kind, although glitter was the ultimate favorite so any craft with glitter reigned supreme. I will have those memories locked away forever because it wasn't just that we did crafts together, but that it became our talk time. There is something about a little one busy with creative work that unlocks their jaws and they fill you in on their most important thoughts and secrets. We have had tons of fun and I think I've gotten to know each of them better with this shared time.

I was feeling a bit sad that I'd miss Gabe and Liv's first day of school, so with our projects time in mind, I decided to make them a back to school bucket. All of the pieces are printed from digital scrapbooking kits.


Then I filled the inside with back to school goodies. This is the kind of project that I normally do with them and it wasn't nearly as much fun doing it by myself. I hope they love it!


Then I made matching composition notebooks. Again, made from digital scrapbooking kits.

Now normally when I do these kinds of projects Nathan humors me and says oh , that's nice. Which is code word for I know I'm supposed to say something here and usually a compliment works well with you so I'll try that. This time he said, "I want one of those". I made him repeat it three or four times just to be sure. Yes, he really did want one. No, not the bucket-the notebook. So I went to work and made him this:
And since I was on a roll and had all of my supplies out, I made one for my best friend and my sweet nephew.Since this, as all projects, took far more time than I had planned-this is pretty much all I did today. It was fun! We did a RAK today, but this one is private so I'll just post it without details.

More food and fun

Today we hung out at the campground again and had another relaxing day. The teens slept in in the way that only teens can sleep in, so that gave Mom and Dad time to catch up on some things. We played Apples to Apples, did some scrapbooking projects and gabbed. The kids wanted to cook dinner again so we got to kick back and enjoy being spoiled. They made spaghetti and meatballs, garlic bread, salad and chocolate cake. I think the girls ate a tub of frosting together, just while making the cake. ;-0 Life is still good.