June Happiness!

June has been the happiest month! Nothing in particular has happened, it's just been happy! London is in a really fun age. She is ridiculously hilarious and generally a very happy-go-lucky kid! We have moments... 3 isn't the easiest year of parenting, but I still really like it! We can communicate totally, she can do chores (PRAISE THE LORD!!!), she can be a ball of energy when it's appropriate or sit and cuddle with you for more than 4 seconds, she has a wildly creative imagination and has all kinds of darling conversations with her dolls... i love it! 

It takes her a minute to wake up in the morning. She usually is a tad grumbly so I like to be early morning CHIPPER CHICKEN to annoy the stew out of her! That's probably my favorite time of day when I'm dancing around the room singing like a bloomin' idiot and she has the covers pulled up over her head! We're entering the 'Im embarrassed by my mom' stage and I couldn't love it more! :) 

Mom and Archie came over recently to help with some home renovations. One day I'll post pictures of all of our hard work, but now is just not the time. Anywho- here's grumbly London and sweet Archie asking for a play mate. It didn't take long for her to accept his offer! :) Sweet things. Both of them! 

London went for a long weekend with her dad earlier in the month so I met my old running partner for a very early morning run. It. Was. Awesome. I love that girl so so much and I've missed scenes like this in my life. 

Side note: this is right after we ran up on a GIANT snake so in my head I was all, 'GOD WILL GET YOU, DEMON ANIMAL!!' Beautiful view but this moment held such serpent defeating power in it also! :)

4:00 dinner date with my best friend Jill and her kid-o's. We walked into a yoga clothing store that sells outlandishly expensive yoga wear. The only explanation for the prices is that they built a Vulcan replica at their front door and are trying to re-coup this unnecessary expenditure. It is so mis-placed but the kids thought he was funny! 

London woke up sick one morning but voted to plow through her sickness because I had promised we'd go to the pool that day. I'm positive that she just will-powered herself well. Amazing. I forced her to take a nap later that afternoon so she could rest and she ended up falling asleep on my belly and stayed that way for 3 whole hours. I wouldn't have moved for 3 days if it meant I got to soak up looking at this angel face. So good. 

This guy's been posting a plethora of pictures with his new Fuji camera. The pictures are unbelievable. So, if anyone has an extra $1200 sitting around and just feels like getting me a happy.... :) 

Just kidding (kinda). My trusty phone treats me just fine! Im very grateful for what I have!

Lu and I and I went to a food truck festival down town one Sunday afternoon and had the best time! They had free activities for the kids then super expensive food to make up for it! :/ It was worth it though! We had a blast! 

This outfit does me in. So cute. 

You've never seen someone work so hard at hula hooping in your life. She calls it something adorable like hoopy hoops or something... I'll have to ask! UPDATE: Huly Hoops. She calls it a Huly Hoop. I LOVE that!!!

GET IT GIRL!!! 

I loved this picture! Isn't it great? Just some good old fashioned fun! I tagged this picture to a community of Birmingham picture-takers and we made their highlight reel! I was pretty excited! 

Go London!! :) 

We were one of the first people to the festival, so we had the jump house mostly to ourself for a while. At one point London was the only kid in there so I decided to jump in with her. 

Read: if your life is overwhelming, or if you are taking yourself too seriously, or if you don't remember the last time you acted like a kid, go hunt down a jump house and don't get out until life feels happier. Best 10 minutes I've had in a long time. London was howling laughing the entire time. Best time, best sounds, best reminder that life is great. 

Catching some air

All of my happy, right there. 

We left right before the bottom fell out of the sky. I walked in my bedroom and found London like this. I thought it was such a cute picture. Little girl watching it storm. Childhood is awesome. 

Beach Trip: Day 4

Welcome to day 4. A not so peachy day at the beach. Which was so disappointing because look at this kid below. These pictures aren't edited a bit. All of it was GORGEOUS. The little lady, the ocean, the sand. It was the quintessential PERFECT day at the beach......

Except for one thing. This doll face child is in her 'threes' and occasionally we have days that can be fairly labeled as 'holy terror days'. Day 4 was one of those days. This little nugget was IRRITABLE and thus being tremendously disrespectful to her momma. We were down at the beach by 9:00 and back in the condo and grounded by 9:45. Short lived day in paradise. 

This picture has a filter on it but COME ON. Doesn't this look like we're having the time of our life here? The transparency of our day was that she was probably storming off in the ocean to get away from me for 'being sooooo mean'! :) Ha! 

A little lesson for you future groundation parents: You get antsy being cooped up in the house all day while on vacation. Getting 'out for a bit' and sticking to your guns about being grounded from the water gets EXPENSIVE. Don't try it. Rent 4 Redbox's and keep your tail at home. I'm an idiot. 

The ferris wheel (and this ridiculous amount of joy) was free for her and not bad for me.... and worth every penny to get captures of tangible joy like this...

But then, like a $UCKER, we wandered into our first build-a-bear store. Almo$t $20 later for a $tinkin' $tuffed animal, we were broke and happy. The little experience of building your bear was cute...

You pick out a heart for your animal (London threw in an extra one for good mea$ure)...

..then $he $tuffed him full of fluff...

then $he went through thi$ little ritual where $he rub$ the heart on different part$ of her body to promi$e to love it with every part of her....

... and $queeze it tight and tell it $he loves it...

... in goe$ the heart....

...then Freckle the puppy got an air fluff and was all $et for $ome lovin'! (Yes, all of those $$$ are to reiterate the fact that I just threw my hard earned money down the drain. For suckers, i tell you!!!)

By this point in the day, we started getting, 'Where are you??? We miss you!' texts from Hannah so we went for a late afternoon walk and arm swinging session with Mrs. Bananas. We sat in the waves and caught clams for about 30 minutes straight. After all the emotions and effort of our groundation day, our afternoon turned into EXACTLY what our morning could've started as... the perfect day at the beach! :) 

One hilarious moment: We were all sitting in the waves scooping up clams and we didn't know it but a little tiny crab washed up to us and apparently London set her little chunky thigh right down on top of it. A few mins later she moved and this baby crab JETTED out from underneath her! Shocked us all to death and praise GOD it didn't pinch her! That would've ruined the beach for her for life! 

Day 5 was spent soaking up every second of play time with my Lu Lu so I didn't even get my camera out of the bag. We played as hard as we could possibly play until lunch, then we packed up and headed home. It was a lovely, wonderful vacation and we're both already jonesing for another trip!

Beach Trip: Day 3

I've got plenty of material to walk this trip out day by day. Goodness the pictures! Day 3 was an early morning for most of us! London and I got up at normal kid time... when she's 16 she's never gonna believe that she voluntarily woke up so early all these years! :) Hannah & John had signed up to run 'The Color Run' while we were down there so Hannah was up and at 'em but John had called it and decided to keep on snooze-a-loozin'. Hannah wasn't feeling well at all so 10 minutes before she needed to leave, we jumped on board and said we'd do it with her! I was really glad we did! We got some much needed exercise and all had a blast!

You may remember The Color Run from when Charley and London ran it with me last year. It's a really casual 5K but periodically you run through 'Color Stations' and they pummel you with colored corn starch (or something like that). It's perfectly safe except that it's chalky tasting!

Surely you remember one of my favorite pictures ever taken.... (from last year)

Pre-run with an uninterested London on my hip... and therefore cropped out, sucka!!! ;)

Mid Race at a Color Station 

 Post Race. Baby Girl's got a hand full of blue powder here! She loved throwing it on people!

 Getting in on the action!

 This kid is loved something fierce. 

In the car afterwards taking pictures of herself!

We came home, got showered up as best we could (I had bright blue arm pits for 2 solid days. Gross..) and headed down to the beach.... only after Mrs. Bananas got ahold of this child's head and did the most awesome french braid. London looked GORGEOUS with her hair braided all week!

I've died and gone to heaven right in this moment. So adorable. 

Mr. John (Hannah's hubbs) was with us by this point in the trip. I should try to explain London's and John's relationship but I really just can't. John is the nicest, most wonderful person ever.... EVER. He's highly intelligent, gentle, funny, and much quieter than me! :) (I realize that's not hard to do!) London gravitates toward quieter people, but she is usually very tentative around guys. Not the case with John- she's like a bug to a lamp with him. She doesn't see him all that often but when he walks in the door, she's immediately his shadow until we leave.  When we'd go up to the condo, she'd jump right up on the couch by John and just snuggle into his side without a second thought. She wouldn't go to bed without giving him at least 1 big hug and kiss every night. Adorable. She loves him so much. These shots are from John teaching London how to shell and eat sunflower seeds. These two were in the ZONE with these seeds. 

Suck, bite, spit, chew, repeat. BFF's.

Check out that little squirrel girl on the right munchin' with her main squeeze! Haha!!

Get it, Lu Lu!! :)

Building sand castles with the coolest people ever! Hannah wanted to try to build a legitimate castle so she googled Martha Stewart's instructions. Martha suggested you use a melon baller for precision. Pah-leasssssse. Martha's CRAZY IN THE HEAD. 

I think our beach finale will be coming up next but it's late and I've gotta call it! Thanks for reading!

Beach Trip: Day 2

Well, maybe I am walking this trip day by day! I came home with a ton of pictures because I had 'super photographer Hannah' with me! Any just down-right-amazing shots that you see over the next few days definitely belong to Hann. She's incredible at catching THE shot. 

Day 2 started spectacularly! I was not yet exhausted from vacationing so hard, so I woke up with the sun, grabbed God's good Word, and sat on the balcony... watching a new day rising and reading of God's faithfulness to His people. I was totally awash with renewal.

 My little heart beat was still snoozing when I came in and it was all I could do to keep from just eating her up right there. That little snoring ball of perfect. So cute. I was thankful she slept late since she had had such a trying day the day before.

 Minutes later she was up and at 'em and seemed to be feeling great! So started our first FULL day of vacation. We were very close to being the first people on the beach! 

 And this child was thrilled to be right in this exact moment...  

(hannah shot)

If you look hard, right in the center of the photo, you can see a dolphin fin. One of easily 40 that we saw over the course of this day. They were everywhere. You couldn't look out at the sea without seeing 4 or 5 at a time! Dolphins are usually a rare sighting so it was amazing to see so many of them!

 London 'swimming'... aka, letting me pull her floating body around the pool! Lazy bones! She got plenty of practice the rest of the week though!

 Hannah giving me 15 minutes to lay on the beach and relax... to which I spent taking pictures of how much fun she is! These two jumped waves for forever!

 Getting swamped by a wave!

 We headed to the Wharf later in the afternoon to grab race packets and ride the ferris wheel.... 

 ...and I fell in love with my life all over again!

 We ate dinner at this new 'food truck-ish' restaurant called the Gulf. A friend (with kids) recommended it to me. The food was casual and fabulous but I am NOT as cool of a mom as my friend is! The restaurant is outside on the beach so London just played in the sand the whole time. She had sand in every nook and cranny of her whole body- not to mention all in her food... BLECH!! I thought i was doing okay until she brought me a huge shard of glass and said, 'Mom... look at this!!' Yeesh. So, the restaurant is great, but only if your kids are old enough to differentiate between beach sand time and dinner time sand time. London is not there yet! :)

My Boo. 

 And another night of incredible moon views / bad photography. It filled up the whole sky in real life!