The girls wanted to do lots of swimming while we were on vacation. And we did a lot of swimming. For a Mama it was a lot of hard work to watch two little swimmers.

Emily is doing marvelously in the pool. She has confidence to jump into the pool at any depth, increasing confidence in swimming “under water”, and loving just the fun of swimming. She loved doing cannonball jumps. We made a new game of riding the elevator down game. This game originally served to encourage the girls to get their faces underwater. Our new variation involved Mama holding her far out of the water and slowly lowering her as the elevator rides down and then at the basement level, instead of dropping her under the waterline, Mama would throw her across the top of the water into deeper water. She loved it!

Julia started off by not being able to pop herself back up to the surface after jumping into the pool. Somewhere in the first couple of days she figured it out and she was fearless. We would think she was on the steps of the pool and getting out to find that she turned around and tried to swim back into the pool. She just wouldn’t stop trying to swim. It paid off and she showed the biggest improvement. There was nothing that she wouldn’t try. She mimicked Emily in trying cannonballs, jumping into the pool, swimming long distances, and putting her face in the water. She even figured out how to do a back flip off of Mama’s shoulders which Emily then scrambled to learn to be like Julia.

Enjoy the smiles and fun memories –

Swimming with Daddy! It is wonderful to show Daddy all our new tricks.

Uncle Doug and Elizabeth playing.

Water soaked grins

Grandma being silly with the girls

Pool smile- really she is just saying, “get the photo done so I can go back to swimming”.

The first stop on our vacation was at Grandma and Grandpa’s house. Robby got to spend a little time with Elizabeth, the girls got to play with Grandparents, the girls were fascinated with Elizabeth and her toys, and there was lots of swimming.

Some of the sweet or fun things that happened while we visited:

LOVE THIS! What is better than an eye-squeezing hug!

Emily is in-love with Midnight. This poor cat got more attention than he could probably handle, but he kept coming back for more. Emily would carry Midnight from room to room covering him up with blankets and treating him like a baby. Emily is asking for a cat of her own. At five she is already coming up with rational arguments of how we could work a cat into our home and promising to keep up with cat responsibilities. Please, no kind gifts of a cat for our house.

Elizabeth seemed to enjoy having other little people to play with. She crawled into the Lego cart and Emily happily pulled her around the house. What we didn’t catch with this photo was the tumble that Elizabeth took a few minutes later that ended the game. They enjoyed it while it lasted.

All the kids were taking turns wearing Uncle Doug’s hat. Julia had stolen it and was running around the house with it. She was proud of herself.

Julia has her favorite friends that she sleeps with. This trip she brought three and got a bear from Grandma. She seemed to have a firm hold on Nina the Mermaid this particular afternoon. Not to mention a sleeping kid is a perfect kid – Cute!

The girls love to borrow their Grandparents tablet and draw things. Julia was quite proud of her drawing

We heard stories that Lizzy thought she could sit on any flat surface that she could get to. Sure enough we watched her move the toys and then climb up on this shelf and try to sit. She did successfully sit, but it didn’t look too comfortable. The girls were trying to stop her and sticking with her to make sure she was safe until Sabah could get her down. Emily and Julia were surprised by this climbing thing because neither of them are climbers.

What a sweet face sitting next to Aunt Rachelle on the couch wearing a Julia dress. Aunt Rachelle was pretty lucky!

We took our summer trip to Florida at the end of July. This year Daddy drove down with us. Unfortunately he didn’t get to stay long, but we were thrilled to have him for the time we did. The girls traveled well on this trip with the exception of Emily coming down with something on the way home which gave her carsickness-like symptoms. We did get lucky and get them to sleep at the same time on the way down. On the way home they alternated naps.

Emily’s "almost" home photo and smile. These were the photos we sent Daddy to tell him we were almost home. Everyone was excited to see Daddy.

Julia was all comfy watching a movie as the sun went down. We tried to race the sun and get home before it went to bed, but as we were counting the red lights through town the sun beat us.

The girls and Mama went camping and had some time to play at the beach. The weather was warm, the ocean cool, the breeze pleasant, and the giggles perfect. Thank you Grandma for taking photos so that Mama could just play.

Just some shots from the fun beach play.

No words can say more than Emily’s face already is saying.

So intent, Julia what are you studying?

Dylan being busy. Lots of sand digging – lots of fun!

What a ham! Natalie was SO great with all of the kids.

Everything is so new and fresh for Elizabeth. Even her crying face is cute.

This was the first trip to the Great Sand Dunes for Mama and the girls and Daddy’s second visit. The visitor center was fantastic and had kid friendly exhibits about sand dunes, magnetic sands, lightning, and frogs. They had a video that explained why the huge sand dunes exist in the middle of Colorado. The dunes are deceptively large as you hike out to them; they just grow bigger before your eyes.

We hiked out to the first dune and played on the back steep side for an hour. We would have liked to hike further, but the girls had all the fun they needed on that one dune. The girls practiced their rolling downhill technique. Mama ran down and rolled down too. We could only talk Daddy into running down the dune once. When we left we had sand everywhere. The girls loved seeing all the sand we poured out of their shoes.

I love food. This is a fact. In the years of travel with my family as I grew up, we would enjoy food from all over America. There is a problem that comes with travel cuisine. When you go home you can’t get the different foods you find that you love. Therefore, when we travel we have to include food as an activity. This is never more true than with a trip to the Southwest where we get our favorite Mexican food. When we travel to New Mexico and Colorado we hunt down sopapillas.

The trick to finding good sopapillas is to ask locals for the best locations. This trip we found out that restaurants are now stuffing them with taco toppings, but the best way to eat them is to fill them with honey. We found two places that served great sopapillas in the areas we were visiting. Restaurants used to serve them in baskets before meals like some do with tortilla chips. The best we could find were that some restaurants served them as dessert and you could buy more individual sopapillas. The ones we ate made our fingers sticky, cut the spicy kick from our mouths, and made our stomachs full. The biggest disappointment was that Julia didn’t fall in love with them. She tried one bite both times, but passed on the sweet dessert. Emily could manage one each time.

Robby’s family traveled to northern New Mexico when he was a child and their family discovered a favorite restaurant in Taos. We had to stop and try it out. After hearing the stories repeated over and over we were sure that it would struggle to measure up to the hype. We are pleased to say that both their Mexican food was fantastic but so were their sopapillas. The girls tried the Mexican French Toast which was Uncle Doug’s favorite thing to eat there at age three.

Emily eating her Mexican French Toast, which was cinnamon nut bread made into French Toast. Sounded pretty good.