Happy 4th, 5th and 7th Birthday

Birthday season is fun each year, but it's also a lot of work!  I recognize my limits, which Danny is glad to hear, so I don't plan on ever attempting to throw each of them an elaborate birthday party all the same year.  While they are still young and share so many of the same friends, 

it works out good to have one big party for all three!

Last year, we had Alexandra's party at the beach and it was a hit.  Since we have most of the beach equipment and party supplies we need  from last year, I thought It would be fun (and a little easier and less expensive to plan) to have their joint party this year at the beach. 

It was, once again, a hit!  The girls love being at the beach with all their friends and for the most part, the parents get to sit back and relax! 

Happy Birthday, Aubrey!

I know I say it every year and I will probably say it at each new age, but I can't believe I have a 7 year old!!!!  A balloon fairy started visiting Aubrey during the night on the eve of her birthday many years ago and she is still going strong!  All of the girls love to wake up to see what shenanigans the fairy has done with balloons on their birthday. 

The traditional birthday breakfast in our house started out as cupcakes!  Who doesn't love cupcakes for breakfast??? However, since I once again attempted to make a birthday cake for the second month in a row, my baking limits have pretty much been reached.  So, we went with birthday pancakes this year!

Time for presents!

I asked Aubrey what kind of birthday cake she wanted this year and she said she wanted a Barbie cake like the one in the book at the Publix bakery.  I didn't really want to pay $50 for the cake and since I was feeling a little confidence coming off of baking Anna's birthday cake in April, I decided I would just make her Barbie cake!  Of course, I took to Pinterest. Can anything be done these days without consulting Pinterest first?  I found several different versions and finally merged a couple of them to create my own. Aubrey loved it, so it was considered a success!

 

Anna's Five Year Check-up!

She's a small five year-old, but as precious as she can be. Neither Danny nor I are tall, so we don't have great hopes for tall children (and I'm perfectly ok with that). This little Miss Priss is measuring at 40" tall and weighs 34 pounds.  These numbers put her in the 10th percentile for height and weight!  As the doctor said, we are just going to have a little petite princess!  She also passed her vision and hearing test with no problems and is growing just fine!  We are so thankful to God  for our healthy, growing girls!

Spring Break Fun at Blackbeard Island!

To end our week of Spring break fun, we spent the Weekend at Tom and YaYa's along with the whole Wailes family.  We planned a Saturday boat ride over to Blackbeard Island.  Blackbeard Island is only accessible by boat and is names Blackbeard after one of the most notorious pirates that captained the waters off the eastern seaboard in the late 1800s.  We of course learned this later through a little research since we considered this a field trip for Aubrey's school year!  

We packed some sandwiches, treats, and drinks and headed off around lunch time. 

The captain and his first mate!

We made it!  

The island was beautiful and mostly deserted except for one or two boats off the coast in the distance.

We found our own shipwrecked boat!  

Needless to say, there was no treasure to be found!

We found a lot of awesome shells, coral and crabs.

We decided to take off on a little exploring adventure and we found all this beautiful drift wood.

By late afternoon, the dolphins were coming around and gave us a little show.

 Just a few more cute pics that I took of my littlest babe!

What I didn't mention at the beginning of this post was that shortly after we got there, we realized the tide was going out.  We didn't pull the boat all the way up and all got out of the boat and waded through the water to get on shore.  However, the tide was going out quickly!  Not great thinking on any of our parts!  Before we knew it, the front part of the boat was coming out of the water.  At that point, it was too late! The boat was obviously too heavy for us to push back (although some husbands...and a wife or two that will go unnamed tried to push it back into the water). We referred to our phones for a trusty tide report and discovered that the tide wouldn't come back in until early evening!  We settled in for a longer than planned visit to Blackbeard Island!  We rationed the drinks, chips and sandwiches.  Thank goodness we packed more than enough to last us.  Don't get me wrong.  Every morsel had been eaten by the time we left the island, but it was plenty that we weren't starving and light snacked through the afternoon. Of course to document the fun adventure, we got a rare picture of everyone enjoying the boat...completely out of the boat!  Who needs water for a good time?

We did manage to get the boat pushed back into the water around 7:00 or 7:30 that evening and then high-tailed it back to the house before it got too dark! 

We will always have the family story of  "remember that time when we went to Blackbeard Island and beached the boat!"

Spring Break Fun at the Zoo!

Our trips to the zoo are normally on weekdays since it is much less crowded then and you can really get to spend some quality watching the animals.  With this being said, it's not often that Dad get to go to the zoo with us.  Danny took the day off on Friday (the last day of spring break with Lydia) and we decided to stop by the zoo to visit our favorite animals on the way to YaYa's house for the weekend. 

We were excited that we got to see a lot of our family animals out and about!

This jaguar was obviously very tired!  

She was was breathing, but the only movement to her was her chest rising and falling!

The girls decided they needed to be monkeys instead of just watching the monkeys!