We're Back!

We left our home the last week of June for a trip to Florida to see our families with a trip to South Carolina for a family reunion (Sam's side) in the between. 12 hours is a LONG drive with a 2 yr old, but Rebekah was a trooper and did surprisingly well. I went armed my "bag o' tricks", which included toys, food, and the best traveling toy ever, the Magna doodle! We were gone for 10 days, which seems like a long time when we say it, but it always seems like we never have enough time with our families when we're there, and always wish we had more when we're traveling home. I always come back remembering that living 12 hours away from family is hard, but it also reminds me of the Lord's faithfulness and gracious provision in leading us to our church. A church full of people who care so well for us! Of course I took a bazillion pictures that I want to post and I have been editing through them as I've had time. 


My main reason for posting today is to remind everyone that I will be placing and order for the adoption t-shirts THIS MONDAY, JULY 18th.  If you live in the area and would like to order a shirt please let me know by this Sunday. If you don't live near us, I am considering ordering a few extra shirts (and will probably place another order soon if I have a response that's big enough), but I will need to have your money before I can mail a shirt to you. Here's the link with all of the information in it, including the e-mail address, for the adoption t-shirts.


And finally, a few pictures from our time at the family reunion in SC.

Rebekah was super ready to go on vacation

She was so ready that she kept telling all of us to "GO!" while we were loading the car. This earned her the right to be the 1st to be buckled in and supervise the packing. Unfortunately that also meant that she was trapped in the car with a mosquito that bit her about 9 times. The girl has MAJOR issues with mosquito bites and ended up having a low grade fever for the next 2 days. Once again, I'm out of the running for the parent of the year award!   

Each night that we were in there one family was responsible for cooking dinner for everyone (19 of us, I think). However, since we were on vacation we let Rebekah snack/eat appetizers/basically allow all good eating habits to go out the window. 

The 1st night she ate chips and dip for dinner with her Grandmother and Great Aunt's supervision:

The culprits caught in the act

Rebekah and one of her Great Grandfathers, Pappy

We enjoyed a wonderful dinner by candlelight. 

And instead of the night winding down around 8:30pm the party was just getting started! We played a game, that I still don't know the name of but am pretty sure it should be called something like "steal every ones money"! It was a lot of fun and Pappy even gave Rebekah a few dollars to play too! We discovered that my girl has quite the arm (at least when it comes to throwing dice). This throwing of the dice could also be from the super hyper/overstimulation caused by us letting her stay up until 10:30pm (NEVER AGAIN!)

The 2nd day of our trip involved "the kids" (who are all in our 20's and 30's) getting up early to participate in a scavenger hunt that was spread all over the property of our vacation spot. We hopped on our bikes and rode around for a few hours from location to location completing different tasks. We even toted Rebekah around in the bike trailer. It was a lot of fun and we were in it to win it!

We had to look for golf balls in the wet grass and count how many had our group number on them

We had to shoot at targets with a gun at one location and with a bow and arrow at another. We also had to rope a bag with words in it and make a sentence with the words (bottom left picture).

Rebekah started to give up and wanted to be "all done with bikes" so we gave her a dum dum sucker and she suddenly became very okay with completing the scavenger hunt... it was blue

We had to put 5 people in a boat and paddle around a buoy and back to the dock

We had to dive for yellow rings and find the ones with our number on them.

Tom (far right) came along for moral support. He broke his foot while he was wrasslin' an alligator. 

Well, not really, but we've discovered Swamp People on Netflix and it sounds like a good "how I broke my foot" story! 

There were a few more activities that we had to do but this is just a bit of what I was able to catch on camera. 

I didn't take my camera with me to the announcement of the winner of the scavenger hunt but if I had you would have seen the following: a group of 11 or so 20 somethings laughing and cheering as our family accepted the trophy for coming in 1st place. Next to us you would have seen a group of 3 preschool and elementary school aged children crying off to our right. It was a sad moment, but only briefly sad. We had worked hard to win that trophy and the only thing that would have made it better is if Rebekah wasn't napping and she were with us (it also might have helped us not look so bad as the only group without a child! :) ). 

Regardless, we had a wonderful time and were so glad that we can share moments and make memories like these with our family!

More pictures and stories to come once my laundry pile is a little smaller and we're back into the groove of life.

Don't forget to order your shirts!!!