Beach Trip 2010!

See! I told you I would get some pictures up this week!

Ok. No unnecessary babbling. Lets just dive right on in, shall we?

This is the view from the living room in our condo. If I could walk into my living room at home and see this every day I think my life would be complete. This view did not get old!

And we didn't just stare at the beach from the balcony. Our first full day there we ventured down and parked it in the sand for a while. Now, the ocean was NASTY. And by nasty I mean there was nothing but seaweed in sight. So we stayed out of that grossness, but Z really, really enjoyed playing in the sand!

And this is what happened when I asked him to look in my general direction and smile. Yeah. Not so much.

And no, I have NO clue what Daniel is talking about in the background.

And here is Zachariah's favorite cousin, Collin! See Zachariah, Collin smiles for the camera!

*sigh* We will have to see if Collin can help Zachariah out with the whole posing for the camera thing. :)

And what did we do after we were done playing in the sand? Hit the pool of course!

I'm not going to lie... this pool was pretty great. Half of it was in the shade and half was in the sun. I LOVED that I could choose to bake or not to bake. It was great. And grand. And lovely.

Oh, and we don't know that couple there in the sunny part of the pool. Our crew was in the shade at that point and these people creeped into my picture.

Rude.

Each afternoon when we would come back to the condo from our fun activities this is what Zachariah would do. He did not take a nap the whole time we were there, but he would definitely come close resting on the couch waiting for lunch to be fixed!

Ok folks. Hold onto your hats, because this was one of Zachariah's favorite part of the whole trip.

The skywalk. The convenient covered walkway that connects the condo to the parking garage. It can be called a skyway, catwalk, skybridge or skywalk. But in reality, it doesn't matter what you call it because Zachariah will only yell at you and insist it is a spaceship. That's right. A spaceship.

And this kid LOVED going in the spaceship. It was the highlight of every day. Anytime we need to go to the car (rain or shine) he would beg to walk in the spaceship. It was pretty much the cutest thing ever.

Yes, we could have just walked across the street to get to our car. And yes, it would have only taken about 30 seconds to do it that way. But we very rarely did that. We decided to take the extra 2-3 minutes to ride the elevator up, walk through the spaceship, ride the elevator down and THEN walk through the parking garage to our car.

Because, lets face it, there is no way on earth we could refuse such an adorable and giddy boy the experience of walking through a spaceship several times a day. :)

And seeing him walk through the spaceship may have been one of my favorite parts of the trip too.

No, wait. This was definitely up on the favorite part of the trip list as well. We went down to the beach to take a group family picture and seagulls were flying EVERYWHERE! Zachariah was basically in heaven.

Every morning Z and I would take a walk on the beach before breakfast, and every morning he would chase the seagulls in hopes that he would be able to hold one. He never got upset when he couldn't catch one, but he was a little discouraged that he couldn't even get close to them. So you can imagine how giddy he was when they started flying very low and very close to him!

Watching this kid run with/towards/away from the seagulls was probably one of the cutest things ever. I mean, EVER. He loved every second of it. :)

And just in case you were wondering, here is our Titus Family group picture. :)

The morning after the seagull fun we started packing up to leave. It was a sad moment when Zachariah realized we were leaving the condo and heading home. We had packed everything up in the car and came back into the condo for one last look around to see if we had left anything. We decided nothing was left behind and started heading out and he quietly said, "I don't wanna go home. I need to stay in condo." and from there it was just downhill. For the first 20 minutes of the drive he cried about not wanting to leave the beach. It wasn't a bratty cry. He wasn't pitching a fit. It was a genuinely sad cry.

And that made me cry. I wont go into how long I cried, but lets just say that Z dried it up well before I did. Darn these pregnancy hormones!

And here he was, about half and hour into the ride home. My sweet baby was exhausted.

So yeah. We had a blast. And while it wasn't his first beach vacation, it was the first one where he was able to soak in and enjoy the wonder of the beach. It just made my year to experience this trip with him! And I owe that all to my wonderful in-laws. This yearly family beach trip is a fabulous tradition they started and it is because of their hard work planning this trip that we were able to have such a great time!

I guess that about wraps it up! Well, not really. I still have a post about going to Gulf World while we were in Panama City, but you will all have to wait for that one. I am beat! :)

Until next year...

Well, ok. Until the next post...

I'm Baaaack

For those of you who are wondering, I am back from my trip to Biloxi Ms. I had a great trip and it was so nice being able to see Wesley!! As usual, I took way to many pictures... so it is going to take me a few days to get a post up about my trip.

In the mean time, I am going to show you one picture of my brother. Just so you can all see what he looks like. You know, in case you forgot. It has been a while. :)



Doesn't he look so grown up? I guess the military will do that to you though.

More pictures coming later! Hope everyone has a great Tuesday.

Biloxi Bound

Guess what? I am leaving today to go see my brother! I am so pumped. I haven't seen him since he left for boot camp. Now he is in Biloxi and we will get to his the casino's together. :) You wanna know the crazy part about this trip though? I am leaving Daniel and Zachariah here.

Yep. You read correctly. I am leaving my son for three whole days. This is big folks. Real big. The longest I have ever been away away from him has totaled up to four hours. In two years I have only spent up to four hours away from Zachariah. And most of the times I leave him its only for two hours.

Typing this out I realize how crazy that is. But in my defense, its not like I don't trust anyone to keep him. The grandparents keep him once a week. At least! I just don't make time or plan to be gone for longer than two to four hours. Pitiful huh?

Well all that is going to change this weekend, because Mom is outta here! And as I said, I am pumped. Zachariah's temper tantrums have made it so easy to decide to do this. :)

I will be documenting the whole trip, so don't you worry. There will be tons of pictures to come once I am home!



Despite his two year old tantrums, I sure am going to miss this little booger.

Grandfather Mountain

While we were in North Carolina, we went to visit Grandfather Mountain. It was absolutely gorgeous up there. I took quite a few pictures, but due to my constant fear that I was going to fall off the mountain, I didn't have time to change my settings all around. So a lot of them turned out... well lets just say they weren't the best pictures ever. I did try to save and edit a few, so I thought I would show them to you so you could gaze at the beauty that is the mountains.



This was our view once we crossed over a mile high swinging bridge. It was amazing.




Family shot on Grandfather Mountain. This is one of three family pictures we got all week. I am so bad at getting family pictures. I really need to work on that.



Daniel and Zachariah looking at the magnificent view. I love this picture. :)




This is the second family picture we got on the trip.

Do you know how hard it is to get someone to take a picture these days? I mean, it is as if no one knows that you are supposed to get all of the subjects in the frame. Seriously. There were about twenty pictures taken like this, but this is the ONLY one that included all three of us. And its not just this one person that took our picture! Its just about everyone I hand my camera to!

One day I am just going to break down and actually hire a photographer friend of mine to take our picture. This is getting ridiculous.

Ok. Enough complaining. Back to the mountains. :)


*sigh* I love the mountains. Wanna move there with me?

Gem Mining

While we were in NC, the youth group decided to do a little gem mining in Boon. Seeing as how it is not the most toddler friendly activity, Daniel kept Zachariah back at the retreat center and I got to go hang out with the kids WITHOUT a toddler! It was so refreshing to be able to have adult conversations with other counselors there without having to throw in a "Do you have a poopy diaper?"


So here I am... mining for gems. Except you don't really mine. They give you a big bucket of dirt, and you scoop a pile or two into your sifter. Then you put your sifter in a water trough and sift away all of the dirt. Then you decide what rock like objects you want to keep and you put them in a bucket.



Here I am, scooping my dirt, hoping for some massive diamonds or something.



No diamonds were found, but check out this massive rock I found. Its called a geode. You can get it cut open and there are crystals inside of it. Its pretty cool, except their machine was too small the cut mine open. Boo.

Oh, and you see how nasty my hands and fingernails are??? Yeah. That water was MUDDY. It was gross.

I don't like getting dirty. Just ask my parents. I am a real wimp about certain things, and dirt is definitely high up on the list.



Here are my rock findings! I kept A LOT of the rock like objects I found. Just in case they ended up being something important.



Here is a nifty little chart that they give you. This guy put the rocks in their appropriate places on the chart, then used some heavy duty packing tape to seal them in place.



And here is my finished chart! I had a good bit of emeralds and garnet. The rose quartz and amethyst were my favorite though! Oh, and look closely at the top right hand box. That stone is one of the three rarest to find. And woohoo! I found it. I don't know why, but I was pretty excited about that.

It apparently doesn't take much to entertain me. Just give me some dirt and rocks and I will be happy.

Anyway, the nifty thing is you can have the stones cut and set, making some beautiful jewelry! I am sooo looking forward to that. One day. You know, when we have money to spare. When I decide to have the stones cut, I will probably mail them back to this place in NC, because they do it for CHEAP.

So yeah.., that concludes my gem mining experience. I had a TON of fun and would love to do it again one day!

Like Mommy, Like Son

Someone forgot to tell him his lens cap was on. Poor kid.

:)

Wheeeeee!

Sorry for the delay everyone. I know I promised you a post yesterday, but I had one heck of a busy day. I had to do grueling things like play the Wii, eat my mom's food, take a nap, and color with my adorable child.

With all that hard work, I am lucky I made it out alive!

Well, the other day I posted an uber cute picture of Zachariah here. That picture is one of the many from our North Carolina trip, and this particular day he was all smiles, all the time.

Why? Because of the kick butt playground we played on for about 3 hours, that's why.


We started out on the small playground. And quite honestly, I assumed that is where we would stay.



But Zachariah eventually got bored and started climbing up the slide. So we moved on to bigger and better things.



The big kid slide!!! Woohoo!

He loved this thing. He went down with Daddy the very first time, but from then on out he did everything himself. He climbed the 20 flights of stairs (with one of us halfway up just in case he needed something) and wend down the slide. All. By. Himself.

I had issues with that. I mean, I know he is almost two, but I was remembering the very first time he went down a slide. And I had to hold both of his hands. It was adorable. And now he is grown up. Sliding all by himself. *sniff sniff*

After I was finished balling my eyes out, I got busy taking pictures.



Because this is way to cute not to capture on film.



There was never a time where he did not have a huge smile plastered on his face while going down this slide. And he had an audience cheering for him every single time. Which he loved.



And every time he would slide he would say "wheeeeee!" That in and of itself was cute. But then when you factor in his facial expressions and giggles on the way down? It was almost too much for me to handle.


So yeah. We had a blast. And how can you not have a blast playing at a park with it being only 67 degrees?

What? Your tired of me talking about the amazing weather? Well too bad. Because I am on a North Carolina high. :)



And I am on a Zachariah high as well.

He is just so DANG CUTE!

Picture Perfect

As you may know, Daniel, Zachariah and I went to North Carolina last week. We spent two days with my grandmother, and 6 days at a retreat center. Daniel was the speaker for this youth camp and we had an absolute blast!

The weather... oh the weather. The highest it got all week was about 75 degrees. In the evenings it got down to the 50's and we were wearing jackets. Who would have thought I would be wearing a jacket in the middle of July???

So yeah. We loved it. We didn't want to come home to this awful heat. It is 92 degrees today, but it feels like 99. (thank you, weather.com) Oh the joys of living in the hottest state there is. Ugh.

Okay. I will temporarily pull myself out of my seasonal depression for the remainder of the post.

You are welcome.



If you have ever tried to take a picture with a toddler, you may be able to empathize with me a little bit here.

Right behind the retreat center there was a small creek. It was beautiful. So I decided this would be a good time to grab a quick picture or two of me and Zachariah. (We are long overdue for an updated picture)



It started out as well as could be expected. We start with the usual routine of taking a picture with a squirmy toddler. I picked him up and I either point to something near Daniel, or Daniel does something silly to get him to look at the camera and smile.

Usually it works.


But 10 seconds into this he decided he would rather play with his doggie friend by the water.

Thus begins the squirming.



Let me just tell you, it is very difficult to hold onto a 30 pound toddler when he has his mind set on getting down.

So the rest of our pictures were... well, not anything to write home about.


Yeah. I think you get the idea.

The picture taking stopped there.



What, Zachariah? You want a picture with Daddy?

Of course you do.

*sigh*

On any other occasion I would be VERY bitter about that. But we got some decent pictures later on in the day. I will post those later. Along with the hundreds of other pictures I took from the trip. :)

Ta ta for now.

I Heart NC

We are officially home from North Carolina. We are completely exhausted, but we had an absolute blast. Our welcoming party was a bummer though. It consisted of a flat tire on Daniel's car and a dead refrigerator. Our house is apparently confused on the details of a welcoming party. Finding out we need to buy new tires and a new fridge upon arriving home is NOT what we were expecting.

Such is life, I guess.

So, while we tackle the daunting task of unpacking and cleaning out all the spoiled food from our fridge, I will leave you with this image from yesterday's excursion.



*sigh* I want to go back so badly.


More about our trip in the upcoming days! :)

My Little Musician

I know I have been a horrible blogger this week, but I have had very little down time. We are having a blast here at the retreat center, but we keep very busy!

Until I get a chance to sort through the hundreds of pictures I have taken so far, I will share with you one of Zachariah's favorite things to do during his free time.

Introducing my son, the pianist...

He has started giving lessons to some of the counselors here at camp, but today he let Tad join in. (Tad is his new best friend. They met on the drive up.)




They love each other.

More to come later. Until then, I will sit here on the porch in the breezy 70 degree weather, enjoying the beautiful mountain view.

Be jealous.
:)