Beach House '09 Baby

Well, we did it again! We took a month off from day to day life to spend time together as a family. Wyatt, Peyton and I stayed for the entire month, Dylan stayed most of the time and Tait stayed about three weeks. Joel joined us each weekend and stayed the last full week with us.

So many people ask, "How can you do that? How can you miss all that time and what about school?" Luckily, the boys are still young enough that missing school doesn't effect them. And if schedules are too packed to take time off as a family, then life is too busy. We went to the beach house last year for a month, this year and have decided to make it a yearly tradition. Life is so hectic that stepping away for a month just to be together and relax makes living the other 11 months in complete busyness doable.

A couple of nights during our month stay we got together with the Garns and the Dunyons (the other two families that stay during the month as well) to have a fire and make smores. The kids loved it and so did I. Who can complain about chocolate and marshmellows???

Peyton loved the smores too and Wyatt got dressed up for the occasion in his special pajama shorts, tennis shoes and jacket. Doesn't he look fabulous?

We enjoyed spending time with the cousins who were able to join us part of the time. All the cousins were able to spend at least a couple of days with us.

During part of the stay, we ran out of little swimmer diapers. As you can see, Peyton's diaper got full pretty fast. One of the fun things we did was buy a little play pool to keep out on our beach.

Joel and Wyatt enjoyed lots of fun time together playing on the beach and eating sweet treats.

Dylan was such a great helper at the beach. He did a good job at playing with Wyatt and Peyton. I think we all bonded during this vacation.

We got to enjoy having a friend of Tait's, Kegan, with us for part of the time. They had a great time playing on the beach, playing games and watching movies.

One of the days we had a little sandcastle building contest. And Tait was the lucky winner. We had the kids build them one of the days it was cloudy and a little too cold to be in the water. Tait did a great job.

Can you tell by some of the attire that it was a little cold?

Joel, Greg and Ryan enjoying a friendly game of horseshoes.

One of the most fun we had was going to the strawberry patch to pick strawberries. We all went, but for whatever reason we don't have pictures of Tait and Dylan. We all went as a big group. Peyton just picked them and put them right in her mouth. She had a blast. All of the kids enjoyed it.

Grandma and Grandpa Johnson got to join us for part of the time this year. It was fun to have them there and be able to spend time with them before they head off for their mission.

On our way to the church there was an enormous tree in front of a house that we absolutely loved. You can't really tell from the pictures but the roots were almost as tall as Wyatt. I have never seen a tree like it, it was beautiful.

One of our favorite streets near our beach house was "Tait" street. Can anyone guess why we loved it so much?

As we were heading out the door on our way home we realized we didn't get a picture of the entire family. So here it is, pajamas and all. I know the most beautiful family picture at the beach. We took it on our balcony. Isn't that a beautiful view?

Here we are on our way home. Notice the Uhaul in the back??? Yes, I made Joel rent us a Uhaul. We took toys, scooters, my sewing machine and lots of other fun things to use at the beach for the month.