It's me again...back from the witness protection program

Here's some bits and pieces of my exciting life in the great midwest:

**Our trip to Delaware went as smoothly as one could ask for. No one ended up in the hospital, it only rained one half of one day, I swam in the ocean for my first time ever (wading in the water up to your knees does NOT count), we saw tons of dolphin pods swimming right off shore every day (very cool!), and we didn't get a ticket for our non-functioning tent trailer lights. I can't wait to get back to the beach. It is truly one of my favorite places to just "be". It was quite an adjustment though to have to share the beach with all of the other thousands of vacationers. The first day we headed to Rehoboth Beach, which ended up being the busiest of all the beaches we visited. Here's some pics of our third day and what ended up being the least populated beach. We were accompanied by a family to our right with a very, very sick child. Just as we were eating our picnic lunch I heard this gurgling sound. Not knowing what it was, my natural curiosity caused me to turn and look. At the exact same moment as the girl was tossing her lunch (and by the extent of it..breakfast and last night's dinner). Immediately Jesse tosses her sandwich down and a little too loudly announces, "Well, I'm not gonna be able to eat for about 4 hours now!" Nice. Real nice. It's good to know that our efforts to teach her some tack have paid off.

This is the only pic of me in a swimsuit I'm willing to share. Can you see our turtle sand sculpture? Me neither! All the beach pics turned out too light. :(

** I have decided to start my daycare children in swim lessons. Call me crazy, but once a week I am now taking 4 little ones (aged 4, 3, 2, and 2) for a 45 minute swim lesson. The first one was this past week. Every thing was going smoothly. I had every one dressed in their swim diaper (those not potty trained yet), their suits....and then I scramble through the backpack for my suit. After dumping everything onto the floor, cursing myself (in my head), I realized my big mistake. It wouldn't have been a big deal except this was the first lesson for all of my kiddos and we had no idea how they would do listening to the teacher. Luckily the woman who teaches my evening water aerobics requested to be our teacher...and I just love her! She was definitely MADE to work with children. She said it was no problem and just had me remain poolside to make sure everyone got the idea to sit on the edge and wait their turn. They did such a good job and the parents were excited to hear how the first lesson went. One of my guys was even practicing some of the skills he learned in the bathtub at home. Wish me luck on Wednesday....and, yes, I already have my suit stashed away in the backpack ready to go!

**My oldest nephew just graduated from Army bootcamp this past week in South Carolina. I wish the timing would have worked out better for us to go see him. Since we just took a trip to the coast and the kids are in school now it just wasn't feasible. My sister and her husband flew from Cali and so we would've gotten to see them, too. Bummer. As it turned out, they missed the actual ceremony due to some schedule changes. Because of Hurricane Hannah's looming approach, they moved the graduation forward a day. They anticipated having to use the barracks to house some of the evacuees. My sis and bro-in-law had planned on arriving the day before graduation. Unfortunately they still ended up missing it by a mere hour or less.

I'm still kind of in denial that we now have a close family member that will most likely be at the top of our Worry List. I know it is inevitable that he will end up in either Iraq or Afganistan. Even with as dangerous as that prospect sounds, the path that his life was headed pre-Army was not a good one. I just hope and pray that he gets to use the government paid schooling that he is looking forward to.

**The kids started school 2 weeks ago. Here's their first day pics. Better late than never, eh?

Are we excited or what?

Jesse showing off her newly learned skillz. String games!