My Next Car Will Be A Transvestite Old ... I Was Scared When She Drove Her Loneliness

Ah, dear Edisto. How it pained us to leave you! Your sandy beaches, soothing waves, and giant, giant beach house with it's own elevator, pool and hot tub call to us still.

When we first arrived, I thought the hot tub was sort of a superfluous addition to the fine, fancy house Nannie and Papa so generously rented for everyone. (Thank you!) But the first 3 days were cool, especially with the sea breezes and all, so the hot tub (or "tiny pool" as Els referred to it) became the kids' very favorite place to be. Uncle David didn't mind it, either.


Poor Elsbeth got chilled after a nippy walk on the beach (during which she fell into the drink), then a dip in the not-yet-properly-heated "tiny pool", followed by several minutes on the very windy porch while Mommy ran around looking for a towel. I bundled her in everything I could find and she still shivered through most of her lunch.

Here's My Precious having some quiet time before bed reading an animal encyclopedia on this super nifty swing/hammock thing. He and I are conspiring to talk Daddy into getting one of these for our own porch.


The last half of our week there got deliciously warm. We took many long walks on the beach where we saw hundreds of horseshoe crabs, a couple star fish, pelicans fishing, and porpoises playing very close to shore. The walks were my very favorite thing.

We also built many an awesome sand village, always well fortified, yet never quite able to withstand the tide.


I actually love the little mismatched boy's swimsuit ensemble that TFO is sporting in these pictures, but I'll have you know she also wore some really adorable (and feminine) little bathing suits. At least she had the pink hat. I have amazingly few snapshots of our beach week. Who wants to tote around a camera where there are waves and sand around? So much fun to be had as well as so many elements to destroy a camera, especially when one is a clumsy ox prone to dropping said camera.

Bye-bye east coast. See you again in July!

I'm Allergic To Fingers

Alrighty, I have 4.7 minutes to make this blog post. I'm supposed to be packing for a week at the beach we're leaving for in the morning, but I'm already so horribly behind.

So, first things first ...

I love this man! I had had sort of a crumby day and it was late and I suddenly felt desperate for a bowl of Fruity Pebbles. I also really wanted to see if his hair would go into pigtails. It did. Nicely. And to cheer me up he went to Kroger like this to get me my cereal. Quote of the night: "What if a little old lady stops me and tells me I'm an abomination?"

Nannie came to visit us for a few days before Easter and, as always, it was like Disney World came to us. The highlight was the day at the Aquarium.

I couldn't believe how mesmerized Elsbeth was with all the fish. I think she sat in front of one of the giant tanks for over 30 minutes.


Easter was lovely. Very relaxed morning, worshipful church service, then Nina and Pa came for a visit!

I tried my hand at a bunny cake. I think we can all agree my fears about the Thomas cake were well founded.


Pa probably had to sleep for a week to recover from all the attention he got while he was here.

Els went nuts for her Pa. He had to be looking at her or playing with her at all times, and her sensibilities were all disturbed if he dared leave the room.

After all the glorious grandparent fun was over, we staved off depression with a day at Southern Belle Farms picking strawberries.


Big fun! Both kids did such a good job this year. Els needed a little help picking from the top of the berry instead of squeezing it hard in the middle, but otherwise it was perfect. As was the homemade strawberry ice cream.


And as a little side note, my Fiery One is so cute when she's napping.

The only problem is that if she sleeps too late, she has a hard time at night night sleepy time. So sometimes I have to wake her up. Which sometimes makes her feel like this.


Which is how I feel when people wake me up from naps, too.

Oh, and a funny Andrew story. So he's totally obsessed with this iPhone game called Angry Birds (not Angry Pigs as I referred to it in an earlier post). Phil put the free version of this game on my iPod touch and Andrew can work this thing about a thousand times better than I can. This was brought fully to my attention when I checked my e-mail a couple days ago and found a charge from iTunes for some upgraded version of the bitter bird game. Can you belive this?! I had to sit down with Andrew and tell him he needs to ask me before he does anything on my iPod that requires a password.