It’s been a while since I posted, but Brian and I were on vacation last week (whooo-hoooo!!). The boys spent the week with Nana and Papa at our house. They basically had their own vacation as well…they went to the zoo, the aquarium, a cute little Swiss town in Wisconsin, made fun treats, watched Papa launch soda geysers and had more than one trip out for ice cream…lucky guys! I’ll post some pics of their adventures after I get them from Nana (oh by the way…Nana…please send me some pictures!)

So meanwhile in St. Lucia:

Here are Anna, Anne and Kristin pool side while husbands Joel, Jeff and Chad float in the water. I’ll admit that I posed Anna for this shot, but the other two were already sitting that way!

Here are the three men who “ran the gauntlet” (ie: drank one of every drink they had on the pool bar menu during our 6-day stay). That is the drink tray that Brian and I packed as a surprise for everyone else…it may not seem like much, but it certainly came in handy!

…like when we were handing out in “our pool”…a bit of a walk from the main pool and the swim-up bar. This is where we (Brian) invented our version of “tub thumping”. It’s where someone launches a few (we got up to 5) pool floaties and then someone else jumps off the top of the hot tub to see IF they can stay on their feet. Anne and I (mostly Anne) won for the girls..not sure about the guys…in all fairness, it was sort of a girl’s sport.

One of Brian’s many attempts.

Our grandest adventure: zip lining – so cool!!!! We did 11 lines ranging from 25 feet up to 250 feet up. The gear is dorky, but the experience was amazing!

yours truly coming off of one of the lines. I tried to go as fast as I could by pulling my legs up. I found out the next day that it’s an excellent ab workout!

The girls at dinner Thursday night – Italian restaurant at the resort.

The guys…

I can’t believe we didn’t discover the raspberry daiquiri until our last day. I think we were in the pool/ocean for about 7 hours that day…and then we did some more night swimming after our final trip to the resort buffet for dinner.

last night shot

Here is the outside view of our room. It was at ground level, right next to everyone else, mere steps from “our pool”…so super fun!!

None-the-less, it’s always good to be back home. I sure missed our little men!!!! Here they are wearing the shirts we brought back for them…and mostly refusing to look at the camera. Brady was examining a lizard fake tattoo that we brought back as well.

Monday it was back to me and the boys. It was so nice to hang out with them again! They played with color changing cars one morning and I just had to take a picture…for no reason…

While we were gone, my mom reported that Brady was often tagging along with his older brothers for potty breaks. He decided, late afternoon on Monday, that he wanted to put on underwear. So be it I guess. His first pair had star-wars guys on it so I kept warning him, “don’t pee on the force!!” To date (Wednesday evening), he has not only peed on the force, but also on Thomas, Diego, Lightning McQueen, the living room rug and in the pantry…where’s the respect?! We’ll see how this attempt goes…he’s right now mostly interested in the rewards…

CANDY!

The week before we left on vacation, Brian brought home our garden’s first harvest” several small tomatoes (roma we think), 2 “8-ball” squash and some of our basil crop.

Here’s what I picked today: green peppers, LOTS of tomatoes, squash, jalapenos and yes…some green tomatoes (Brady picked those!)  

Our bumper crop for the year is basil! Don’t be surprised when you all get home-made and canned pesto sauce for Christmas this year…maybe home-made salsa too…gotta figure out what we can do with those tomatoes! Here is a (small!) portion of the basil that I picked today!

Today, long story, the boys ended up playing with a sprinkler on the driveway (I was “power spraying” spider webs off the front of the house…the water was making streams down the driveway…they were chasing the streams too far into the road…I suggested the sprinkler and voila. Oh, and by the way, they were in bathing suits because I had set up water-world for them in the back yard…I was only coming around to spray the webs while I thought they were staying put, but they followed me. Oh and p.s.s – I got like 3 spider bites while spraying! I’m not kidding…I think they were jumping on me and punishing me for ruining their homes!). I told the boys that we used to point the “rainbow” up in the sky and run through it. Logan pointed it straight out and said, “this is how we’re gonna do it mommy”. Boy do I love that kid!!!!