I am still desperately trying to catch up on our summer’s events in the blog. We had the busiest summer of our lives this year, but have had such a blast. We have traveled together, apart, experienced new fun things as a family, seen our best friends get married, visited some amazing people… the list goes on and on. While I am quite happy to have our lives be back to normal(ish) and be able to stay put for more than 2-3 days at a time, I’m secretly missing our jet-set lifestyle. We have definitely made some great memories and traditions in 2011, that’s for sure.

The last trip to Auntie’s was pretty busy, but on our last full day there we headed down to “The Lotion” per Harlo’s request and had such a fun family beach day. Now, I’m not much for the ocean.. I love the beach, I can hang and lay out all day, but the actual ocean water totally freaks me out. Luckily, Harlo did NOT inherit my fear of the water, but her dad’s absolute love for it. Stella loves it too, she sat and played with Harlo for hours. It’s so fun to watch my little brood at the beach, though. It’s literally better than Christmas for them. Harlo still asks every. single. day. if we can go to Auntie’s house today and go to the lotion. Poor girl just does not quite grasp that we live 7 hours away. 🙁 But lucky for us, that gives us a pretty great excuse to get down there every month or so! 🙂

I promised myself I would keep my camera out at the beach and take some pictures of it all this time. It’s so easy for me to forget to bring out my “real” camera with a baby constantly on my hip, but I truly vow to be better at this. The girls are getting more independent which makes it a lot easier, too. As soon as I got home and uploaded these pictures I was so happy I stuck to my guns! These will be some family favorites, I’m sure.