If you read Kelly’s blog you probably know we spent the last several days hanging out on Florida’s east coast with some really amazing mamas, their husbands and just beautiful children for our own little Heritage Camp, babystyle. I know I keep saying it but how lucky am I?!! Sooooo lucky, I know.

So back in the spring when I went to Denver, Kelly was also supposed to make that trip but it didn’t work out. In its place, Laurie graciously offered her family’s summer place as a hang out this summer if we were willing to make the trip. To add to the allure, as if that alone wasn’t enough, S. lives locally too. Somehow (I honestly can’t remember but am SO glad it worked out) Jena got brought into the mix and there you have it – the fabulous five! ha. All together we were actually 22 strong. Crazy, huh? It was seriously SO much fun and we are already conspiring and planning another MUCH LARGER blogger get together somewhere more centrally located because there were so many other bloggers and AP’s we would have loved to have in the mix. So look for details on that soon.

Kelly did a really awesome job summing everyone up. I think I only mixed up Addy and Lucy twice this time! haha. I know at laest one other person unrelated to either girl also mixed them up once, so I feel justified

These are an amazing group of women who are sooo smart and soooo freakin’ hilarious. I swear I have not ever laughed so much in my life. We had LOTS of hours of long chats long into the night which left us with like 2-4 hours of sleep a day. ROUGH! I’m so not a college kid anymore, apparently! But I would not do it differently because it was just so much fun.

The Dads are totally amazing husbands and fathers. they are smart, super-helpful, hands-on and just fun. I love them all and love seeing such good fatherhood and husbandhood (husbandry?!?!) in play. Case in point, Addison totally loves Travis (who she calls Tabitch – haha) like an Uncle. She just adores him and that’s something she reserves for VERY few people. We are one lucky group of women! We missed Kelly’s husband and S’s husband who both had to work but I am positive that they are just as awesome.

The kids….wow!!!! They are all so beautiful and radiant and amazing to me. It is so neat to me to see the products of the parenthood of some parents I truly admire. My kids really loved them all and had such a great time and so did I.

Highlights for me:

* tidepooling with my boys

* collecting sand dollars, starfish, crabs and shells with my kiddos

*hearing my kids excite over spotting tiny sandsharks in the waves and huge tortoises in the dunes.

* big huge waves, real white sand and clean ocean water

* watching the dolphins from the deck in the wee (for me) morning hours.

* long talks about politics, religion and boning the neighbors

* ruining the olympics into the wee hours (so sorry Kel!)

* insane games where the kids do nothing but run back and forth and crack up.

* seeing someone’s kiddo walking hand in hand with someone else’s parent

* being able to talk adoption and ethics endlessly without being intrusive, getting weird looks or boring people to death. Speical bonus for  me was talking adoption with Jena, who I work with at VVAI, live and in person. How cool is that?

*awesome fried shrimp

* babysitting finjin, cuddling her to sleep and hogging her as long as I could

* playing with lucy on the last day when it was quiet and she totally turned on her charm, jackson’s sweet loving on the last day, seeing samuel and noah playing in waves together (also on the last day! hmmm sensing a pattern here), getting bailey to talk to me about earrings and stuff (again, final day), khai’s hysterical camera poses, Shane’s awesome crawl straight into the ocean over his head without fear, S’s daughter M’s precious bonding with Addy during out trip into town, S’s daughter A’s hysterical laughing competition with Addy, S’s son L’s pure joy and energy that just makes you smile all the time. These are some totally AWESOME sweet, adorable, smart kids. I love them all!

* watching kelly’s natural parenting and strong connection with Lucy, seeing Laurie and Travis tag-team parent their 3 tinies without seemingly ever getting frazzled and just rolling with the punches, basking in the peace and love humor and patience that Jena and Sheldon parent with and finding inspiration in the patience, grace and joy that S seems to meet every day with despite some extremely challenging days that are hilarious to hear about and read about on her blog but would definitely bring out the worst in me as a Mother, I know! These paernts just inspire me in all the best ways to be a better, more connected, more joyful, more appreciative mother.

{Addy & M.}

Things I could have skipped:

* Dalton got pierced straight and entirely through his fingernail by a crab. Yeoch!

* Noah, Teegan and I all got colds (no, Em and Lee, this was not your doing!! It was much too soon and we had already begun to feel funky before we even left NC!)

* Dalton was out waveboarding on a higher-wave day and a shark swam up to Dalton. It was NOT a shark attack – haha. That would be the fish tale portion of this tale. But it was big enough (close to as big as he is!!) and close enough that he decided his waveboarding day was over. ha. Tony asked the life guard about it and he was all “Oh yeah, I saw that shark. Its no big deal”. haha. For landlocked midwesterners, however, its sort of a big deal!!!!

* the sunburns. oh the sun burns. The number of sunburns I personally have endured just this summer along is ridiculous. I don’t know what I was thinkig but I imagine it was something like “I live in Houston, we have a pool, we are outside allll the time, i’ve already been suburnt several times so I should be safe”. Dumb. Dumb dumb dumb. Thankfully this was by far not the worst sunburn I’ve had this summer and I felt pretty much fine within 24 hours. Noah, on the other hand, endured his first ever sunburn and I feel sooo bad about it. I took SUCH huge efforts to protect his lily-white skin and blond head for the first 6 years of his life and just totally screwed up. He did use sunscreen but not soon or often enough. Poor kid.

Despite those few minor things, this was the time of our lives. Thank you Laurie and Travis for opening your family’s home to us crazies!!!!

More pics:

{Khai}

{Miss Sassy Pants}

{Lucy loving on Finley}

{playing with Lucy – peekaboo!}

{Jack}

{Finley}

{Crazy Khai}

{Jena the Book Whisperer}

{Shane – wave-bound}

{chasing down the flying balloon}

{photographing the photographer}

{more balloon chasing}

{ring around the rosy}

There are sooooo many more! When I get home I’ll go through them and post-process and do another big picture post.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 18th, 2008 at 5:30 pm and is filed under Adoption, Holidays & Vacations, Nature, Photos & Videos, Things I Love. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.