My Mother’s Day Recap:

I woke up in a good mood despite it being before 8am. Kids made cards and crafts while waiting for Dalton to wake up and then presented me with stepping stones they made, each unique and special its own way.

We packed the kids and stuff into the car and headed out to visit a beach on the boulivar pennisula near Galveston. We had a hot tip that it was THE place to spend the day beaching, shelling, etc. The weather? PERFECTION it was like 70’s and breezy - a far cry from the mid-90s from the previous week.

We took a ferry to get to the beach and it was really fun! We saw dolphins playing in the water. And by playing I mean mating. A small fact I did not realize until I went home and examined some of the photos I took and now I am traumatized!!! It was super cool to see them splashing and jumping and flipping in the water. None of us had ever seen dolphins in the wild so it definitely made our day.

The beach is one of the few drive-on beaches left in the US which meant we just drove the coast until we found a great place to park and stay. The water was typical golf coast ugly but the beach was really nice, clean, full of shells. The kids filled a bucket with live hermit crabs and Dalton even nabbed himself a baby speckled crab.  We found a dead jellyfish which was super cool since we’d never seen a jellyfish in the wild - dead or alive. And frankly, I’d rather see them dead.

The kids had a blast in the water. Even Addy, who I knew would be totally freaked out by the water this summer, eventually was willing to dip her toes in and run along the edge. The water is always warm in the coast so that makes it really fun to play in. Noah got to go out alone and body surf the waves for the first time. He is getting to be a major swimmer this summer! Amazing what a difference a year makes!

And best of all, I got to take tons and tons of pictures. 350 to be exact. I’ve felt guilty for disconnecting a bit from our family experiences because I’m so busy taking pictures so I’ve tried to balance it more and leave the camera at home but I really wanted to get some great beach pictures so it was definitely a great Mother’s Day treat! I got to take all kinds of pictures I had really wanted to take including some cool gull shots, pelican shots, the dolphins of course and I got to really experiment with direct sunlight and shadows which is perfect for this week’s Theme Thursday over at Land of KA.

We had some awesome seafood for dinner, of course, and then headed home late into the night. I just love going out to Galveston but our new favorite spot will be Crystal Beach, for sure.

Check out my photo blog today and this week. I’ll be posting a few pictures every day from our great Mother’s Day adventure. I promise I won’t post all 350! haha.

Happy Mother’s Day to my Mother, my Step-Mother and all my dear friends whose mothering inspires me on a daily basis!

I’m challenging each of you readers to post a photo on your blog of the place in your home or world that most reflects peace and serenity to you. Don’t feel like it has to be master photography. It just has to be a photo taken by you of somewhere that you feel grounded and at peace.

My place is my hammock.

Back when Tony and I first moved in together we shared a tiny home in a lovely neighborhood that was covered in mature trees. I loved it there. I loved our huge yard most of all, even though the trees were so huge that we couldn’t even grow grass back there. I loved the wildlife that our personal forest attracted. Most of all I loved my hammock where I spent MUCH time every day, winding down, meditating, relaxing and learning to cope with our crazy chaotic life. We outgrew the house really really fast and when our landlord decided to sell it, he offered us the option to buy it first. We were sort of cornered into buying it but once we got the mortgage preapproval, we wizened up and decided to shop around and found a place that was much larger and would better accommodate our growing family. The problem was, our new house had no trees. None. We had the same huge yard but not a single shade was cast. Part of my deal for buying the house was that we had to also buy a hammock stand and hammock but it was never used, it was just never the same. Even though Michigan doesn’t get all that hot, there is something truly centering about laying UNDER the trees on a beautiful day. Minus the trees, it had no appeal to me at all. Eventually we moved to yet another treeless home and we toted our hammock with us where it stayed in the garage until we moved, yet again, to Texas.

Finally I feel like I’ve come full circle and I’m back somewhere that feels like home to me: earthy and full of nature and shade and birds singing. It took us a year but we finally got our hammock up this spring and there is simply no better way than to spend an afternoon or 10 minutes than relaxing under the trees with a good book in my hammock. The smells, the warmth of the filtered sun, the breeze, the dragonflies flitting about, the sounds of the squirrels and birds vying for territory, the sight of the gigantic Texas sky speckled through the bright green of our ancient trees, my dog lounging nearby sharing the occasional kiss or snuggle, it is my idea of heaven. Peace on Earth.

So what’s your special place?

Well we hit a dreaded milestone: addy wants to go out to play. all.the.time. She does not want her brothers to go out without her. She screams. She cries. She makes everyone feel so guilty. And once she is out, there is no getting her back in. At least I get some pictures out of it….

Today we played outside until I lost Addy. I knew which direction she headed so I didn’t worry too much - it was a dead end. But still, she never came back. So off I went into the garage to find her except the garage is clean and there is no place to hide.

Except one:

If there is one thing worse than letting the baby outside it is letting the baby get into the bike trailer. If there is no accompanying bike ride, there will be a meltdown. I promise.

So off we went to the park.

Noah did what he does best…..the Heimlich. Just kidding. The “choochoo train” down the slide. He’s a good big bro:

Addy was proud of her big girl sliding skills. She’s actually pretty apprehensive about the big slides but the park by our house has smaller slides and she felt independent enough to scream “STOP” at me every single time she started to climb up the play structure, in case I was thinking about coming up with her.

I love this picture because Addy looks like such a tiny baby in it still:

Addy is a big fan of the swings. Until she’s not. She can be done so fast, it will make your head spin. But she had fun

If you are into seeing awful painful teething, like I am (not), you can click on the picture above and see Addison’s lower left canine painfully jutting through her sore gum but the other one is nowhere in sight. Will we ever see the end to teething pain?

Addy developed some odd obsession with climbing trees. We need to visit Lucy for some REAL tree climbing. I have no idea where or how she has determined that trees are for climbing but she will frequently approach a tree for climbing.

Even Noah caught the climbing bug:

But finally they just worked together:

Noah is such a good brother. He wanted to go for a hike through the woods and Addy obliged.

Right up until she found this bush full of berries. She had to pull every single one off, one by one, and ask “I eat it?”

This is Addy’s “I ate a poison berry” face:

Kidding. I didn’t let her eat them, silly.

We decided to mosey over to the lake hoping to see some ducks. Addy LOVES ducks. But apparently she HATES the lake. She was terrified of going anywhere near it. And there were no ducks in sight. But suddenly……her biggest brothers showed up! What a surprise! Dalton got her to go near the water as long as he wouldn’t let her go:

And then….oh my gosh….the ducks appeared out of nowhere! The day was saved!!!

This is Mr. People Beggar:

He would like to be fed and gives us this coy look:

When that doesn’t work, he opens his mouth wide, waiting for us to stuff crackers inside:

Mr. People Beggar is a regal beggar:

He brought a buddy, Mr. Bottom Feeder:

He wasn’t into the whole begging scene. He was just along for the ride. There was a deal where he provided the muscle in exchange for a hefty cracker kickback. But fish were more his style:

Finally Noah could not bear it anymore and offered Mr. People Beggar the closest thing around: a charcoal briquette. But apparently Mr People Beggar has the audacity to be a picky beggar.

Buh-bye Mr. People Beggar. Next time we will bring crackers, even if the authorities will have our hides:

At this point poor Addy was shivering and her nose was red. It is COLD here today and Mama did not pack a sweater (or a drink or anything else including the travel potty which -yay - we had our first successful pee-on-the-tree incident, so to speak. I’ve only ever done this with boys so I have been dreading this incident for a year!!)

So we had to go home. But we had fun at the park. We might do it again tomorrow when it is actually warm out and we bring treats for ducks.

A bonus picture:

This here is what you might call a Midwestern Bird Feeder. In the Midwest, the squirrels don’t actually fit through - they are too big! Where can I get a Southern birth feeder? Or would that be what you call “roadkill”??!?