Today was a super-exciting day. If you are a 13 year old boy. Or a 2 year old girl.

Addy is absolutely obsessed with fishing. She went, once, months ago and loved it then. So on our way up north we bought a fishing pole for Noah and let her pick one out for herself too (Princesses, of course). The little kiddy fishing poles have big plastic object you can tie onto the line instead of a real hook/lure so the kid can practice safely casting without hooking themselves or their mother, for instance. Addy’s plastic practice thingy was in the shape of a big pink crown. Addy had such a good time with her pole (or “cole” as she calls it), practicing her casting and reeling in the big pink crown in the safety of the cabin.

When her brothers set out to fish this morning, she was not far behind with her “cole”. I thought it would keep her busy for awhile becuase she was really into it. What I wasn’t expecting was that the minute her feet touched the dock she would turn to me and say “take off the crown”.  She absolutely knew that the crown had to go and be replaced by a hook in order to actually catch a real fish and she was having none of the ridiculous pink fake fishing experience.

We managed to convince her to keep the crown on for awhile, for safety’s sake, so she just threw her Cole down and tried to take her brother’s baited up poles. It did not help that she saw Dalton catch a HUGE fish and wanted in on that experience.

Oh Teegy caught a fish too….

By the end of the day she relented and practiced casting with her big pink crown and I’m proud to say that she has a heck of a cast down for a 2 year old. I think she may be almost good enough to try the hook out. If she catches a fish, we are in trouble. We’ll never get her away from the water. She’ll be ‘hooked’ (har har).


The kids swam and played in the sand all day. Suddenly someone spotted a huge HUGE snapping turtle in the water right in front of us. It was totally preying on us. Or begging for food. Something. But it would not go away. It just circled us all morning and that there was the end of the swimming for the day!

Addy, however, we pretty convinced that the turtle wanted her pink crown. And sure enough that turtle came right for her pink crown. But when she didn’t catch the turtle she got very mad and crossed her arms and stomped off.

We ended our day 6 with a big fire, roasted marshmallows and s’mores. Tony had the idea to spread our graham crackers with peanut butter, add on the marshmallows and chocolate and I do believe s’mores may never be the same again. yummmm.

Random other pics:

This picture just kills me. Look how tall she looks!! And her hair is getting so long.

Addy is getting so big in so many ways, I am reminded many times a day that she is not a baby anymore. I miss my baby, a lot! But I also love how self-assured my big girl is, how determined, how curious and steadfast and fearless and confident.

One crazy thing I will never get used to about Houston is the storms. They roll in out of nowhere and then are gone in a heartbeat. I think I can count on one hand the number of times it rained for more than a few minutes! But it rains hard enough that we have not had to turn on our sprinkers at all this year!

Once we were all swimming in the pool, the sun was out, hardly a cloud in the sky and the few clouds we had were big and puffy. And suddenly it starts to pour. And pour. And the sun is still out, the only cloud in sight is still big and white and puffy. Its so fun - often the kind of rain the kids can really play in and enjoy - devoid of any thunder or lightening. Plus its COLD rain and its always HOT here. Bonus!

But sometimes it doesn’t just rain but it STORMS. Most of the time it seems like they still come out of nowhere, last a few minutes, blow through hard and the sun is back. It is the weirdest thing. I’ve long since learned not to bother looking at the weather because a prediction of storms is inconsequential. It doesn’t stop or ruin plans, it rarely even happens and when it does it’s over in a heartbeat.

Addy, though, she’s still getting used to the thunder. She hates loud noises and thunder is no exception. Today I distracted her from a hard-hitting storm that tore through by letting her watch the river that formed on our drive and the rainwater that came rushing out of the neighbor’s gutter. She’s lived here long enough to know that rain, more often than not, means rainbows. So she looked and looked but this storm didn’t bring any rainbows.

I love the way she handles her fears. Often she determines she is afraid of something and rather than avoid it, she plows steadily through, finding opportunities to expose herself to her fears and eventually they are a thing of the past. Its like fear is an emotion she refuses to let settle within herself. Now I know that if she is afraid of something, the way to handle it is to bring in her for a closer look, a more detailed examination, and suddenly she’s no longer afraid at all. I could learn a thing or two from this girl.

Today my Mom, Dad & brothers took me berry picking. I don’t remember going last year so I wasn’t sure what to expect. Usually Mom tells me I can’t pick or eat the berries I find on bushes so this was new and exciting! Dad explained to me that I should only pick the ripe ones and then he showed me what a ripe one looked like, gave me my own big bucket and off I went!

At first I ate a blueberry after I picked it. It was good but I wanted to save all my berries and bring them home. I refused to eat another berry after that until we got home. Instead I focused on finding the perfect berries, cleaning them up and placing them in my bucket.

Not everyone had this same strategy. After all our hard work, this was my brother’s berry bucket:

The purple lips were a dead giveaway. Once he even stole a berry from MY bucket and there was hell to pay, let me tell you. I made him spit that berry right back out and then I picked it up off the ground and put it back in my bucket. That’ll show him!

I did a very good job at picking the most purple berries. Some slackers in my family were just throwing anything with a blue hue in their bucket but I went through everyone’s berries and took out the ones that weren’t perfect. I examined each one.

And I picked out leaves and pulled off stems. Every berry must be perfect or why bother at all? I gave all the little nasty bits to Mom.

Suddenly we spotted something much more interesting than blueberries. Can you guess what it is? No? Ok, I”ll tell you! It was a DUNG BEATLE!

He was working harder than all of us! He was moving this pile of, um, dung to somewhere far away. Watching him work was very entertaining! Only MY Mom would take pictures of beatles and poop!

Finally Mom declared it was time to go home. One look at me and you’ll know why:

It was so so hot and my unorganized parents forgot to bring drinks. So we headed out but I was not so easily convinced. I wanted to stop at every bush along the way and check for stray berries that called my name.

At the end of the day, I was so so hot and sweaty but very proud of all I had picked. See how perfect and purple my berries are? That is dedication, I tell ya!

My family picked a lot too. Don’t let my brother fool you - he didn’t pick all of these berries himself! Everyone but me combined their berries but he did pick about half that bucket! He told me his secret is not to eat them until we get home JUST LIKE ME! When I grow up to be big like him I’m going to fill my bucket that big!

We sure had a fun morning picking berries! I love blueberries - they are DELICIOUS!