In case you doubted Brooke’s awesomeness…..

Yesterday I took Brooke to the park and she was climbing all over the place as usual.  I decided to get a few videos to show you how awesome and strong she is.  You might notice her saying ‘No, no cheese!’ in the videos this is because she has decided she DOES NOT like to be photographed or videoed and I might have said a tiny white lie in the name of sharing with you.  Enjoy!

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Fix-it Brooke

Today we had the appliance repairman come to fix our microwave that broke before we left for vacation.  Brooke saw their stepstool and tools and immediately wanted to help.  The two men were very sweet and got a kick of her getting her own stool and setting it next to theirs to help.  I put her to task with her tools to fix the door while they fixed the microwave.  Both parties did a great job and we have a working door and microwave now.  After our naps Brooke wanted to listen to her heart, my heart, and the baby so she ran and grabbed my stethoscope from the study and put it in her ears.  I caught a glimpse us in the mirror and thought she was so cute I had to take a few pictures.

Beach Vacation

This last week we took a beach vacation and rented a small house at the north end beach in Virginia Beach.  We had a good time though will not rent locally again, but because I know better this pregnancy that only a fool leaves your doctors at the end of pregnancy AJ humored me the location for this trip. Even though we were only 30 minutes from home we stayed in the oceanfront area the whole week and didn’t venture past a 4 mile radius of the beach house.  The first day there it rained and so we went the Aquarium to spend the morning and got to venture out to the beach that evening.  AJ and I had a lovely dinner at ‘One Fish Two Fish’ on the Lynnheaven Inlet for our 6 year wedding anniversary.  The next morning I had some pregnancy insomnia and got to see what the beach looked like at 6am.  Naturally I took my tea with me.  We went to the beach everyday and in the evening biked to the boardwalk or to First Landing State Park, saw a boardwalk concert, and took Brooke to the nearby parks to play on the playground.  We spent a morning at ‘The Narrows’ the inlet beach in First Landing State Park as well. Though we had to stay out of the water because of two rowdy sting rays and a lot of jellyfish.  We had a great time and our beach baby loved endless destruction of sand shapes we created, being buried almost daily in sand, burying Mommy or Dadda, going on walks and getting shoulder (Dadda) and piggyback (Mommy) rides, playing in the shallow waves, collecting water and dumping it on the ground, herself, us, and of course being out in the ocean waves jumping and dunking for hours.  It was a wonderful restorative trip and so nice to spend time together un-distracted from life as a family.