Late night at the Parker's

It is much too late to be up in my opinion (10:30), but with it being so hot recently the last thing that I want to do is turn on my oven. Therefore, I have started making bread at night when it is much cooler. That way I actually get to savor the smell that I love as it cooks and I get to see Dave in action while he paints. Usually, I am fast asleep while he paints until the early morning hours. Not tonight though. I actually snuck a few pictures of him as he mixed paints and contemplated next steps for his next piece. It is going to be beautiful (it has Taylor's silver baby cup in it so it should be beautiful, right!). He is so talented and I am so proud of the works that he creates!

Garden Update - part 2

Wow! The garden is finally starting to come alive. I have already picked three cucumbers and one tomato. I feel better already...the plants didn't all die before producing anything! I have counted almost forty tomatoes that are green on the vine, one pepper, and at least a half dozen cucumbers. The bell peppers and okra have buds, but no produce yet. The cucumbers are doing the absolute best. They have even spilled out over my square foot garden. They love it there. On the other hand though, my squash loves to put out beautiful yellow flowers, but then they fall off without producing any squash. I need to research this and find out what is going on.

Talk, Talk, Talk

Taylor's vocabulary skills have started to take off!  At the beach, his verbal skills just exploded. He wanted to talk about, comment on, and ask questions about everything.  Most of what he says Dave and I can decipher.  However, sometimes there is just the verbage that only he can understand.  Here is a quick video of Taylor at the beach pretending to talk on my cell phone while it is charging.  He hasn't figured out how to unlock the phone...yet.  You can tell by the conversation that he misses his buddies, Ellie and Grace.  Too cute!

John Deere

My dad is such a dear to drive Taylor around on his riding lawn mower.  This ride with his Papa absolutely makes Taylor's day!   He cries every time that he has to get off and do something else (like eat lunch).  We are going to have to seriously look into buying a miniature toy ride-on version of this for our driveway. 

We took homemade barbecue over to my parent's house today for lunch.  We are trying to make it a point to have lunch together once a week.  This way, Taylor gets to spend time with his Papa (and the John Deer of course) and I get to try out new recipes on my dad.  What a great to way to spend part of a summer day!

We're home from the beach!

We arrived home today around 11:30.  What an amazing trip we had!  The weather was great, the food was amazing, and the company was priceless!  I am already looking forward to another great trip next year.  Now, I need to focus on Father's Day for Dave tomorrow! 

When I downloaded all of our pictures from our camera onto the computer, we had 609!  Thank goodness for the age of digital cameras.  Could you imagine taking that many photos with rolls of 24 or 36 exposure rolls?  Not to mention the money it would have taken just to get them printed.  Now that we are home, we can start to unwind from the trip and pick out our favorite picture memories.  Here are a few pictures that we took yesterday.  What a great way to end our trip to Hilton Head!  

More pics from the beach

It is a gorgeous day here today! Taylor played in the pool for the majority of the morning and then we biked to the golf club and grabbed some lunch. He is absolutely wiped out now and is sleeping soundly for his nap. We will take him back to the pool this afternoon and then head out to the golf course this evening to try to get some family pictures. I am not going to hold my breath though. Hopefully, he will will cooperate and we will get some good pictures. We have thousands of just Taylor, but only three or four of us as a family.

I can't believe that our trip is almost over. The time has flown. We have many many wonderful memories to take home with us though!

Check out those sunglasses. He didn't want to take them off.

Alligator!

This little alligator was in the canal near our condo. He loves it when we feed the turtles on the bridge. He comes out for a visit every time. He makes me nervous being so near, but I feel a little more secure knowing that I am on a bridge above him. I hear that this is the baby of the three alligators. Apparently, there is a large 10 foot alligator that loves to bask on the banks. We haven't seen him, but maybe we will before we leave.

Taylor has been timid of the water and the beach all of the sudden. We have spent a lot of time riding bikes, playing with trucks, visiting playgrounds, fishing, and watching the golfers play right outside our window. I think that tomorrow we will go out to lunch and do a little more exploring. We will try to coax him back to the pool and the beach many times again as well I am sure.

Water Wings

We blew up Taylor's water wings and set off for the pool today. He has no hesitations what so ever now jumping off of the side of the pool and into Dave's arms. He started kicking his legs and blowing bubbles in the water as well. Hopefully he will start dunking his whole head in the water before long. He is definitely becoming a water baby. Check out the pics and the video. I love how he says, "I splash you!" in the video. Too cute!

This evening, Dave and I were all set to go to a local seafood restaurant for dinner when a terrible storm hit the island. Taylor was all set to stay with his favorite babysitters- Mimi and Papa. However, when we saw the large amounts of wind, rain, and lightning, we decided that we should postpone the dinner until tomorrow night. Because Taylor was scared of the storm, we put him in the bed with us and allowed him to snuggle under the covers with us, drink milk, and watch Diego until bed time. Who needs dinner out when you have can snuggle and get sweet kisses from your child? Those times are priceless!

First full day at the beach

These are a few pictures of the first day at the beach. Enjoy the brief video as well. We'll post more soon!

Our trek to the beach

After 7 long, hot hours in the car we finally made it to the beach. It was supposed to be a four hour trip, but we ran into a horrible accident- and it delayed us for a few hours. Taylor was such a trooper. He played with his cars, read books, took a brief 45 minute nap, and watched movies. What a lifesaver the dvd player was. We never could have made it here with our sanity in tact if we did not have movies to keep Taylor occupied. Thank you, Kevin and Sarah for loaning us your dvd player! I think that we definitely need to invest in one now!

My parents met us at the condo when we arrived on the island. We are staying at a great little condo that is not far at all from the beach. There is a golf cart in the garage that can get us to the beach or the pool in a flash. My dad took us on a tour last night in the golf cart. Taylor kept saying over and over, "I drive it! I drive it!" We headed down to the beach just to see Taylor's reaction to the sand and the water. He was very hesitant at first, but once he realized that the sand was like the sand in the sand box, he didn't want to quit playing.

Power Outage and a trip to the Zoo

It has definitely been an eventful couple of days around here!  We were without power from Thursday at around 4 pm until tonight at 7 pm.  A huge storm caused power lines and trees to fall all over our neighborhood.  I sure did my share of complaining about not having power, but I had absolutely nothing to complain about after seeing several neighbors with trees either on their roofs or in their house.  We were certainly blessed to have been spared that nightmare!  

Today, Taylor and I left the house and met Emily and Sarah at the Zoo.  I think that everyone else in Greenville had the same idea.  There were several daycares there and even one elderly home with about a dozen senior citizens.  We pressed on through the crowds though and had a fantastic time!  Emily and Taylor are so cute around each other.  They copy each other a lot and generally play really well together.  Sarah was so awesome- she even had us over for dinner tonight and allowed us to take showers and bring our remaining loads of laundry so that we could be all clean and packed for our beach trip tomorrow.  You guys are the best!  Thanks so much for being such amazing friends!!  

Fun in the sun

Yesterday was one of those days that I just didn't want to end.  Taylor was in the BEST mood.  He took a great nap, he hardly whined all day, and he managed to play by himself with his trains and cars for long periods of time.  He was completely content and hardly any t.v. was turned on. Hopefully that mood will continue today.  

Taylor and I visited with Kelly and AnnaKate yesterday.  Taylor went "fishing" in the water table and played in the sand box with AnnaKate.  We also ran a few errands and made a quick trip by Chick-fil-A for lunch.  What fun!  

First day of summer vacation

Yesterday was our first full day of summer vacation for Taylor and myself.  We played outside, took a walk on the nature trail, strolled along the bridge, dug in the dirt, watered the garden (and pulled up a chive plant for the fun of it- thanks, Taylor!), weeded the backyard, pruned a multitude of neglected bushes, took two baths, watched excerpts from the movie Cars, made homemade ice cream, ate ice cream with Papa, tried new recipes for salmon and crab cakes for dinner, and finally snuggled before heading off to bed.  Whew- I was definitely tired at the end of the day!  It sure was fun though!  I'll post about today's events later on (just a heads up though- it was much more laid back).

Check out this face - he had had enough of the camera by this point!