Our anniversary beach trip

Brad and I celebrated our four year anniversary this past weekend! Our actual anniversary was on Thursday, then on Friday we left (without the baby!) for the beach for the weekend! #99 on my 101 in 1001 list is to take a road trip with my hunny! Check!

There are a TON of geocaches in Gulf Shores along the state park trails so we mapped out our route and put in a lot of preparation before we went. Losers, I know!

 

We decided we were going to bike the trails. We already had one bike at the beach house, so early Saturday morning, we went and bought another one. We got about 1.5 miles into the trail (in the BLAZING 103 degree heat!) and my bike BROKE. Like completely wouldn’t pedal anymore. So we had to WALK the 1.5 miles back out and to the car. We had to return that bike, buy a new one and then pedal BACK where we left off!

We found an air conditioned bathroom so we happily cooled off and had lunch!

About halfway through caching at around 2pm, I decided that I was DONE and it was just too hot. But we were about 3 miles away from the car. So we had to pedal allllllllll the way back and I literally didn’t know if I would pass out, throw up or die first. But thankfully, we made it back. We biked about 8 miles total.

BUT with all that caching, I finally reached my goal of finding 50 caches with Brad so I’m checking #95 off my 101 in 1001 list!

  

Besides geocaching, we stuffed our faces. I gained three pounds. No joke. We tried a new restaurant called Flippers and Brad and I both tasted some fried oysters and a crab cake. One word? NASTY! :) And we went to the movies to see The Lucky One.

We had such a fun weekend but I was SO glad to see this little face when we got home!

#2 – Check!

Have I mentioned how much I love checking things off a list? :)

#2 on my 101 in 1001 list was to dedicate a wall in our house for our Honduras feathers. Brad and I are very passionate about the people of Honduras and teaming up with BMDMI to minister to them. Our church normally goes to Honduras once a year for a mission trip and we give out clothes, shoes and food in the villages, as well as provide people with medical and dental necessities that they may otherwise never get. And after we try to meet their physical needs, we minister to them and try to meet their spiritual needs. Every year we see numerous people come to know Christ as their Savior.

It’s a week full of hard work, sleeping on the floor, no air conditioning, fighting foreign bugs, taking cold showers and it’s one of the biggest blessings I’ve ever been a part of. If you go just once, you will be changed forever and will always have a special place in your heart for the people.

So each year as a reminder of our trip, we buy a painted feather in Honduras to bring back home with us. I went in 2005, 2006, and 2008. Brad has gone in 2011 and 2012 and he leaves to go again in July. The feathers used to be displayed in our kitchen, but we had to take them down when we had our backsplash installed. But we finally gave them a home in our foyer this past weekend!

And there is plenty of room for future feathers! :)  

Noah has more friends than I do

Noah is a social butterfly. Any time we are at church, he has to make his rounds and speak to everyone he knows. He’s just a people person (except in the mornings…he gets that from me!). Saturday we had two birthday parties to attend for some of Noah’s friends. He LOVES going to birthday parties! Friends and cake=his two favorite things!

Brad had to help load some things to ship to Honduras Saturday morning (he leaves again in just two months) so Noah and I watched. They used a bobcat and Noah loved watching it!

From there, we went to party #1 for his friend Aisley. She had an ice cream party at a local park.

For some reason I only took one picture at the party. It was super hot and Noah fell and his hit head on the concrete, plus it was inching close to nap time so we ended up leaving a little early.

Then after naptime, we were on to party #2! It was at The Barnyard. We had never been there before and we all absolutely loved it!

He got to feed some fish.

Then go for a boat ride.

Ohmygosh is that not the cutest thing ever!?! He hated the life jacket so he ended up not wearing it, but Daddy rode with him so I wasn’t nervous.

Next, he got to bottle feed some baby goats.

And pet some baby bunnies and chickens. He liked looking at the animals but he wasn’t a fan of actually touching them!

And finally, he got to ride the pony! I was pretty surprised that he actually rode it. But he did great!

 

The Barnyard even had a jungle gym play area with sand and shovels. He spent the most time there, digging and being all BOY!

Here he is sitting beside the birthday boy, Christian, drinking a Caprisun by the chicken coop!

You can tell he ran around nonstop! He was so tired from a long day! As favors from the party, he got a Barnyard t-shirt. After he picked it out, he told me he wanted to take his clothes off and put his new shirt on! :)

I love that boy!

#52 – Check!

#52 on my 101 in 1001 list is to go to the eye doctor. Riveting, I know. I’m supposed to go every six months because of a medication I take and I knew that if I put it on my list, I would be more apt to actually go the first time!

It’s super hard to read the letters backwards. Ha. Kidding. So anyway, they dilated my eyes so that was real fun. Then I had to wait forever for the doctor to see me so I sent freaky pictures of my dilated eyes to Brad and my sister! :)

You’re welcome. Now your Tuesday is complete. 

Weekend recap

Friday night, Brad and I had our monthly date night! We went to Birmingham to see the play South Pacific.

It was a lot of fun! The show was great but it lasted over three hours and our legs were screaming by the time it was over. Then we had the hour drive home! BUT I was able to cross #26 off my 101 in 1001 list, by staying awake until midnight! I NEVER do that!

OH, also on my way home from work Friday afternoon I saw this in the road…

Freak my FREAK!!!! Still alive. But that didn’t last long! I ran back and forth over it so much that Noah said, “Mommy, I want to go home now.” Ha! They are tearing down some woods close to our house to build a new school so I’m sure we are in for some more critters.

The rest of our weekend was pretty low-key. Just some geocaching and hanging out with our little fam jam. :)

Noah’s 2012 class picture

How stinkin’ cute! In case you can’t tell, Noah is on the far left, sitting beside his bff. Noah loves for me to point to someone in the picture so he can tell me their name! And he can name every single one!

Our beach trip!

We left town Thursday afternoon and headed to Gulf Shores for a little relaxation and fried crab claws! Noah and Bella both did so well during the four hour car ride, with help from a Bob the Builder dvd.

Noah loved playing in the sand but he hated the water! Once we finally coaxed him in to putting his feet in a little tide pool, he slipped and fell and went all the way under! He was 100% done after that! He kept saying “I don’t like it!” or “I don’t want to!”

After about an hour on the beach, his face started breaking out from his eczema so we packed everything up and headed back indoors.

The next day, we played in a park. #75 on my 101 in 1001 list is to take Noah to a park! Check!

And we did a little geocaching, of course!

And since we didn’t really want to haul everything out to the beach again to only stay an hour, we decided to visit the little zoo the next day. Noah loved the tigers the best! #55 on my 101 in 1001 list was to take Noah to the zoo…Check!

We all thoroughly enjoyed getting to spend time with each other and we can’t wait to go back!

#11 on my 101 in 1001 list is to go to Gulf Shores 5 times, so only 4 more trips to go before I can cross that one off!        

And finally, #96 on my 101 in 1001 list is to eat a Krispy Kreme doughnut. Our KK was destroyed in the tornado so it’s been almost a year since I’ve had one. Luckily, there is a KK close to Gulf Shores, so we were able to grab a few doughnuts before we headed home on Sunday!

Whew! Now I need a vacation to recover from my vacation! :)