Laexins Sweet 16 + a trip to the beach

 This years move has interrupted a lot of things which has been hard on me, including my own 40th birthday ...but nothing is harder than the interruption of the kids big things.  One of those was Laex's 16th Birthday, there were no big first dates or parties with friends.  We had previously told the kids we would take them on a trip around their 16th birthday and we couldn't even plan that (his dream is to go to Japan!).  So...we asked him what he wanted to do and he opted for a trip to the beach.  We went to Folly Beach near Charleston - booked our trip and it wasn't until we showed up that we realized this is the same beach town we had been in a year prior on our trip through the Carolinas to Dollywood.  We didn't get any pictures of all the yummy food we ate but there was plently, and lots of amazing beach time!

We beached, found Shark teeth, and sea animals...

..got to watch the local conservancy hatch a sea turtle nest and is was SO awesome!

We beached some more...and I got a major kick out of LeGrand searching for shark teeth, ha ha!

Laexin picked out his Birthday key lime pie!

We did a boat tour to the lighthouse we went to last year shark tooth hunting...our hunt was much less successful but we still had a good time and got to see some dolphins along the way!

We were lucky enough on our last day of the beach to have some of our new SC friends meet up with us, the kids were so excited to have friends to play with at the beach, perfect ending to our trip!

I'm reminded everyday how precious these memories are, our trips are never perfect, people get mad and frustrated and things don't always go as expected but the memories are priceless!

Lytzi Turns Double Digits 1-0!

We celebrated a little of Lytzi's birthday while Helinfield, Ed and the Carly were here visiting but Lytzi wanted to wait for Loa to get home to have the traditional Birthday Dinner.  Lytzi chose to go to a Chinese buffet for her meal, Loa was dying over the octopuses to eat on the buffet so she smuggled one out for a picture - ha ha!

Lytzi is such a fun part of our family!  It's a joy to watch her grown, some days the sas and 'mothering' are a little much, ha ha, but we just love her!  She is always the first to be willing to help out, she does so well in school where her teachers love her and she takes pride in working hard.  She is girly through and through - she used her birthday money to buy all the things to do gel nails, and she was so thrilled to find this cute dog cake at the local grocery store!

 

Girls Camp

 Although Loa was trying to be excited for Girls Camp this year, a big part of her was so sad to not be in Grace going with all of her friends - just so happened that Grace's camp started the exact same day as camp here.  I dropped her off at the church and bawled half of the way home, it really tears at your heart when you see your kids facing hard things...I so wanted to be sending her off with her friends - I just prayed that she would have a good time!

I talked with her YW leader and told her my concerns and the leaders were awesome to send me pictures throughout camp.  Turns out, she had a great time, met new people, and the leaders raved about how fun she is to have around!

Tryon, visitors + More Lake days!

 One Saturday evening we went up to Tryon NC to the Equestrian center for Saturday night lights.  They have lots of food trucks, vendors, restaurants, and a free night to watch the horse show.  It was so fun!  Loa especially loved the horses!

We've got to experience some pretty crazy rainstorms here in SC, it really pours!

Ed, Helinfield and Carly came to visit over Lytzi's bday, they rented a house on a lake near us and the kids loved going every day to float in the lake --we couldn't get enough of the warm water days!

LeGrand even got lucky and caught a fish!

I'm not sure why we didn't get more pictures of their visit but it was so nice.  We basically just hung out by the lake, ate and swam for the week...Loa missed most of it because she was off at girls camp.  The next week, we explored Lake Cooley which is right in our backyard basically :)

July Randoms

We told the kids we could visit one of the massive Firework stores once Laexin got home from FSY.  Because fireworks are legal all of the time here, there are lots of giant stores open year round and you can shoot them off whenever...so we took a trip to one of the warehouses and the kids shopped for fireworks and we had our own show about a week after 4th of July.

During July the kids took turns choosing an adventure or something they wanted to do in our new area --I didn't get many pictures, but we did everything from visit our new library and splash park/park in the area to trying new restaurants and going to the lake.  One of our stops that Loa picked was for Boba - she LOVES the popping fruit bobas!

 Mr. Linq hadn't lost ANY teeth...then in July he lost 4!