Corpus Day 2

We truly were spoiled by Aunt Toni, Uncle Gregg, Autumn and Caleb (Ben's cousins). They spent their Saturday with us and it was amazing.
Being natives to Corpus, they know where to go! They took us to the beach. It was Henry and William's first time.

Henry enjoying the seaweed with Evelyn and Ben digging for shells behind

Meet Aunt Toni, she is wonderful in every way. She loved Henry and he loved her. This is one lady who is going to be a FANTASTIC grandma! 

I think that's Ben and Hannah out there "wave chasing" as Hannah and Will termed it. 

Sweet beach babe, Evieboo

Rockin' sea dude, Will

Beach babe Hannah

And Henry happy as can be as he tried to step over the waves

Off to sea with Caleb

This is Autumn, our kids favorite and best person ever! And we think she's pretty great too! She was so nice to the kids and spent so much time with them. She is the bees knees to the max! 

Autumn and Will built this awesome sand castle! Okay, not really, it's a gift shop. But theirs was almost as cool! 

It was a hold-a-cheese-stick kind of nap on the way home

All clean and some quiet time with Nanny McPhee

Another gift shop pic

Uncle Gregg and Autumn took us to this great gift shop. Hannah had a pretty wild imaginary ride on this dolphin, her favorite animal ever. 

William enjoyed playing with Spiderman while we all waited for Evelyn to pick out her souvenir. We left him alone with the Uncle Gregg and the car. Soon enough, Will had emptied Uncle Gregg's pockets and had ridden the rides like there was no tomorrow! Uncle Gregg is an awesome Grandad in the making! Needless to say, William really likes him :) 

I am sad I didn't take more pics of the Gregg Wyeth family, but here is one of Uncle Gregg and Autumn cheering on the horse and stork race. 

We stayed up late talking and Sunday we went to church, had some lunch and headed home. We had a marvelous time! Thank you much for hosting us so graciously! We love you Wyeths! 

Corpus Christi Day 1

Ben has been itching to get to the coast. His dad grew up in Corpus Christi hence many of his childhood trips were to the beach and to visit grandparents there. It is only a 4 hour drive from where we are so we took advantage of summer time and off we went! 

We left in the morning and made it to the Texas State Aquarium a little after lunchtime. The kids were very excited, especially since they had recently watched "A Dolphin Tale" and are a little obsessed with the sea right now.

 Enjoying the exhibits

 Evelyn holding a sea urchin

 Will was brave too

 SHARK TANK!

 The dolphins! Hannah's favorite anything and everything right now is dolpins! 

Waiting for the dolphin show!

The kids really liked the pet tanks. This one had stingrays.

 They have a splash park there which was great for some unwinding time. Here are Hannah's skinny little legs and Henry having fun.

 Hannah at the guns and Will taking cover 

 The view from the tippy top and the USS Lexington in the back

 We got some dinner to go and ate at this beautiful park 

 Cute little fish! 

 Hmmm...pretty fishy.

 They loved watching the waves crash on the rocks

Henry just wanted to jump in! 

We then drove to stay at Gregg and Toni's home, Ben's aunt and uncle. They were so gracious and treated us like royalty, we were so happy to get to stay with them and visit them!

Waterer for Hire

Henry has a very convenient obsession, the hose. On nights we need to water, we just plop him somewhere in the yard with the hose and viola! Grass is watered. We can relocate him as needed to make sure we get an even water. 

 He's also great for cooling off siblings

The only trouble is taking the hose away at the end, it's a pretty loud and upset ending to a wonderful time, but he gets over it quick enough.

Evelyn enjoying the spray

Just a little video of the kiddos having fun with their brother and the hose

Alopecia is NOT my Best Friend

It's a little awkward for me to even be posting this. But I am doing it anyways.

I have Alopecia Areata, an autoimmune condition where my immune system attacks my hair, stopping and preventing growth. As if my immune system didn't already have enough to do with it's normal job AND attacking my thyroid (hypoactive thryoid) and my joints (rheumatoid arthritis)!

Before we go any further, please know, I am not writing this so you can feel bad for me. I know that if I were to walk through a cancer ward in a hospital, any one of the chemo/cancer patients I imagine would much rather be simply losing hair than having to lose it due to chemo and cancer. I am sure they would be glad to be bald or balding alone than have to deal with cancer on top of it. I am grateful to just be losing my hair. It's as simple as that. I'm not sick. It's just hair.

However, it is getting worse. Before you couldn't really tell:    

Nice photo, eh? Thanks Will for the great dino shot! 

Now I'm getting this lovely view of my scalp: 

I know, it's not big, but I can't cover it up like I can these: 

 Smile if the side of your head is bald! 

So as for now, this is what you see. But if treatment doesn't work (painful steriod injections in my scalp...WHY don't dermatologists have numbing gel in their offices? I am getting to the bottom of that one for sure!) you just may be seeing a wig. Evelyn said I could have her hair  if I needed it :)  I am grateful I am not a boy, I would have to shave my head! 

So please don't feel bad for me, but now you know if you are next to me and a breeze blows by and you get a glimpse of some major whiteness on my head, you can say to my kids: Yo momma's so bald, Mr. Clean got jealous! Or if you can think of a better joke, that would be okay too.