OBX Pictures - House Fun

One upside to vacationing with 30 other people is that there is never a shortage of people to entertain the kids. One downside is that there is currently only one person in our house to entertain the kids.

Matt and Matt sporting some fresh wolf shirts. They wore these to karaoke. Twice.

Annie and Bridget

Allison and Evie and the tambourine

Al and Joe looking thrilled with Annie, Kate and Abbie. And the tambourine, of course.

Uncle Matt, Annie and Kate

Hair salon

Aunt Jackie and Kate

Annie rocking the USA shades

Regan, Meg and Allison

Annie and Annie. They appropriately call themselves Double Trouble.

Apparently Aunt Jackie spent a lot of time holding Kate.

Cousins! Jackie, Annie, Allison, Kerri

Cousins again! Jackie, Annie, Allison, Kerri

Matt, Joe, Dan, Billy

Mike Wise and Kerri. Badminton champions of the world.

Those crazy kids.

OBX Pictures - The Beach!

Running

Annie the beach babe

Kate

Evie in the only picture where her feet are touching the sand

She quickly realized she HATES sand. She wore her Crocs the entire time.

Fun in the water

Annie on the boogie board

Aunt Jackie, Grandpa Jeff and Annie

Grandpa Jeff and Annie

Jackie and Allison

Showing off their guns

Go Blue

Allison rented this stand up paddle board, and it was super fun. Also, I was way better at it than Matt, so even better. :)

Al was really good at it. She even rode the waves back!

Grandpa scaring the kids with a dead crab

Kate and Aunt Jackie

Annie

Kate and Aunt Jackie heading out

Matt and Annie worked on a "hot tub" for a long time. Unfortunately, Matt is not an engineer AND the tide was working against them. Maybe next time!

OBX 2012

This year, instead of going to Port Clinton as usual, the crew decided to try out the Outer Banks in North Carolina. It was a good decision! We had such a fun week! The trip was definitely worth the 15-hour car ride with the kids (they actually did pretty great). There were, I think, 37 people in one house. We were a short walk to the beach, we had our own pool and the weather was perfect. The only thing missing was Jimmy Hinkel. He has been a part of my vacation memories as far back as I can remember. It was hard not to miss him in his visor and cut-off shirt, delivering the paper and the morning coffee. It's so sad that he's no longer with us, but I think we all agree that he was there in spirit. (Remember when Kevin's chair broke as soon as he sat down by the pool? :) ). Thanks for a wonderful week everyone!

We drove 15 hours with five people in a Nissan Sentra. Yeah, we did.

We arrived and dove straight into the pool!

Kate and Kerri

Kate and Annie

Evie and Allison, or G Me, as we started to refer to her.

Regan and Jackie

Matt and his vacation beard

Mama and Evie

Brian, Matt and Joe

Sweet baby face Evie

I took so many photos, I'm going to break them up into separate posts. You're welcome.

We Are In Trouble

This baby is spoiled.

Doesn't get what she wants?

And this isn't even her best work.

But then we give her what she wants inevitably.

And all is happy again.

We are in so much trouble.

Memorial Day

After literally months of trying to find a time to get together, the Puchmeyers joined us for the Dexter Memorial Day celebrations. It was so fun to have them here. The girls played so nicely together the entire time. Really. Callista and Jason's girls are just the sweetest little things. It made me a little sad, though, because I wish they could play all the time. They are such perfect little friends!

Cece and Evie. The two most awesome babies ever. First, they sat for like 30 minutes and played quietly while Callista and I chatted and their sisters played in the basement. We almost forgot they were there. And second, Cece is an adorable little talker. With the best manners EVER. I gave her food and she said Thank You. Umprompted. At 19 months. Seriously. I can't get over this. I can't even get Evie to say Mama. We spent the last 25 minutes of their visit just laughing at Cece and having her say words in her cute little voice. She says Eve "Eef." It's awesome.

I don't know if I can ever have six kids. Putting sunblock on them was confusing and sort of tiring. And we used a whole bottle in one day.

Annie and Bella. Badasses riding in the back of our minivan.

All of us.

Cece and Evie stuck in the stroller at the parade. We refused to take them out. Because we are mean and they are #3. We did, however, ply them with Dum-Dums so they were generally pleased.

Waiting for the parade.

We ran into some Dexter friends, including Annie's boyfriend Jack.

Then we went home to cool off and prevent heat exhaustion.

Lucy and Annie

Bella

It looks like Cece is crying, but she's not. She actually joined in Annie and Bella's silly game was laughing hysterically.

I will admit that there was one point where all six girls were naked and crying. I was running around getting towels, Callista had the big girls in the shower, and Matt and Jason had the four little girls in the tub. Literally, every child was crying and/or yelling. All four parents were laughing so hard at how ridiculous the situation was. And that's why I love the Puchmeyers.