SUMMER FUN!

As the saying goes, time flies when you are having fun. And FUN is what we've been having all summer. Jackson and I had a great visit home to Mville in celebration of Uncle Don's 60th birthday. Way to go Aunt Jo for pulling off a fantastic surprise party!

Upon our return, Eleanor, Jackson, and I celebrated Father's Day for Jason with breakfast at one of our favorite spots in Carytown, Can-Can.














When July arrived, we celebrated the July Birthdays with Jackson's pals, his included. I just love this one photo of us preparing to eat those yummy Elmo cupcakes made by Li. The combination of a 2 year old, a cupcake and a lit candle will certainly put you into a trance. Or as my friend Petra (in the green) said, it makes us look like some kind of cult. Another friend Morgan (in the red striped shirt) added "Every birthday we light tiny fires and offer cake to the Mighty Elmo, God of Toddlers..."




Later in July, Eleanor, Jackson, Jason and I traveled to NC to celebrate Jackson's 2nd and Poppy's 95th birthday. What a real treat it was to have a party for the 2 of them together.

We then headed further south to Pawleys Island for a week. Gosh, our trip to Pawleys was fantastic. We heard that the area is often referred to as "shabby chic", which is so appropriate. Our house was right on the beach which was a treat. Jackson absolutely LOVED the ocean and the beach. We all spent many hours driving dump trucks and digging holes in the sand together. Here are few of our favorite pictures. Be sure to check out Jason's surfing too! Pretty cool, huh!

Beach Trip #2, More Birthday Cake & Of Course More Fun!

After a fabulous week in HHI, we headed up the coast to meet Emmy in Emerald Isle, NC (part of the NC Crystal Coast in the Lower Outer Banks). We stayed in a great beach house --- oceanfront! It was so fun to walk right out of the house down our own private walkway to the beach. There were rocking chairs on our porch that we made much use of to enjoy the sights and sounds of the ocean. Jackson calmed down a little this week and didn't run quite so much at the beach. We think one reason is that the beach was pretty narrow in comparison to the SC beach. Plus he wasn't so overwhelmed with people because it was much more private than in SC. But he still loved running into the water! We found a great seafood market just a few miles away so we dined everynight on local, fresh seafood. YUMMY! We made cioppino for the first time too --- DOUBLE YUMMY - and drank lots of great wine, some from our CA adventures last year (Coppola Sofia, Pisoni)! Emmy made Jackson a dinosaur cake too for his official July 16th birthday which tasted so good. And he's quite intrigued with his new activity cube that Emmy, Jason and I gave him for his birthday, especially the bead maze and fun gears.