Applesauce Alphabet

I think I am up to date! We did alphabet lessons in our applesauce today. I think David likes learning at home.

Lia belly

I was asking Lia to show me her belly a few mornings ago. I know I'm her Mommy, but that belly is just about the cutest thing I have ever seen. See for yourself.

Blanket Forts

We have been building blanket forts in David's room by using his desk chair, bed and drawers. I got in with him to take this picture. The blanket has some loose strings... it was David's idea to suspend his little ninja guys from the roof. Creative kid. Thank you Nana for the toys. You can see he is making good use out of them. This picture, and David's look of pride... remind me of when he first got his bed back in April of 2008.

Emily lost her 1st tooth! August 21

We were eating pizza for dinner and Chris noticed Emily's tooth looked kind of funny. Emily realized it was loose and it came out shortly there after. She was very excited! There are a lot of kids at school losing teeth too!

Emily's 1st Day of School, Wed Aug 19

Very Exciting! Here she is all ready to go to first grade!

Joe and Jackie's Wedding, August 15

After our beach trip, Chris had to fly to Thailand for work but made it back just in time to go to Austin for my cousin's wedding. Joe and Jackie got married in Austin at the University Christian church. Their reception was at The Texas Union so we were able to take some pictures in front of the fountains. It was very hot!


Future Longhorns.

Mom and Dad were the only ones cooperating here.

My cousin Tony and Lia. Love this picture!

A little Monkey Business? Max fits right in with our family.

A little Y-M-C-A?

The Nelli Bye Bye, Sun Jul 26 (Travel Day)

We left the beach on Saturday and spent the night at Nonna and Pop Pop's house. Here they are givng us the traditional 'Nelli Bye Bye'.

"Bye Bye", "Bye Bye", "Bye Bye"
***Imagine this very very loud with arms waving up and down. I guess I should have taken a video!

Beach Trip, Fri Jul 24 (Ice Cream Social & Fireworks)

Our last day on the beach... It is always celebrated with ice cream, fireworks, and hugs goodbye.


Here is David playing 'Come Back Ball'... You throw the ball in the ocean and wait for it to come back.

Lots of kids in the sand. There is a fish in that yellow bucket.

Emily got a hold of Dale's guitar at the ice cream social.

Nonna and Pop Pop are serving all the kids.

Our beloved Uncle Crab. Watch out for the pinches!

We can't wait till next year!

Beach Trip, Thur Jul 23 (Men's Luncheon, Ladies Night, Make-Up Party)

It is too bad I can't be in more places at once. A lot went on this day and I only have pictures from my perspective... and I only took a few! Anyway, we spent the morning on the beach which was enjoyable as always. The 'big' event for the day was the men's luncheon. It is held at our beach house and all men over the age of 21 are invited. It is a really big deal to them. No women are allowed inside... there is no telling what goes on at these things! One thing is for certain, the men take it very seriously and look forward to it every year. A lot of wine, fine cheese, italian cold cuts, and cigars go into making this a very enjoyable time for the men... or so I've heard.

So while our house was occupied, Emily spent some quality time with Ainsley and I took the little ones out for lunch. We ate at the restaurant by the pier and I had their crab and avocado panini. What a treat for us. We weren't the only ones with this idea. Carol and family were their as well. I'll have to brag on the manager. He came by with a Spiderman coloring book for David and a Littlest Pet Shop one for Lia. Nice touch.

We walked out on the pier after lunch. David and Lia held hands and looked very sweet. David was very excited to see all the people fishing. He was also lucky enough to witness a very exciting event.... read on.

When we got to the end of the pier... where the serious people fish... there was a lot of excitement amount this shark that you really can't see very well in the picture below. However, it was a 4 foot shark. It was bigger than David! The guys tried to get it into a net but it broke the line and got away. It was very exciting! If David ever goes fishing with Daddy, he may have unrealistic expectations!

I don't have any pictures, but after the men's luncheon, the ladies go out to eat. This is a nice treat for us! It is always nice to dine out!

And the next really fun tradition is make-up night. The teenage girls put make up on their younger cousins and do their hair and nails. What makes it even more fun, is they then let the little girls do their make-up in return. I'll post some pictures from this when I get them from Caroline's website. They will say copyright on them but you'll get the idea. And yes, I plan to purchase prints from her...

Beach Trip, Wed Jul 22 (Kids cooking party, Chris's Bday)

At our house Nonna was having her traditional kid's lunch... This is the lunch where she makes something out of the ordinary to see if her grandchildren will eat it. Only the really "good" eaters get invited to this lunch. This year I believe it was Jed, Olivia, Christopher, and Charlotte. The 'surprise' menu item was frog legs and I heard everyone ate them and said they were good. The best to date was the year she made chicken feet soup...

So our crew, Emily, Anisley, Analiese and Lia got to hang out at Kristen's beach house. Chef Stacey arranged for them to make cookie pizzas. There were no complaints here. Stacey is melting the chocolate chips here and adding to the sweetened condensed milk for the chocolate sauce.

Now the girls are adding the toppings to their cookie pizzas.

And yes, it was YUMMY!

Nonna had a turtle cheesecake for Chris's birthday. Lia is helping him blow out his candles. We love the year's we get to celebrate his birthday at the beach.

Dale and Pam arrived Wednesday night as well. They stayed with Jamie and Kathy across the street since they had extra space this year. Here they are with their daughter Caroline.

Beach Trip, Tue Jul 21 (Italian Night)

Another great day on the beach. Thank you to Pat for taking these great shots of our family!

I like this shot of Emily walking to the ocean. She was sporting the cutest pig tails.

Here is my big girl... she liked to sit at the bar like the big kids. She is having her breakfast here.

Tuesday nights theme was Italian Night. Tom and Cortney hosted a pot luck dinner at their beach house. Steven and Stacey made this delicious pasta with chicken and brocolli. Don't they look sweet working as a team here? Nonna taught me a thing or two about baking italian sausage in the oven with peppers and onions. You just remove the casings from the sausage (hot is the way to go), chop up some bell peppers and onions and bake at 350 for about 30 min. Delicious! Chris and I wrapped cherry peppers with proscuitto and parmesan cheese for our part. There was tons of food at the party and Cortney outdid herself again with the amazing desserts. We were certainly well treated that night.

Tom played the Italian mob very well with his forehead curl. He looks kind of scary with those scissors... He was actually opening up the flavor ice pops for the kids. ;-)

As for the puzzle, our home team finished it but found they were missing one piece. They were happy to finish but a little dissapointed about that one piece... At the end of the party, Daniel admited he swiped the last piece just to get a rise out of everyone! So here is the completed puzzle we were so proud of.

I'm hoping I can find a Texas one like this. It was awesome!

Beach Trip, Mon Jul 20 (Game Night)

My goodness, with all the interruptions, and my inability to quickly adjust to routine changes, I may never get this beach blog done. I'm going to have to put in some serious overtime to get caught up!

The most beloved Long Beach tradition has to be running the races. With 21 grandkids, and their friends, and some adults running for candy, we draw quite a bit of attention. Pop Pop is seen here marking off the finish line in the sand. He is wearing his famous referee shirt.

Here is David running his time trial. All the kids are timed in the time trials so that they can be paired up with a similar runner for the relay races. A funny little story... I was trying to get David all pumped up for his first time trial. I told him if he ran really fast that smoke would come out of his legs. I think he believed me... his first run he kept checking behind him for smoke! This was quite funny, but slowed him down quite a bit! He told me he didn't see any smoke... I think he was disappointed.

And here is our Emily -

Nonna picked out an awesome 1000 piece Historical North Carolina jigsaw puzzle. You can see our home crew hard at work here.

And here is everyone for games. This was some sort of trivia game and let me tell you... the Nelli crew take game night very seriously. Frozen concoctions were provided for the adults and they were mighty tasty too!

Beach Trip, Sun Jul 19, Pizza on the Beach Night

We were all excited to hit the beach on Sunday morning. Chris and I were especially happy with the cool weather. We were happy to leave the 90/100 degree weather back in Texas! Here is David checking out the tide pools. The beach provided an awesome 'kiddie pool' this year.

There were lots of toys so Lia was very happy!

And here is Emily catching her first boogie board ride!

To wrap up a very fun day, we had pizza on the beach! Sweet Cortney took orders for all the families and coordinated a massive Domino's Pizza delivery. Here is everyone enjoying their pizza.

David really likes pizza!

And check out cool Pop Pop!

Lia told me... "I really like the beach!"