Fun Indoors and in the Sun!

This week Daddy went to Tumbleweeds with us. He seemed to have had as much fun as Annabelle does! He got to see just how active she can be for 45 minutes straight! It's crazy how much she's able to do now that she wouldn't even try a month ago... I'm sure some of it is just being a month older and some of it is being familiar with the equipment. She's doing things like running on the trampolines (I could barely get her to walk on them before), climbing onto the kids' slide and going down it all by herself, and crawling up some of the stair-step type things and getting back down all by herself. She's also learning how to get down off of high things by going feet first (she's always been a head-first kinda girl). She still doesn't grasp things like the rings or bars enough to hang on them (actually, she doesn't even seem interested in them), I'm not letting her near the ladders (I do NOT want her learning that skill anytime soon... especially since we have that ladder up to the loft in our bedroom), and she doesn't try walking on the balance beams (she actually prefers walking over the ones that are close to the ground). She LOVES bubble-time at the class, and has started showing more interest in the interactive song time. Today she even tried to do a sommersault without any help! I'm sure it'll be a while before she's able to do that, but it's crazy that she's even trying that! It'll be interesting to see where she is when the semester ends in 2 months.

Friday morning Keith mentioned that many of our Harris (now Harris-Stratex) friends were going to be out at the beach playing volleyball and that Belle and I should go hang out at the beach with Halle and Nikki. So we did! :) We spent a perfect Florida beach day out on the sand, and had lots of fun. Both Halle and Belle really seemed to enjoy themselves, despite not having naps (neither of them napped until 7pm that evening!). They played together in the sand with their little sand toys and both girls tried getting their feet wet in the ocean. Halle seemed to enjoy the waves, but Annabelle was not such a fan. She liked to look at the "water" and the "bubbles" (the foam), but ran away every time she saw the water coming toward her. She did have lots of fun walking up and down the beach picking up shells and putting them into a pail that she was carrying with her. She started doing that without being prompted too... it was so cute! Both girls ended up eating lots of sand and I'm sure took a bunch of it home (I know Belle did!)! Belle kept me up and running around chasing her for most of the 4 hours that we were out there, but it was worth it to see the smiles.

Liz, Ella, and Erica came out and joined us for a little while. Ella even seemed to enjoy the sand during her first trip to the beach. Erica took lots of cute pictures of the girls, so I didn't have my camera out at then (plus, I think I got some sand into my old camera that I took out there). The girls had fun sharing their "puffs" for an afternoon snack, and Annabelle decided to ham it up and kept playing with her puffs by holding them in her teeth or lips and making funny faces.

After the beach, we headed to our friend Justin's place to have dinner and hang out with friends. I really miss hanging out with everyone, and it was great to spend time with them. It's funny how much fun you can have doing nothing (well... doing "nothing" in between chasing an active 14 month old around a non-baby-proofed condo). :)

Pictures of our day at the beach are up on our gallery and Nikki's pictures are up too. I've only seen a sample of Erica's pictures, but can't wait to see the rest!