Highlights 2012....Part 1

 It seems that blogging went where everything else goes when I get pregnant....out the window.  I can't stand to sew, craft, read or cook while I am pregnant....I turn into a slug!  I was really sick and couldn't sleep to save my life during this last pregnancy and my blog was not on the list of things that really needed to happen.  So....I didn't blog for 9 months which has left a huge hole in my family history.  This post is my attempt to capture some of the highlights and things I want to remember about my family in the year 2012.  It was a hard year for me but life kept going on around me :)

I'll start off with Mother's Day. 

Emily has this long, beautiful hair but never lets me play with it! 

She let me do her hair on Mother's Day and I think it turned out really pretty.

While I was taking pictures of them, Carter said "Mom...look...so serious."

Yeah....you're so serious, Carter...HA!

Alec fell and needed stitches.  We ended up at the urgent care with some crazy Dr. from Russia who spoke in a very heavy Russian accent AN D whose breath smelled really bad.  

"He'll be fine...a little gravel won't hurt.  I have gravel in my knee." 

 "No really, Dr., I want you to clean  the gravel out of his face and put some stitches in,thank you very much."

Quite the experience!

 I like this picture because it discloses who the tease is at our house....

 

Don't worry....he doesn't take it....there is usually a pay back.

Aaron took the boys to the Father and Sons campout.  This was Carter's first time and he really thought he had done something.  So glad they could go and do that.

This is a picture of Alec's fifth grade class, in front of the Zoo, right before we went inside to spend the night.  That's right...I chaperoned "Snooze at the Zoo" (just barely pregnant and sick BTW...those smells about killed me!).  I slept by the lion encounter and listened to the roaring lions all night long.  Probably would have been fun had I not been pregnant :)

  

 In June we went to North Carolina to visit the Orchards. 

We spent a week on the Outer Banks in this beach house.....that's my family walking back from the beach.  All the beach houses have names and we stayed in "Banana Wind"

 We went to Kitty Hawk and stood where the Wright Brother's first flight took off.....

 

 Visited the lighthouse

 We took a ferry over to the next island (Orcacoke)...I had never drove my car out on to a boat before...kind of a weird feeling.....it was fun!

Looked for shells and other creatures.  We caught a firefly and put it inside a water bottle and Carter used it for a nightlight.

Had a hot dog roast on the beach...

 

Enjoyed the beautiful sunsets.

But we mostly just played on the beach. 

 

 I have a million pictures (seriously!) so I'll just put a few of my favorites here....

First time at the Atlantic Ocean.....

 

 

 Carter was just mesmerized by the crabs crawling everywhere (So was I!)

 He even found a crab leg and brought it home with his shell collection.

He recently took it to preschool for show-and-tell....he's very proud of his crab leg he found on the Outer Banks :)

 I love this sequence of pictures.....

They look so happy.......

Our trip to the Outer Banks was such a fun vacation!  It's a pretty unique place to go....haven't met many people in our part of the world who have been there.  I loved to tell people where we'd been and then watch their face....nobody in Boise knows where it is...I didn't either until my friend Jamie had moved out there...it was a chance of a lifetime and I would love to get back there again!