Photo Dump

As the summer comes to an end, oh wait, its still 85 degrees here! Sweet. Here are some random end of "summer" pics.

Sophie and Navy started gymnastics:

 Beach Day!

Apparently this is more comfy than her bed:

Phil is all excited about the panoramic option on his new IPhone 5:

Our cute girls just being cute...

New Orleans: French Quarter

We had a few hours in New Orleans before we dropped Mary at the airport so we went to check out the French Quarter! It is not exactly family friendly but we found some fun souveniers at the French Market, ate lunch while listening to live jazz and ate french donuts at Cafe du Monde.

Pensacola Beach

Yes, this beach is an hour and a half from our house!

My dear friend Mary came to visit for the weekend and so we brought her here and had an awesome day! Phil dug a hole for my belly in the sand and it was just what I needed.

Caitlin's Pool Party

Caitlin turned 2 on Saturday! Since Ryder's birthday is 4 days after, we decided to have a double pool party. We had turtle cupcakes and presents and swam, it was perfect!

Biloxi Seafood Festival

We got caught in our first rainstorm. It comes down like crazy out of nowhere for about 5 minutes and then its gone as fast as it came! A nice man gave us an umbrella but we still got soaked.

The boys got to try alligator and ate a big basket of crawdads.

We Have a 5-Year-Old

Sophie turned 5 on Friday! She had a great day at school and loved all the attention and getting to wear the birthday hat all day. Since we already had her party in Boise, we had a small celebration with pizza and cookies and then went to a hands-on children's museum they have here called the Lynn Meadows Discovery Center. It was impressive and the kids had a blast. So glad the Crooks are here with us!

Sophie's birthday interview:

Hurricane Isaac

Well, we made it through a category 1 hurricane so I guess we've been initiated into the Gulf Coast now! At first we thought we would evacuate just to be safe, but then they tried to split up our family and make Phil shelter on base with all the other students. Luckily, they changed their minds and let him stay home with us, but we couldn't leave. The commander on base did not issue a mandatory evacuation so we trusted in him that he would not let us be in danger. But look how scary the satellite image was!

At first, the storm was going to hit us straight on but then THANKFULLY kept going more and more west.

Being less than a mile away from the beach though, I was seriously scared. The military housing we live in though was built after Katrina so the windows can withstand 140 mile an hour winds, etc. So, we just waited it out. It was actually kind of fun to just be home as a family for a couple of days but there were 2 nights of crazy wind and rain. I was worried about the tree right next to our house falling into it or possible flooding but we were blessed and made it without a scratch.

Well, there was one annoying thing. Because we put our stinky trash can in the garage during the storm, maggots took over! SO GROSS!

Here is the marina on base, pretty much underwater...

Here is Hwy 90 that runs along the coast, flooded. We drive it to get pretty much everywhere...

Here is our attempt at setting up the camera to get a family pic of us waiting out the storm: