Mommy is a professional during the day

At work, we took professional pictures. Here is mine.

Who is this put together woman?

Unfortunately, this is what I normally look like.

Maybe I should start wearing a suit all the time! Maybe I should wear makeup! Maybe I should brush my hair. Dang, that seems like a lot of work. Maybe I should just grab a cute kid anytime someone has a camera so that the focus is on them instead of me. Good thing I have three kids. I like that plan the best.

My Hat

I bought a hat before we St. Thomas. It was really cheap but I thought I needed it. After that, I feel that the hat took on a small life of its own.

It started out calm enough, as Jen and I took turns wearing the hat around the resort. Then it went out with us most nights. As I looked at the pictures, I was shocked to see how many of our vacation pictures had the hat in them. Yes, we talked our new friends into wearing the hat too. I hope we asked them, but I bet we forced them into it. Yes we made them take pictures with the hat on. As some point, we decided that the hat was my punching hat. I never actually punched someone but Jen was nice enough to act out the punch for me. Turns out that I don't need kids around to act juvenile.

St Thomas- Part 2- We're on a Boat!

The best day of our vacation was out on a boat. We had so much fun eating, drinking and snorkling. I swear, all of my break outs on my face went away when we were out on the boat. Too bad they came back when I got back to real life.
Here we are with the boat captain. I am sure he was sick of it by the end of the day but he hid it well.
Here is Kevin as the king of the world...just like Titanic.
Here is Jen trying to stay out of the sun. She moved spots constantly.
Here is me trying to get more sun. I switched spots with Jen willingly.
Here is Matt taking a picture of himself. He had the best time on the boat. He did throw Kevin off the boat for fun one time. In his defense, the boat was stopped.

We met new friends, two newly weds on the boat. We coaxed them into going out with us the next night.
We wanted to go out the same night, but we just couldn't. We were still living it up in the car ride home. I went to bed at 9:30 that night, which is still later than I stay up at home.

St Thomas Part 1- The Recap

We got away (escaped) to St Thomas for five days with our friends Jen and Kevin. We had an awesome time. Here is a recap of our trip in pictures.

Did you know they drive on the left side of the road in St Thomas? I found that out as soon as I got behind the wheel of our rental car. I think that is why Kevin wanted to drive most of the time. Thanks Kevin!

Matt was also happy that Kevin drove. It kept Matt and me from fighting about the other one's driving.

There were beautiful views from our hotel.

There were also iguanas at the hotel. They were very fast and would show up when we were walking around. We dubbed them EEEE-iguanas because we screamed when we saw them.

Every day we put on our bathing suits and ate a big breakfast before we went to the beach.

Each night we got dressed up and went out. We danced, we drank, we ate lots of fresh seafood. Here is one of the only pictures of all of us. I made them take 4 of them before the timer worked correctly.

Here is Jen and me dancing a bar that was really just a parking lot.

Here is Matt dancing with Kevin.

Best of all, Matt and I remembered that we really like each other.

That's One Happy Harper

Harper has been enjoying a quiet week at home while the big kids are spending the week with Papa Tim and Shay Shay. She is trying to crawl but she doesn't have the forward motion down yet. No rush Harper. I like that you stay where I put you.

After Harper goes to bed at 7:30, our house is quiet....too quiet. I miss those loud, inquisitive kids.

Our Beach Trip Captured on Film

I was having such a good time at the beach with the family, I forgot to take pictures. We spend an entire week playing in the ocean, building sandcastles with Uncle Thomas, walking to the turtle nest down the beach and deafening my parents and siblings with the loudness that are my children. Thank goodness Will and Abby stepped up to record a few of these memories.

This first picture is a classic. I like this picture of all the shoes still sandy from the beach. This next picture is Abby's take on that classic. Here is her dirty clothes pile, still sandy from the beach. Not sure what they were going for with this next one. This is Harper's pack-n-play.

And this is a part of the dresser at the beach house.
Thank goodness Matt took the next picture. It is a good picture in its own right. In comparison to the other pictures, it is so good, I might even print it off and frame it.