(Large picture post . . . just a warning!)


This cute baby is the reason we took our little trip last weekend. Her name is Lydia.

She's our Goddaughter.  This weekend was her baptism. She and her family live in Alabama for a year while her daddy completes his vicarage.  They are some of our good friends, and we had a blast visiting with them!

We packed up the family and drove down on Friday. I have to say, borrowing someone's portable dvd player helped a lot! Google maps said the drive was 10 hrs, with stops, it took us 12.


We packed in like Sardines and took off for the coast!




We arrived at our destination too late Friday night to do much of anything except go to bed.

Saturday, however, held a huge treat for us.

We met some of the nicest people around, and they let us stay in their house. When you come with 6 people, four of which are ages 9 and under, it's nice for people to let you stay with them. And maybe dangerous. But mostly nice.


They had a huge Theater room, where the boys watched Mickey Mouse Club Saturday morning, while Steven slept in, recovering from the drive.


Dorrel, who insisted the boys call her "Meme", pushed them on the swing in the gazebo, and slid down the stairs with them on her butt.  She and her husband Byron made us all feel welcome, and at home in their house.

Making new friends is a nice bonus!

Later on, we decided to head over to Dauphin Island. We plan to go back sometime next spring, but the boys (and me) have never really been to the ocean. So, we couldn't pass up that opportunity!

Our first stop on the island was for lunch. We were hungry (why did I write that sentence? Would we have stopped for lunch if we weren't hungry?). Steven had a soft shell crab Po'boy that he says might be one of the best things he's ever eaten.




We had to take the boys picture next to the "Crusty Crab" sign inside. I had a better picture than this one but I accidentally uploaded the wrong one. So you get to see the one where Thomas is acting weird, Isaac's trying to get away, Eijah's trying to hold Isaac in place, and Alex is smiling in a very creepy fashion.

Then, we were off to the beach.




(Are you coming Mom?? We're in a hurry!)









We thought, hey, we'll roll  up their pants and let them get their feet wet. It is after all, their first time to the ocean.









Then, wet spread to the legs of the pants.







And stuff like this started to happen:


You can't really blame them.



It was all very tempting.





Shirts came off.



People couldn't even hold up their wet pants.





Everyone was happy.


Even us.

While we were there, Alex found a good size shell.  Jennifer said, "wow! That's big enough we could baptize Lydia with it!" And I said, "hey, do you want to?" and she said, "Yes!". Thus was born a new tradition. Baptizing with the shell Alex found at Dauphin Island. I have to say, that's pretty cool.


If you look on the side of the baptismal font, you can see the shell.

After all that, we drove home Sunday afternoon. We got home sometime between 12 and 1.

I'm glad to be home, but at the same time, it was the kind of trip that didn't exhaust me. If anything, I'm sad that this week brings us back to everyone going off to school and work for large chunks of the day. It was really nice for it to be just all of us together.

I think that means it was a good trip.

One Halloween, an unlikely group of fellows set out to inspire fear in the general public, and rob them of all their treasure.  In this band of fellows, were  Snake Eyes and Duke (am I saying that right?) from GI Joe, a pirate, and a skeleton.  Of course.

Here's the skeleton with his mask on:

The skeleton wore his mask for a terrifying 2.1 seconds.

 
The Duke, Getting ready to do some, well, whatever it is that he does.


Snake eyes, possessed innate ninja skills (inherited from his stealthy mother, of course) which came to light when he was almost invisible in all the pictures and managed to evade a single shot of himself.


This pirate hangs with an odd group friends. His Grandmother said we should dress him in silk all the time. He IS a dashing fellow.


Once people started putting candy in Isaac's pumpkin, he would not let go if it, no matter how heavy it got. that was HIS candy!

Scary yard decorations: Not a problem for him.


He also had a chauffeur.
When all was said and done, who ended up with the most booty? The pirate, of course.