The Dirty Dozen

Oh, this crew.

I am so thankful for The Cousins. 

With clusters of boys and girls, there's always someone fun to play with and they all get along so well.

Here's to family!

Fishing with Grandpa

Fishing with Grandpa is a given, at least to these kids.

They equate Mississippi with ponds, but the drought left our regular fishing hole dried up so we had to change venues.

 
The upside was a boat;

 the downside was that these fish aren't quite as desperate as the ones the kids were accustomed to "catching." 

 Jonathan got a large mouth bass right at the start then the catching slowed down considerably.

 
And despite my fears and reservations, Doug managed to take all the kids out on the water without anyone going overboard (I was the sole landlubber).

 

While the fishing wasn't great, there were also small frogs to catch which was ever so exciting.

All-in-all a good day to be out by the water.

Thanksgiving Antics

What a beautiful day to celebrate Thanksgiving!

 

It's always good to be out-of-doors and this wild crew had plenty of energy to use.

There was biking and basketball,

races on foot and on bike,

swinging and shooting,

working up an appetite for a lunch time feast.

Beach Trip 2016

We finished up our first 6 week period of school and headed to the beach to celebrate!

A dozen kids at the beach doesn't sound particularly relaxing but it's become easier over the years.

Boys don't use plastic shovels.

These boys wasted no time in constructing various cities out sand and incorporating their knowledge of history in making a ziggurat, a nazi concentration camp (we just read The Hiding Place) and many other imaginary dwellings.

The upside of arriving just after a hurricane passes through is the sealife (death) washed ashore.

I never knew there was a pink stingray but we found two in addition to jellyfish, a huge horseshoe crab (and parts of many others) and a fish.

Then there was the living: crabs both small and big(ish).

Another highlight was the beach reclamation project going on just down the beach from us.  Another blessing of the hurricane is that work had to be halted temporarily and thus they were not able to make as much progress as projected (meaning we were not displaced or inconvenienced).

Every morning the trucks rumbled along delivering fuel tanks to the squad of bulldozers spreading the sand that was being pumped from offshore.  There must have been some sealife along for the ride because the seagulls treated the worksite like an all-you-can-eat buffet.

I know in my mind that all my children were along for the trip, but sadly, I only have a few pictures and those mainly of the girls.  I forgot my camera charger and had to rely on my phone, but really it was just that I was always busy handing out snacks to hungry diggers and there was little time for photography.

  

The school bell's a'calling - time to head back to real life!