Our personal photo shoot!!!

Well, thanks to my fantabulous sister in law, Jill, and the talent she possesses with her camera, we were able to get some family pictures taken while at the beach. Our last family picture was taken before Christmas last year. It was one of those pictures where you hit the timer button on the camera and make a run for it and hope everyone cooperates. I was/am so pleased with how our pictures turned out. I love that Jill captured moments, as well as the "say cheese" poses. For example, here are a few "moments" Lydia had after losing a race to big brother.

The rest of these (warning, there are many) are in no particular order. I had a hard time narrowing it down to the ones that I did. Enjoy; I know I will for years to come. Thanks again, Jill! We love you!

Best Friends!
(Lydia had to pee and you can tell in the next 2 pictures...she's doing the potty dance).

I LOVE the pictures of Dan getting kisses from his girls!!!

Hey, that's a Jake pose, Claire!

I can't tell you how many times I've seen this at home! She is such a mama's girl.

'Beary' Happy

Ok...I know I promised some family pictures, which I am excited to share (and during which those first two pictures were taken), but I had to blog on my love/hate relationship with a member of our family. She's pink and furry and really doesn't do much. Unless you count bringing sheer delight on the face of a toddler doing something. Her name is Beary (creative, huh?) She's been Claire's BFF for almost 2 years now. Yes, I said BFF. Mommy's great, sissy's pretty cool, Daddy and Bubby make her laugh, but no one can match Beary! I love that Claire gets so much pleasure out of a stuffed bear, but here comes the hate part. You see, we had it worked out that Beary had to stay in her crib and go "nigh-nigh." She'd either drop her aimlessly or carefully tuck her under a blanket and that was that. She'd see her again at naptime and then again at bedtime. This eliminated the issue of ever having to find Beary and kept her fairly clean. Well...seems I am much the pushover mommy. Here's a common scenerio that occures in the Ernst household nowadays. We wake up, put Beary nigh-nigh, change diaper, and then go downstairs for breakfast. The mood of my almost 2 year old is usually pretty chipper in the mornings. The sun is shining, a tummy gets fed, all is well in the world. Fast forward to about mid-morning, oh, I'd say usually around 10ish. Claire starts to get whiney and tries to communicate some sort of jibberish. Her whine proceeds to turn into a cry. Maybe she's thirsty. Nope. She heads in the direction of the stairs to go to her room. When I get up there, she is in a full-blown, mad cry and there she is trying desperately to get her precious Beary out of the jail, er...crib. I've tried to reason with Claire, telling her that Beary needs to keep sleeping. But come on, the solution seems pretty simple. Give the poor child her bear. And so I reach in and give my little girl what will heal her woes in a matter of seconds. And that is how quickly the tears stop flowing...seconds.

*Here is a picture of Clairey and Beary September of 2007, when she used to stay in her crib.

More Beach

While on vacation, Dan and I celebrated 1o years of marriage (8/29). We were able to go out on a date one of the evenings (thanks, fam). I had wanted to go parasailing, but after reading about it taking some strength to pull off, I decided maybe this year was not the best time to go. So, we didn't really have a plan for the date, but it turned out to be a very fun and memorable time. We decided to stay close by and try out a local restaurant rather than drive a ways off to go somewhere we knew was good. We ended up going to The Smokehouse. Wasn't the best eating (at least for me), but the company was excellent. After supper, we went to the souvenir shop and got Henna tattoos. I got a dolphin on my ankle and Dan got a shark on his arm. I also found the hermit crab cage and we ended up leaving NC with some new pets after my newfounded interest in them. After this, we went to an area of the beach by the pier and layed a blanket down and talked and star gazed...they were beautiful! We half way joked about walking back to the beach house and then ended up doing so. It was longer than we thought (3 miles), but it was a good time of just being together (and counting crabs). I quit counting around 80 something....we had to have seen more than 200. There were so many. Finally, we arrived back and tried (but failed miserably) to scare the rest of the family inside who were playing games.
This is Lydia in the same hat she wore in 2006 (see next picture). She's growing up too fast. Time to pass the hat on to Claire (who hates hats).
Lydia - Topsail Island 2006

"Mom, I'm having so much fun, but...
all this beach stuff is wearing me out!"
Jake and Jack get burried!

Dan bought glow sticks for all the kids and they had a blast with them! This picture is with flash (obviously), the second one is not, but still a cool picture.
Jill snapped a few close up's of the Jakester...this one made me smile as it is the infamous tongue picture. Whenever Jake concentrates on anything, even sand creations, that tongue comes out. Maybe I'll dedicate a post just to Jake and his tongue pictures over the past few years. Araceli and Noelani having fun together in the ocean.
Boogie boarding was one of the favorite things to do this year. We had some great waves!
Beach Bums!

We clean up pretty well though.This was the last time we were all together. We went out to eat at Max's Pizza so we wouldn't have to clean dinner dishes the same night we had to pack. (sniff-sniff)

Just a sweet photo of Jill, Lydia, and Dan! Next blog, I'm gonna show some of the WONDERFUL family photos that Jill took of our family!!!