Things I’m Loving Friday #376

Good morning, my friends! How are you doing today? I hope you had a good week and, for those of you who may have taken advantage of the long weekend to enjoy some time away, I hope you are feeling rejuvenated and relaxed!

While we are definitely enjoying our time away in Florida, to be honest, I can’t say we’ve been relaxing too much. I suppose that’s why they call travel with kids a “trip” and not a “vacation,” right? Ha! Thankfully all of the activity we’ve been enjoying is fun stuff — lots of beach time, pool days and sunshine!

This week’s Things I’m Loving Friday post includes some highlights from our Florida trip so far so if you’re interested in seeing a little bit about what we’ve been up to over the course of the past week, scroll on down!

Things I’m Loving Friday

Celebrating the Fourth of July

We wore our red, white and blue and celebrated the Fourth of July at my brother-in-law’s cousin’s house! He has such an awesome setup for kids (they have three of their own) and our boys loved swimming in their pool, petting their donkey and goat and fishing in their pond.

Earlier in the day, a boogie boarding crash resulted in a bloody nose and quite the fat lip for Chase, but all of that was forgotten the moment he netted two huge catfish in the pond. Ryder was all about paddle boarding with Ryan and Rhett was all about diving face-first into some of Uncle Ross’ bean dip with me. Yum! We rounded out the day with dinner and fireworks at my parents’ place. The big kids thought it was so cool that they got to stay up so late!

Beach Days

The beach is the place to be for our boys these days! It never ceases to amaze me how our boys can spend hours upon hours at the beach and never get tired of the sand, sun and surf. Chase loves searching for creatures and sprinting among the waves, Ryder loves playing in the sand, boogie boarding and following Chase and Rhett sets off on a super fast crawl straight for the crashing ocean waves the minute we put him down!

Family Time

It’s so wonderful to see our boys with their grandparents, aunt, uncle and cousins. We’ve all been especially entertained by the dynamics between the baby cousins, Colette and Rhett, because they are infatuated with each other but lack any self control so there’s been a lot of face grabbing and pacifier stealing among the youngest members of our crew. My parents constantly talk about how incredible its been to go from zero to five grandchildren in five years and having all of us together is, without a doubt, the thing I’m loving most this week.