Outer Banks [the beach part].

A few weeks ago we joined the whole Greer clan in the Outer Banks in North Carolina. Grandma, Aunts, Uncles, cousins, my parents and sisters were all there. It was awesome. There were too many great photos from this trip to overload a single post with so I'm doing this in parts. This is what I will call: the beach part. To say we liked the beach would be silly, we absolutely loved the beach, Caiden included. Actually most especially Caiden. For a kid that moves at one speed his 10 waking hours of the day, he was the most mellow beach child. He loved to play in the sand. He loved being buried in the sand. He loved being buried and playing with toys in the sand. He would literally sit in his hole and play all morning. It was the greatest babysitter. I've never seen him so content to just be still in my life. It was amazing. Now I need to move closer to the beach.

4th of July.

I dare say the 4th of July is my favorite holiday. This year was one for the books. We started our day by heading to the ward breakfast incredibly late. As in we pretty much missed all the food and Caiden jumped in the bounce house for about 5 minutes before it ended. Who can make it to a 9am breakfast on a Thursday that feels like a Saturday when you live a half an hour away? Caiden was sleeping in until after 9, usually waking up around 10, 10:15 so who am I to wake a sleeping baby? Sleeping in trumps pancakes any day in our house. Then we headed to the Outlets and let me tell you the deals were killer. We got a lot of goodies. The rest of the day was spent relaxing and eating (true Americans right there: shopping, eating, relaxing). After resting up we grabbed Miles' sister Halie and headed into Buckhead. They were having a fireworks show right outside of Miles' office. He works on the 33rd floor of the building so we grabbed some chairs and set up for the evening in his office. We played ping pong and talked until the show started. When we thought it was over we were all a little disappointed. We headed down to the car when we heard booming echo through the parking garage. The fireworks were not over and we could feel them pulsing through the structure. It was awesome. So we jumped in the car and drove up to the top to finish watching. Caiden was in heaven. The booming was so loud and the fireworks were great. He was smiling ear to ear. When they were over he said "mommy moy? moy peas?" He was busy recapping the fireworks show the entire way home. Perfection.

Peach Picking.

This last weekend we became true Georgians... we went peach picking. I feel this is the epitome of being from Georgia, although in reality I'm sure a majority of the people here have never been. Nonetheless we hopped in the car and headed to the orchards. We had a lot of fun! We picked a whole bucket full of peaches and a small bucket of blueberries and blackberries for $15! Killer deal. I've been eating peaches all week and they are delicious. Hands down greatest peaches I've eaten. I think we may just have to head back to the orchard for another round soon.

"Manny ball beam?"

When we were still living in Connecticut one of our favorite Saturday activities was going to Matthew's baseball games. Caiden would get so excited to go to "Manny's ball beam" and would yell and cheer and want to run bases along side him. When he wasn't cheering he was playing pirates with Michael or smothering Kaitlyn with kisses. Cousins really are the greatest friends. After Matthew's last game we played imaginary baseball and Caiden finally got to run the bases with Matty. Dreams do come true. Every time we pass a baseball field Caiden asks to go to "Manny ball beam?" and when we were at the Mets game Caiden was cheering "Go Manny Go!" Caiden can play t-ball next spring and I think we are all pretty excited for that!