new pics posted

Hi - check out the gallery link to see photos from our vacation, this year's visit to see tractors, and some shots of Veronica's stay with us.

There are several stories to go along with these photos, but I'll just tell one. In the beginning of the vacation album, you'll see shots of the Berry kids along with our kids. Our vacation was just a few hours away from a dear friend's home in North Carolina, so they graciously piled their kids up and drove to see us at our beach house for a couple of days. We haven't seen one another in quite some time, and we'd never met their youngest. It was such a blessing to get to hang out again!

I suppose we were all rather presumptuous, in thinking that we could go on a sightseeing adventure with six kids as part of our visit. We went to the Cape Hatteras lighthouse. If you follow the pictures you may notice two types: pics from the lighthouse, and tired worn out kids. Well, it turns out that this is the tallest lighthouse in the United States and you can only climb it if you are 42" or taller. No child can be carried at any point either inside the lighthouse or up on the balcony at the top. Either you're big enough to walk it alone or you don't go. Ian made it only because his hair is so spiky right at the top. :-) So, Kelle, baby Roman, Sami (2), myself, and Caleb (21 months) decided we'd walk down to the beach and let the others go up to the lighthouse. Well, the only way to the beach is to walk the path where they moved the lighthouse a few years ago. You can see it in one of our photos. This is gravel and sand mostly, with some grass growing up in between. Some parts are all sand. It was a HOT day. Many of you parents may have also discovered that strollers don't go very well over sand. You are either carrying the stroller with child inside it (Kelle) or you are pulling it backwards behind you until you give up on it altogether and leave it by the side of the sand dune and go on (me). The upshot of all this was that Kelle and I ended up stranded on the sclading hot beach with three very unhappy babes, and Matt and I had mistakenly not transferred car keys to each other so he couldn't bring the van over even if he'd known that we were getting desperate. Kelle's cell phone died, and she didn't know where Michael or Mikey (her husband and older son) were at. What we really needed were about four more sets of hands, and vehicles to come pick us up! Everyone, Ian especially, had a blast touring the lighthouse, but of course that was tiring too. Eventually we all found each other and got everybody what they needed - no harm done in the end - but we had to laugh at ourselves. Why did we think we'd actually get to visit in this situation?? This is the silly illogical brain of the parent. I think it's just a defense mechanism. You go through this cycle of gearing up to believe that you can successfully get out of the house and enjoy things like you used to as long as you pack enough stuff. And once you've actually done it you realize, we went out, we did that, but we didn't actually get to relax or enjoy anything! So then you hole up for a while and only do fairly risk free (extremely kid friendly) activities, until you start to get that itch again and somehow you think, this time it will work. Even though the past 14 experiences have told you it won't, you just can't live holed up all the time!! Anyway it was really great to see the Berrys again despite this less than relaxing portion of our trip. :-)

Enjoy the pictures.