Exploring Our New Home

In the midst of unpacking a thousand boxes, figuring out where to hang our many many portraits of the kids, painting bedrooms and bathrooms, updating and organizing our new home, and in between trips to our little beach as well as Navarre Beach (or the "big beach" as we call it), dips in our pool, and homeschooling, we've made a few trips out to explore our area.
Our new base, Hurlburt Field, has an "airplane park" right at the entrance that I think we'll be frequenting often.

The boys have never lost that infatuation with having another baby in the house.  They love Anna and always want to hold her hand, or hold her, or talk to her, or have her look at them.  In fact, they argue sometimes over who gets to have her attention.  And of course, she has gotten to that age where she wants to do things on her own and gets upset sometimes with them for crowding her so much. 

Leah asked Gabe to carry her baby and this is how boys carry babies...

Anna, who is now 20 months, walked all the way around this airplane park.  I was pretty impressed, but she is pretty determined that she should do whatever her siblings are doing. 

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While it is true that many many houses in Florida come with pools, we still are so thankful that we have one in our backyard.  The kids are in it nearly everyday still.

Gabe has gotten really good at swimming, but he tries so hard to keep up with his big brothers and I have to remind him to rest because he looks so out of breath sometimes.

This is Leah "jumping" in the pool, trying to be like her brothers.  She jumps off the step that is already in the water.  You seriously could barely even tell she's doing anything, but we clap anyways because she thinks she is so cool. 

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My dad (Grandpa White) visited over Labor Day weekend for a week and while we were slowed down by Tropical Storm Lee, (yes, welcome to Florida; enjoy your first named storm!) we still mangaged to get out and do some fun stuff.  Lee hit west of us a ways, so while we had strong winds and lots of rain, there were no evacuations or anything here.

Labor Day weekend is terrible timing for lots of rain, so most of the events around here were canceled, but the Greek Festival in Fort Walton Beach was indoors, so we drove over there in between rain bands.  Greek dancing, Greek lunch, Greek dessert, and lots of vendors' booths to window shop at.  We had a fun time.

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And then one day, we went and got a close up look at the storm, crazy-people-on-the-Weather-Channel style.  We drove over to Navarre Beach to see how big the waves were and how hard the wind was blowing. 

(Again, the storm was pretty far west of us so we weren't in danger.)

There was plenty of space in between the bands of rain and Navarre Beach is only about ten minutes from our house.  The boys were excited to see the waves. 

The boys thought it was neat that they could lean back a little bit without falling because the wind was holding them. 

The girls did not like the wind in their faces.

Especially Anna.

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And then Lee went north to rain on already flooded New England states (lots of prayers going up for them!) and we went back to our routine.  Eat, swim, sleep.  Repeat.

The storm cooled off the weather and our pool water, but Grandpa got in one last swim with the kids before he headed back south.

Have a great week!