Swim Lessons

Mollie Grace and Annie began swim lessons July 5 and they lasted eight days.  Today was the final day!  Annie was pretty determined beforehand that she wasn't taking swimming lessons and I was worried they were going to be a disaster.  She ended up loving them.  She never fussed.  Her teacher's names was Mrs. Sue.  Mollie Grace could already swim the length of the pool and had passed the Y swim test.  However, she really needed help learning how to use her arms so she took a strokes class.  Her teacher was Mrs. Sandy and they worked on Freestyle, Butterfly, Backstroke, and diving.

 Blowing bubbles on the first day.

 Annie's class.  She was in the middle age wise.

 You can see how much smaller Mollie Grace is than the rest of her class.

 On Friday after swim lessons we made a quick trip to Nana and Grandaddy's house to see MV and Janey.  Ben and Janey performed a few songs before bed while Mollie Grace did tricks.

 Annie joined them for Jesus Loves Me.

 Annie's class went outside today.  It was a big deal that she jumped off the side by herself without holding Mrs. Sue's hands.

 That little black dot in Mollie Grace's head as she does the backstroke.  They swam and swam and swam in her class.

Ben had to hang out at the pool for two hours every day.  He wasn't allowed (by Y rules) to go to the outside pool by himself so when there was a free lap lane he would jump in and swim a while.

4th of July

Since the 4th of July was on a Tuesday this year, we didn't make big plans.  We had a fun time at home swimming in the backyard pool, eating homemade ice cream, and popping fireworks.  A big storm rolled in right about dark so we didn't think we were going to be able to do our fireworks.  All the big displays in the area were cancelled.  However, we were able to shoot a few in our backyard about 9 p.m.  Ben and Mollie Grace had shot fireworks with Cole on Monday night, so we invited him to our house for fireworks on Tuesday night.

Fireworks selfie.

End of June

Here are a couple of pictures from the last week of June.

 These two watered the garden by themselves.

Annie loves to build forts.

I let her nap in her for one afternoon.  She is sound asleep.

Topsail Day 5

Friday was our last day to go down to the beach.  Although there remained a double red flag, on Friday afternoon the waves were much calmer and we waded in the water a bit.

 After lunch we went to the pool for a little while.

 Mollie Grace jumped late on this shot.

 You can tell she didn't want to be left standing on the side in the next picture!

 Annie really wanted to fly a kite while we were at the beach.  We told her early in the week that we would fly the kite on Friday (once the winds from the storm had hopefully died down) so she kept saying, "Friday is Flyday."

Annie wrote her name in the sand all by herself.

We brought Annie's bike along with us but she rode on my bike down to the beach.  It's 3/4 mile ride.  On Friday after lunch she really wanted to ride her own bike.  We let John, Ben and Mollie Grace go ahead of us and made the slow trek down to the beach.  The shuttle driver passed us on a golf cart and told us he was running the shuttle soon.  If we didn't make it down there, he would stop for us.  We did not have to catch a ride on the shuttle, though.  Annie made it all the way down.  However, she still hasn't mastered braking.  When we arrived at the beach, I had to jump off my bike and throw it on the ground and catch her before she ran off the pavement onto the rocks and wrecked.  This picture is of us headed back to our campsite.  I think pedaling back was probably harder because she was tired from the ride down followed by an afternoon at the beach.

Saturday and Sunday were travel days.  We left Saturday morning and headed back to the hunting camp where we spent the night.  Sunday morning we drove home.

Topsail Day 4

Thursday we spent a lot of time playing in the sand.  There was a double red flag and law enforcement patrolling the beach to make sure no one went into the water.

 Ben and MV made Annie a mermaid tale.

 Ben built a sand race car.

 Thursday night we got to roast hot dogs and marshmallows on the fire.

Little girls with Jim.

Topsail Day 4

 After 36 hours of rain we were ready to get out of the trailer.  Even though it was still drizzling, we decided to ride our bikes to Flower Nose Lake.  I believe it's really called Campbell Lake.  We call it Flower Nose Lake because that's where Mollie Grace stuck a flower in her nose when she was about 3.

 After lunch the rain stopped completely and we decided to ride down to the beach.  The wind was blowing hard and pounded sand against your skin.  It was pretty uncomfortable.  Annie, in particular, didn't like it.

  The beach is a weird, eerie place immediately following a tropical storm.  The tide was high, the water was rough, and the sand was packed tightly.  John compared it to the surface of the moon.  You can tell by these pictures that there weren't too many people who ventured down right after the storm.  As the afternoon progressed, more people came down.

 We did a lot of walking up and down the beach.

Jim, Fran and the girls joined us in afternoon.  They rented a cabin Wednesday through Saturday.

 Ben's monkey sand castle.

 John and Jim grilled outside but the rain started back up and sent us inside.

S'Mores made in the microwave.

Topsail Day 2

And sometime in the night Monday, Tropical Storm Cindy blew in.  It rained for about 36 hours straight.  We played board games, put together puzzles, and went to the movies.  Cars 3 came out a few days earlier and Ben really wanted to see it.  We headed to the theater for the 1 p.m. showing only to find that it was sold out.  The movie theater was packed with beach goers who couldn't go to the beach.  We bought tickets for the next available show which was at 5:30 p.m.  We all really liked Cars 3.