In the neighborhood of beach houses we stayed in was a pond with ducks. We walked there a few times.
And fed the duckies.
Some of the kiddos ran out of bread pretty quick.
That's what happens when you throw in the whole piece, Cam Spam.
JJ must have heard something spooky whisper, "If you sit still, they will come."
And it worked!
(Remember that movie? Supposed to be uplifting but it terrified me)
I could not love this picture of Mack Attack more. I love her crazy hair. I love the gum in her mouth. I love her super awesome pajamas of the not yet a skank Hannah Montana. And I love that her shoes are on the wrong feet.
This brave duck took the food out of the kids' hands.
When The Spam picked up his "pretty feather" I stifled back my cry of, "Disgusting put it down!" I was proud of myself.
On the way back to the house we detoured through another pool in the community.
One of the gates from that pool led out on a sandy path. We followed that to the street and then went to the sand dunes behind the house.
Then The Spam had a melt down. So we ended our excursion on that high note.
On Thursday evening we took some family pictures. Some of them turned out really really good. . . and then others not so much.
These first three were great. Well with the exception of my two brat boys in the third one.
It seemed that my children were done taking pictures. They were tired. They were bored. And they were sick to death of having the camera aimed in their direction.
The more and more pictures I took, the less cooperative they became.
When we had to change from our black and white clothes into our teal clothes, they were officially finished.
They managed to hang on to their last single shred of self control--which wasn't much, if you take a look back at that smaller family picture--but when I wanted some of the three of them. . .
Little Miss kept shrieking.
And JJ kept eating her flower.
They stared off distracted at something. . .
And JJ kept making crazy face. . .after face. . .
after face.
Threats of extreme punishment did not help.
And The Spam was losing any alertness he may have had.
But I kept trying. Thinking, just one more shot. Just maybe the perfect one will come.
Until finally I just pushed one picture too much.
And The Spam had to resort to other methods to get me to stop.
And JJ's face says it all.
But I only had myself to blame. So I couldn't be mad. Even at this boy who physically could not have a normal face.
Angel Little Miss did fine. She loved sitting by her brothers and eating sand.
Except for when I tried to make her stop eating sand.
But she never stays mad for long.
So we didn't get a great huge frame-able picture of just us. But we got some memories.