The Carrington Family

The Purple Flash. Gracie in her butterfly fairy outfit doing wind sprints with her birthday balloons from Pat-Pat and Pocky.

Butterflies and ballerinas were the required wear for the party, not really, but it was cute for a minute! ;-)

Duke Park
Its feeling like fall already which is amazing and awesome. Alright, wishful thinking, I may be getting ahead of myself, but it is pleasant in the upper 80's without the heavy humidity. Maybe its just that it's not 110 here like it is in Texas, too... Glad life brought us this way out of the heat of this summer in Texas!

Sweet Gracie, taking care of all of her friends- stuffed animals to Baxter, dolls to baby sister.

Big-girl Gracie.
Those blue eyes... so pretty and so telling when she's feeling ornery.
Grace is determined to learn to read, soon!! She can recognize all of the letters of the alphabet, can count to 20, she has an entire library of books that she can 'read' (recite from memory) as well as many, many songs she likes to sing. Its fun to watch Grace's artwork evolve. She has been drawing 'self-portraits' which involve a huge head (accurate), small eyes, hair, nose, arms and a mouth that is a straight line across. No smiles here! It reminds me of some of the stuff we learned in peds nursing about kids' development and how they view themselves. Who needs a body anyways?!
Grace is very sweet about helping Lia, playing with her and its especially cute when she tries to intervene to help stop Lia's crying when she's upset. Of course its not all rosy... There are many times when Grace is the reason that Lia is crying as well. Sharing is a huge hurdle that she is going to have to overcome. As all of you out there with kids know, Grace could be playing intently with something but as soon as Lia picks up something (completely unrelated to what Grace is doing) Grace freaks out and runs over and takes it from Lia. And now Lia is old enough that she isn't going to just let it happen. Let the hair pulling begin!! jk!

9 years of this self portrait
August 24, 2011
How many different houses has this picture been taken? Let's not go there! ;-)

Way too cute! We went to UNC's campus to walk around one evening. Krispy Kreme on Franklin Street was calling Dan's name. Best $3.47 ever spent- and then the free hats for the girls. Krispy Kreme won though with our free advertising for them. All of the looks and the ooh's and ahh's, mostly from the college girls; I'm sure we drummed up some business for them :)

Where has the time gone?! I don't think I would have believed anyone if they would have told me the day Lia was born that we were going to be living in NC a year later. It is awesome to be back. We love our church and it feels so good to have friends over to surround us in celebration of our joy. Friday night after a little Mexican dinner, we went to the Tobacco District in downtown Durham and stumbled upon one of their backyard outdoor concerts. It was awesome. Grace was dancing and lots of other little kids were out running around and dancing too. I think Grace even had a mini-crush on a boy until he had to leave. Her wave to him said everything :)
I will be starting full time work right after Labor Day. It will be in the outpatient vascular surgery clinic for UNC. After having done 3-12's in a row just to get some hours as per diem on my old unit, there is just no way that would be an ideal work schedule for the family. I may as well have been out of town for those 3 days. I would get home just in time to help put the girls to bed. I know it was hard on Dan and it was for me too. I geared up for it and got through it but probably because I knew it was a one time thing and that we'd be going to the beach as soon as I finished.
Dan has 3 potential, promising prospects in the works. We keep praying and trusting God. The right thing will come at the right time. In the mean time we are learning patience and practicing faith and blind trust. Neither of us would wish this on anyone, but I must say it has actually been really liberating to learn how to surrender control. This life is so temporary and money means almost nothing to me anymore. Its like Malachi 3:3- God is refining us as a silversmith, and to make us our strongest, He must first hold us in the highest heat.

Lia was a delicate one with her cake 'smashing'. She went right for it and then couldn't shake the icing off of her hand and that seemed to bother her. She continued to inspect it with her 'hook' but she needed a little help from dad to get eating the cake. Trying to maintain her petite figure I suppose... :)

Feelin' the pressure of living up to big sister's cake smashing of 2 years ago.

Grace and Uncle Dickie

Jeremy, Meredith, Tyler & Avery

Grace, Emma & Zoe

Party People!!!

My two beach bums
Surf City, Topsail Island or Topsail Beach- Glorious!! Ron, Patti, Matt, Christy and the girls came out and we stayed in a beach house for a few days and celebrated the cluster of August birthdays. It could not have been more beautiful and perfect. The weather was more like Michigan than August in NC! And what an awesome beach house. When any one of us were on nap duty, there were lounge chairs on the top deck to lay out on or a hammock on the second level deck with a view of the ocean from either one. I cannot describe the feeling I had when I was in the hammock. I was so relaxed and yet I felt like I could explode with energy and happiness. I have to say that life always looks good from the vantage point in a hammock.
The beach was perfect for the little ones. Every afternoon after the tide has gone out, it leaves behind these awesome tide pools for the girls to splash and play in. The water almost looked like the color of the Emerald Coast of Florida, just with better waves.
We got to watch a sea turtle nest hatching. The full hatching had happened a night or two before and they were going back in to assess if there were any more stragglers or viable eggs left. They found 2 more little baby turtles that had hatched. Once the sun went down and it got dark enough, the two loggerheads made their way down the sand in to the ocean in the dark. Seems like a scary time to enter the huge ocean, but if they tried to make the run (stumble) during the daytime, a seagull or pelican might make them their lunch. They were each the size of my palm. So cool!

'Hmmmm, the world looks interesting this way...'
It runs in the family, I remember Grace doing the 'downward facing dog' yoga pose on the beach at Gulf Shores 2 years ago ;-)

The Grace and Tatum show. Inseparable, best of friends.

Sunset over the intracoastal off of the back deck

Sunrise on the first morning. Lia had me up early; I put her back to sleep and figured I'm already up, its gorgeous. I can always sleep later.

Lia and Pat-Pat

Me and my Li-Li

More of the Grace and Tatum show

reflections...

Look closely, Grace is buried in the sand, shaped like a car (its hard to see before I embellished it with shells.) My mom always used to do this for me on the beaches at Lake Michigan until it was no longer cool to get sand in your swim suit. Grace did not want to get up and ruin her car!

Birthday celebration for 3 out of the 4 Carrington cousins with August birthdays. 18, 19, 20 (me) and 26th. We cooked up a seafood feast; went to a seafood market 10 ft. away from the water. If the smell there didn't say fresh, I don't know what would. Shrimp, scallops and flounder, yummy!!!

The young, blond cousins

Riding the 'roller coaster'

We stopped by the playground on the ICWW on our way home and Grace scaled this rock climbing wall faster than the 6 year old girl next to her. Impressive!