oh, and it's a boy

so, i realize i've been neglecting to share many important things on this blog. such as the sex of the new baby. IT'S A BOY!!!!!!!!!!!!! (in case you missed the giveaway title of this post.) we are very excited about it. i just forgot to tell everyone, because after i found out i forgot that i didn't just use my telepathy to instantly beam this information around the world, and then it became old news to me, and life just moved on without me telling anyone. so, consider yourselves told. better late than never.

also, pace's birthday has come and gone without any mention whatsoever. he did have a birthday, and he did turn 3, and we do love him. here are some shots of him getting his new strider bike (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED if you are looking for a bike for your 2-5 year old). pace can zoom around like crazy on this thing.
he requested chocolate pie for his birthday. it's what i had on my birthday, and i guess he thought it was pretty great. he is not a big fan of cake. i love watching kids open their presents.
and here are some pictures of a trip the kids and i went on with another family. we headed to the beaches a few hours north of here to explore them before the oil spill ruins them. i had to type it small because i'm hoping it won't really happen and i didn't want to jinx it by writing it big.

we went to 3 different beaches while we were there--all totally different from each other, and different from the beaches down here. we looked for fossilized shark teeth at one (and tried not to think about non-fossilized shark teeth finding us instead. the water was not as clear as we are used to and there were largish fish swimming around our feet, so it was harder than you might think to keep our imaginations in check. i might have even screamed a few times myself.) our hotel was right on a beach, and also had a swimming pool, which was heavenly, even though it was so warm it was borderline hot tub temperature. to give you an idea of the water temperatures there, even the ocean was 87 degrees. which is VERY WARM for water. we also went to a white-sand beach. heaven. the kids found some really fun shells and we had a great time.

now we are busy (BUSY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) getting ready to go on a 6-week long vacation that will take us (driving--ack!) all the way across the country to california (yosemite) and back. we leave this thursday. wish us luck! and if any of you are going to be in utah july 8th through the 15th let me know and maybe we can get together!

swim safety lesson

i've been getting nervous about living by all this water here in south florida so i've been doing "swim lessons" with pace every day in our pool. he's been doing really well (more videos of that to come later) and LOVES swimming. last night we decided to have a family lesson on pool safety. the main goal of the lesson was to help pace know what to do if he accidently fell in to a pool. he does really well swimming around with me in the water, but i was worried he'd panic if he fell in with his clothes on and everything without me there. i had all the other kids get dressed in real clothes and shoes and pretend to fall in the pool, then turn around and grab the side and go back to the steps. when it was pace's turn to "fall in" i got him dressed in clothes and a diaper and flip flops and helped him fall in to the pool. he was very pleased that he remembered everything he was supposed to do. he watched this video of it about 100 times today. the next water-safety step is getting him to be able to go from swimming on his stomach to floating on his back--he can almost do it, but it needs a little fine-tuning. anyway, that was a long explanation for a short video, but i promised pace i would put it on the blog and write all about it. he's standing right by me waiting for me to finish so he can watch the video again.