Santa Rosa Beach, Florida

AAHHHHH! Vacation!

We had such a wonderful time. We left st. louis on Friday morning, the 20th and stopped in Greenville, Alabama to stay the night in a hotel (we couldn't have the beach house until saturday afternoon-but didn't want to waste and entire saturday driving). we woke up early saturday morning and headed to the beach, we got in around noon and the cleaning ladies had just arrived so we went to lunch at this great restaurant recommended to us by friends called Stinky's Fish Camp. fabulous food and the best desserts around!-we were stuffed from lunch but ordered desserts to go-which later became our dinner. chris had the key lime pie, my mom had the organic strawberry pie, and i had the bread pudding (covered in caramel sauce)

this vacation was so relaxing, we planned nothing, just woke up in the morning and went with the flow....unlike when we went to disney 2 years ago and set our alarms so we could be the first in the parks! this was wonderful, we grocery-shopped on saturday evening and discovered all kinds of fun shops and stores along the way to visit later in the week. every morning i got up and went for a run on the beach and came back to find everyone else starting to stir....chris always made breakfast and after breakfast we headed out to the pool so the kids could swim and we could relax and read. we only had rain 1 morning, so we headed to the outlet mall in destin for a morning of shopping. Bradley checking out the pool below-we had our own pool which was wonderful!

Lainie in one of her many swimsuits!

I decided to give Tristan a haircut when we arrived, so before swimming I buzzed his hair!

Every evening after dinner we rode our bikes up to our beach access and went for a walk on the beach and looked for shells-there aren't many in that area. All week long the purple flags were flying-we soon came to find out that it meant there were a lot of jellyfish in the area-so many that chris scooped one right out of the ocean with a net to show the kids what to look for so they wouldn't get stung.

After i cut tristan's hair, lainie decided that she wanted her hair cut also, so, after our morning of building sandcastles, and swimming at the beach, my mom, lainie, and i rode our bikes in to the little town square of shops and found a fabulous salon called Kindall's and Kindall gave Lainie a fabulous hair cut. she did a really great job and lainie and i were very pleased!

Pre-haircut!.....Before....

........After........
SOOOOOO Cute!


To end out the week we fished from the beach and Bradley caught a few crabs, and took the usual pictures on the beach (my other camera has all of the pics, but i took black and white with this camera) and i decided since everyone usually wears white, i wanted to change it up and we wore navy blue. i think they turned out well!

Birthdays, Concerts, Rascall Flatts & Father's Day!

It has been so crazy busy around our house lately....we had the kids last week of school (volunteer appreciation breakfasts, field day, last minute field trips, and DARE graduation)...i have not had a chance to update this blog forever. let me fist start out and wish bradley a very belated happy birthday! he turned 11 on june 8th. i don't have the pictures from his party yet, but i will tell you it was great fun. we had family over in the afternoon for cake and ice cream, and then in the evening we had his "friend" party (i.e. 13 5th grade boys AND girls!). it was so much fun...we grilled out hot dogs and brats and turned our backyard into a big outdoor movie theater. after cookie cake and presents-and when it was just about dark-we started the movie. chris brought a projector home from the office, we hung a giant tarp on our swing set, started a bonfire in the fire pit and set up chairs in the yard....i decided that this generation had not been introduced to all the great movies of our time, so we showed Back to the Future. only 2 of the girls had seen it before...hello parents?....they all loved it and couldn't wait to see the sequels!...i didn't have the heart to tell them that they were not as good as the first. as the movie was showing i passed around popcorn and big boxes of movie theater candy...it is really hard to plan a "themed-party" for a soon to be teenage boy-but this backyard theater was a hit! we had s'mores after the movie and all of the girls were picked up around 10:30, all of the boys spent the night.

on another note, we have been crazy busy hopping from one baseball game to the next..we are becoming very familiar with all the baseball fields and which one has great concessions around the st louis area!

bradley takes pitching very seriously! he pitched a fantastic first 3 innings! in the first, he struck out the side (for those not familiar w/baseball lingo that means he struck out the first 3 batters in a row)

lainie got a hit every time she was up to bat!

doesn't lainie look so excited to play outfield!

this past friday night we took all of the kids to their first official concert (bradley has actually been to many) but tristan and lainie have only been to hannah montana, the cheetah girls and the jonas brothers-so i don't really count those...and no we did not pay $500 a ticket for hannah montana, we got very lucky and a friend offered us tickets the day before the show-awesome seats and a good price!...anyway, back to rascall flatts. they were at the verizon wireless ampitheater and taylor swift opened up for them. i have to tell you that chris surprised me for my birthday with rascall flatts tix back in september and we ended up having 4th row seats...we were so close i could've touched them!...this time we had lawn seats and chris payne and taylor went with us. the logan's (bradley's good friend's family) went with us too! it was soooo much fun and an incredible concert! taylor swift was great, but rascall flatts were incredible!...they are one of my favorite bands, but i have to say they not only sounds great in concert, they just put on an incredible show. i told chris after the concert that i think i could become a rascall flatts junkie and just start travelling around following them from venue to venue to see them perform-chris payne agreed! we just had so much fun and the kids had a blast!

Finally, a big Happy Father's Day to my wonderful husband chris. our children are so blessed to have such a fantastic, loving father. happy father's day to all the dad's out there!

i have some catching up to do!

well happy belated mother's day to all of the wonderful mothers out there (to children or to animals as sometimes children can be animals!) lainie's dance recital was the best yet...her teacher miss marilyn amazes me year after year, we had about 175 girls in the brentwood dance school this year from the ages of 4-seniors in high school, and she put together an incredible recital this year with 29 dances including the finale. i'm hoping to upload lainie's dances so you can see them! for now pictures will just have to do!

the first dance that lainie was in was called "no strings" it was a ballet set to a techno-beat of a little girls singing "i got no strings....to hold me down" (imagine the song from pinnochio-only techno) the older dancers brought them out on stage with their "strings" and as the song went on their strings came off and they danced on!

lainie's 2nd dance was called "shoo fly pie" it was tap and it was sure cute-the song was one of those that you get in your head and you can't get out-so you sing it for days! the costumes were cute and they all had mixing spoons and wooden spoons. the last picture lainie was looking to miss marilyn for direction-her green bow had just fallen off of her shoe-little wardrobe malfunction during the dance-she handled it well and went on. i have to show you this one last picture, miss marilyn always has a little boy come and join one or two dances for recital-last year one of tristan's friend was the boy (imagine danny zukko from grease) in the leader of the pack dance of lainie's...so this year a different boy was the role of elvis in "blue suede shoes" and also mc hammer in "can't touch this" tristan really took a liking to the role the boy played and i have to say that tristan has some moves, SOOOOOOO, guess who may be taking dance next year-he doesn't have to take it all year to be in the recital, but tristan has decided he may want to take it anyway!...it makes me laugh so hard-he does not want to do ballet-and i really thought chris would have a problem with it-then i reminded him of how his mom made his brother wes take dance and i have to say at wedding receptions wes has got some moves on the dance floor that the other brothers lack! enjoy!

a stroll down dance recital lane!

as lainie finishes her 4th year of dance and the big recital is coming up this weekend i thought it might be fun to take a look back at costumes of the past! i don't have a digital image of the costume from her first year of dance-in 2005- she was in mickey's mambo..and was it cute! just imagine a red, flared-skirt with big white polka dots and a huge yellow bow in her hair! hopefully i'll get a picture soon! in 2006, since she was an experienced dancer, she was picked to dance in 2 dances!-cinderella ballet and strawberry shake. last year-2007-she danced in the happy feet tap dance and LOVED her costume and dance to leader of the pack...she even had a small speaking role in the beginning. i promise to post pictures soon of her costumes for this year, if i can get them on her before this weekend! i think her costumes for this year are the best yet! enjoy!

lainie in her 'cinderella ballet' costume-2006
lainie in her 'strawberry shake' costume (and quite a pose)-2006

lainie with natalie and trudy-in her 'leader of the pack' costume-2007

lainie in her 'happy feet' costume...on stage!-2007

happy 80th grandma!

(l to r) timmy, sally, bob, susan, daniel, grandma, mark, patty, chris payne, kathy, & mona

a few weekends back the entire becker family converged on the quaint town of steelville, mo. to help grandma celebrate her 80th birthday. it was quite a celebration. as we all slowly trickled into town, first stopping at grandma's apartment (she now lives in town and sally and sarah live at the cabin) we went to the local hangout-the spare rib inn-for a good ol' country breakfast with the locals!

we were surrounded by hunters as it was the youth turkey hunt weekend...notice chris and bradley were not in the picture...they had already been in for breakfast and back in the woods huntin'! after breakfast we headed to the hall to decorate and we had a little concern that there was not enough food, seeing as how word got out about the party and even a park ranger ...long story... from st. james,mo. invited himself and family to come. it ended up we had plenty of food! lainie helping herself to the famous pickles!

the party was great! almost everyone from the family made it..all 8 of my grandma's children were there to celebrate her big day....can you believe she is 80? we were so glad to see molly and brian and spend time with them because we don't get to see them that often anymore. we were also very excited to see timmy (my uncle) two of his boys-matt and ryan. mykids were so excited to spend time with them-you would've thought that they were rockstars! tristan was ready with his camera-he couldn't wait to meet ryan...whenever people try to figure out who tristan looks like they always say he resembles ryan...this has intrigued tristan and he just couldn't stop talking about him all week prior to the big meeting!...he kept asking me how he would know who ryan was and i told him "if he kinda looks like you-its probably him". there is a little more resemblance to ryan's pictures when he was younger. tristan and ryancould they be any luckier marrying into the becker family?

(l to R) sally, kathy, me, molly, chris payne, patty and taylor

great-grandchildren!
4 generations!

patty and i matt and bradley

we ended off a great day with a big becker slumber party back at the cabin! no they are not in a cage- they are on the bridge upstairs in the cabin. they ran back and forth all night and threw things down on us from it! it was so fun to be with all of the family!