the land of jorts and alligators

you know how you write an entire post for posterity and then the internet rejects it and you have to start over again, completely uninspired? hi, i'm completely uninspired. 

we went to florida for spring break. aunt heather just moved to jacksonville and i was raring to go visit. we  tried to leave on tuesday, we tried to leave on wednesday. we tried to leave on thursday. the hold up was this house:

it came on the market as we were trying to leave but i was in loooooooove and i knew it wouldn't last. i just want to kiss it. with a little tongue. huge kitchen, interior already painted my shade of gray, two decks, on the corner of TWO cul de sacs so the kids would never be killed by cars. the whole fam damily loaded up and we went and saw it and we made an offer that day. then we headed out of town.

 the trip was pretty uneventful except for a little barf by herschel and that frankly, is not that big of a deal anymore. i had a frosty and remembered wondered why i can't have dairy anymore.

we also listened to the 2014 annie soundtrack on repeat. and repeat. and repeat.

we arrived in the wee hours and saw heather the next day. is that diana, the goddess of the hunt, the moon, and childbirth? nope, that just heather in her natural habitat. 

thomas was lucky enough to get a work assignment so he spent the day at the hotel working, while heather and i took the kids to the beach. i was probably not the most fun beach companion because i was on pins and needles on the phone discussing house negotiating with our agent. but i could taste that house, with hardwoods floors, it had a bit of a woodsy flavor.

heather is the total package. fun, funny, hardworking, a go getter and a party starter. likes a good pun. goes to bed early. i'm glad she's mine.

while the atlantic ocean is known for it's titanic level of frigidity in april(see what i did there? human disaster pun!) scarlett was undaunted. she spent the whole day jumping over waves. 

hersch had a pretty good time too. except for when his mother wanted to take a few oh-so-casually-posed-i'm-a-famous-blogger beach photos. 

i'm not sure why i thought these flexing photos were a good idea. though i've increased my weightlifting, i'm still not visually impressive. i'm only impressive when your eyes are closed. and you're asleep. and you're dreaming that i'm a very famous blogger from utah. 

 at least you know i have a sense of humor.

the official national geographic photo of what it's really like to take children to the beach:

pioneer children sang as they walked and walked and walked and walked.

it must have been too early in the season for me because i'm actually a prolific sun screen user. this is just a fluke. a painful, flaky, peeling fluke.

but this sunburn is just old-fashioned bad parenting:

to add insult to injury, after the day of negotiation on my dream house, at the last minute, another buyer stepped in and offered all CASH MONEY. so i did cry a little that night from sunburn and disappointment. i shall hope for average things forevermore. 

one of my lifelong dreams has been to visit saint augustine. the other is to visit key west. since heather is soclose to saint augustine we thought we'd make a day of it. but so did everyone else in florida. the entire historic district was packed and parking was full for MILES. we were not interested in hiking 5 miles with six small children and one stroller, so we ate at el potro, even though reagan has decided that he's done "eating mexican food with family." he's totally weird and wrong on that one. a nice man witnessed our struggles with athena blythe and june and secretly paid for their meals. super nice. i'm sure he was actually saying, "stop having so many children if you can't control the ones you've got!" 

instead of taking a picture in front of the castillo de san marcos we took a picture in front of this bank. just another glamorous trip in the books for the famous blogger. 

to appease our disappointment at saint augustine being a bust, we ate ice cream at a park, a la beck family style.

look at my skin discoloration after ONE DAY of sun exposure. all my hard work and valiant efforts of skin protection! i'm heading to burqas R us for a summer wardrobe. it's like jcrew, but instead of east coast sporty, it's middle east sporty. 

the apple shaped head doesn't fall far from the tree:

i couldn't find any good quotes about sisters and farts, so this will have to do.

"i could never love anyone as i love my sister." 
little women

but we're more along the lines of medium women after all that ice cream.

the end!