Home.

We're settling back in nicely after our vacation, picking up with reality right where we had left it. We rolled back into Bryan around 2:30pm on Saturday, about 5 hours or so later than we had expected.  The anticipation of a week of vacation made it much easier getting there than coming home, especially after such a fun week. Fifteen hours with a few quick stops to get to The Outer Banks and eighteen long hours to return home with 1 tired husband, 1 cranky wife, and 2 restless kids. We arrived home to a refrigerator that had stopped working and our golden retriever who happily greeted us back to "his home". I could tell he had proudly taken over, guarding laying on "his couches", as evidence would show by the hair I've been pulling off my clothes. Thankfully, my dad happened to catch our refrigerator mess while taking care of the dog, and was able to save most of our food.

You know those perfect family beach pictures--Beautiful, happy people, with perfect smiles? The ones where the light breeze blowing off the water is just right. Yeah, those weren't ours.

It was incredibly windy. And when I say incredibly, I mean hair flinging in your face, dress flying up, and sand blowing everywhere kinda windy. Not to mention our girl just wasn't into standing so close to the water. Needless to say, the conditions weren't the best for picture taking.

 That's ok, there's always next year.

**The Wink**

We realized on vacation how funny it is to try and watch her do it .

So now we ask her to do it all the time because it's just too stinkin' cute.

She makes me laugh.

I don't know what it was, but it seemed like in just the one week we were gone over vacation Lillian started looking so big to me. I realized just how much of a difference a couple of ounces and one week can make. She's growing. Up to 9lbs now...

And I knew it was coming, but she's been laughing out loud the last few days, turning my heart into mush.

We left to a beautiful sunset Friday evening.

And while the week away was refreshing, it's good to be home, sleeping in our own beds and getting back into a routine.

For now, we're making our plans for next summer.

We are excited for some changes happening with our family...

More to come.