The day photo shoot...

There isn't much to say here except...  we love the family God created for us and we are so thankful for the blessings he has given us, especially the little girl with the smile that makes her eyes disappear!

 

 

Not really sure what she was doing...

It was really hard to get her to stand still so I just started taking all
the pictures I could get hoping for some good ones. I think I succeeded!

Loved the good times with the Helfers' Family!!!

such blue skies every day...

More beach pictures....

 

 

Besides riding the waves, another favorite activity for the beach was obviously playing in the sand. What a great life when you have a big sandbox out your front door.  Hannah dug in the sand all week filling her sand toys and helping Lacey and Leina build sand castles.  She also loved looking for shells. One thing that shocked us most during this trip was that every shell that Hannah picked up was a broken piece off a big shell.  If you know Hannah, then you know that she doesn't like to eat broken chips, pretzels, crackers, etc... but for some reason the broken shells didn't bother her. After the first day, we decided to let her keep them because Mommy had an idea in mind. We designed the shells into her initials of her name and glued them to a board.  She actually still has some left, so we will probably let her make a picture out of them to hang in her room.

 

In the sand it says, Hannah 2013, just in case you couldn't see it.

Telling Mama how to build a castle.

Telling Lacey how to build a castle.

This was a pirate ship that we passed while on our dolphin cruise.

Hannah loves Jake the Pirate, so thought it would be fitting to capture a picture.

 

 

 

Jumping over the waves was another favorite activity for the week.  In the pictures she was actually doing it by herself, but usually either Mama or Baba was lifting her up over the waves. You can tell by the smile on her face that she enjoyed every minute!!!

 

 

I couldn't get a smile from her ...she was concentrating on her work.

 

 

 

 

The story behind this was when Hannah got tired, she would climb up into Baba's lap under the umbrella and ask him to spell words. He would say the letter, then she would repeat throughout the whole word.  She did that probably for an hour one day.  You could tell that she was wearing down from being in the sun and playing in the water all week. It was really fun to watch her and Baba having some bonding time. 

 

 

Love this one!!!!

Giving Baba a kiss on the nose!

Hannah the Surfer!!!

So the first day on the beach, the Helfers' girls brought down a couple of boards to ride the waves.  Hannah got one look at that and thought she should try it. I never imagined that it was something she could do or even want to try, but boy was I wrong.  As you can see in the pictures, we tried it with a circular tube for a while and it was ok, but was not the best tool. Lacey and Leina were nice enough to let her borrow one of theirs for a while, then Roger and I looked at each other and decided we better go purchase one for the rest of the week. So....that is what we did.  You would have thought Hannah had been doing it her whole life. It was amazing how she could pull herself up on it and hold on through the really rough waves. She was pretty amazing and did it over and over and over and..... Every time we got ready to walk down to the beach, she said, " I will carry my bird (board)."  She really had the time of her life!!!

 

 

As you can predict, we did crash and sink!

Can those goggles make her any cuter?

One of my favorite pictures ever!!!!

Looking for the big wave and then let her go!!!!

in action...