Last Days of Vacation

We tried to get some early morning pictures on the beach.  But, that didn’t work out too great!  The sun was SO. BRIGHT!  So, it was a no-go.  Hayden wasn’t real cooperative and we just decided we would do with out beach pictures this year.  Kind of sad.

The last day of vacation was a beach day! Not a lot on the agenda. Just a day to relax and enjoy the scenery one last time. Love those days.

Hayden’s Nana bough a kite and he was loving it.  Until we knocked an elderly gentleman in the head with it.  Oops!  I felt so bad! 

The boys, big and little, had the best time making sand castles.  Hayden’s favorite part was when he could stomp it down with his foot. 

I think this is my favorite picture from vacation.  Especially if it didn’t have some random guy in the back.  HA!

And that concludes the Smith Family Vacation 2012.  :-)

We are back!

We are back from our vacation!  We left last Friday (the 8th) to go to Mississippi for Jeff’s family reunion.  We were there Friday night and part of Saturday.  Then, we left Mississippi and drove to Hilton Head, SC.  We got there around midnight that night.  We spent the next week in Hilton Head soaking up the beautiful landscape, fun on the beach, a visit to Savannah, GA, going fishing, boys playing golf, girls enjoying the spa, and lots of fun with family.  I hope to catch up on the blog the next few days.

Cole kept Hayden company in the car part of the way.  It made Hayden very happy!

The bridge crossing over the Mississippi river.  This bridge is new and looks a lot different than when we had our wreck there 8 years ago.  If you don’t know the story, we had a head on collision on the two lane bridge coming back from the reunion.  This was right after Jeff and I got married.  Jeff’s dad was driving and a guy driving a pick up came into our lane after his steering wheel came off.   It was very scary and is always on our mind when we go that way.  God was watching over us that day because it surely could have been much worse!

Friday night, we always enjoy a yummy fish fry!  This is Allen and Flo, the hosts. 

Time for some basketball!

Hayden and his cousin Berkley.   They had the best time playing together!

A little R&R at the hotel that night.

I know this is random but we thought this was so neat.  There was a cute little church surrounded by the cemetery, white picket fence, American flag, and corn.

Family picture before we left the reunion.

More to come…

A weekend getaway…

Our little family took advantage of  a weekend getaway last Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.  Some of our friends were going to our new deer lease in Oklahoma on Saturday.  It is pretty close to Beaver’s Bend, so we decided to make a trip of it.   Jeff and I had not been there since the summer before we got pregnant with Hayden. We were all pretty excited to go camping and fishing!  The scenery was as beautiful as we remembered and the water was as cold as we remembered too.  Ha!  IT IS SO COLD!!

Checking out the main entrance area to the State Park. 

We must get a special coin!

Off to explore a little bit at the power plant area.  They had just released the flood gates so the water was up pretty high.

We came back the next day and it looked a lot different.

Hayden has gotten quite good at casting his fishing rod. 

We found a little dock to fish on.  Even though I look pretty calm and collected, I have to admit I was a nervous wreck thinking Hayden was going to fall in.  Thank you Kristin for letting us borrow this life jacket!!!

After working so hard trying to catch some fish and even doing some swimming, we came back to our cabin for tacos and s’mores!  Yum! 

He took his marshmallows very seriously! 

Oh yeah!

Hayden didn’t really love the S’more.  I think it was more because it was messy.  He just enjoyed everything separately. 

We couldn’t go to Beaver’s Bend and not  take a ride on the train. 

It was pretty fun.  We even saw a couple of deer.

After our train ride we were off to pack up our lunch, so we could go out on the boat we rented.

Hayden was ready to go!

We enjoyed the ride, a picnic lunch, and even a little fishing.  We weren’t brave enough to swim.  BRRRR! 

But, after our boat ride, we found a couple of places to swim and spent the rest of the afternoon doing just that!  We came back for hamburgers and more s’mores.  Then, it was early to bed for us all! 

Saturday morning, we got up and headed to our new deer lease.  We still have the one in West Texas, but decided to get on this one too with several of our friends.  It will definitely be a totally different experience.  Our West Texas lease it full of Mesquite trees, scrub brush cactus, and you can see a really long way.  In OK, our lease is full of huge pine trees and you can’t see very far at all!  See the top of that hill?  That is where our new OK lease is! 

We took a really long and rough ride on our ATV’s to look at the lease and we still didn’t see probably half of it.

 

Hayden hadn’t had a nap in a few days and he couldn’t take it any longer.  The rough ride put him right to sleep.

Our friends Bo, Rhonda, and Jake.

This might be the one thing I am scared of on the new lease…

But I am pretty excited about this…

We had a great little getaway!  I am looking forward to out VACATION to the beach in the next couple of weeks!!!