Nana Came to Visit!
Nana conquered her fears to fly out to see us, and I had three very excited little girls last weekend! They got in lots of snuggling, book reading, game playing, movie watching, and FaceTiming with other family members. Daddy and I even got a date night! Here's the rundown of the highlight events from our long weekend.

County Fair
The county fair was this past weekend, it's within walking distance of our house, and Friday night was military-families-are-free night! We decided to hit the rides at the kids' carnival first, and Monkey and Bug zeroed in on the climbing wall. They loved it! They got 2 or 3 tries each, and they each reached the top of one of the sides. Poor Monkey though! She was strong enough to climb up, but not heavy enough to trigger the automatic belay line to let her down! Fortunately, she loves repelling, so she just swung around for a while until the worker had a chance to gear up and climb up there to rescue her. They got to enjoy a few more rides before we ran out of tickets and went to peruse the
arts and crafts show--particularly fun since some of our homeschool friends had entries. Then we grabbed some dinner (fried alligator bites and funnel cakes, yum!) and headed to the rodeo! Nana did a little bargaining and got us inexpensive box seats, so we had a great view of the events, and got a little frighteningly up close and personal with one of the bulls who wasn't interested in returning to his stall! The rodeo was a first-time experience for the girls and they had a blast. They got to see bronco- and bull-riding, rope tricks, trained horses doing tricks, a barrel racer vs. a motocross racer (the cowgirl won), and freestyle motocross on a couple of huge ramps (yeah, we're not sure how that fits into the rodeo either, but those guys pulled some very impressive stunts!). Daddy even caught one of the free t-shirts they threw into the crowd.

Shopping!
OK, Nana's love language is gifts, so a shopping trip is inevitable, but this time we had a mission! We recently found out Daddy was selected for a temporary duty assignment on the East coast, so we'll be going along and spending the winter months in New England--a climate for which the girls wardrobes are utterly unprepared. We spent most of Saturday shopping, but since our current location doesn't really experience winter, we completely failed to find things like coats, hats, and cozy tights, but they do now have sufficient long-sleeve shirts, pants, and maxi skirts. Thank you, Nana!

Beach Day
Everybody loves a day at the beach! The water was cold as usual, but it was at least warm enough to don swimsuits and get in up to our knees (or chest in Goose's case). Goose happily made sand angels, Monkey frolicked in the waves with complete abandon, and Bug enlisted all of us to help build her first full-scale sand casstle--five towers connected by walls, surrounded by a village of huts (added after the photo below was taken), a moat, and a wall.