Southern Cooking and Cousins

Thursday night, Mom’s conference had an outing planned at Paula Deen’s restaurant The Lady & Sons. It was 100 people, but we were part of it and the buffet was yummy, but my favorites were the garlic cheese biscuits and ho-cakes (cornbread pancakes) to start the meal and the warm butter gooey cake at the end! yowza! Dad, Mema and Doug arrived just before we had to head over (I got a dip in the pool with the kids, too)

  

 

 

 

 

 

Mom finished up her conference Friday afternoon and I managed to get the kids back to the beach for an hour or so (forgot my camera, but clearly had taken enough pictures the day before) before we headed up to Donald & Wren’s new house. They just got checked out of the hospital with baby Harris on Wednesday, so had only been in the house about 3 days, but were wanting people to come visit! So, in addition to our large clan, we had Donald’s folks Tony & Susan, Joe & Melanie (just got engaged! yay!) and Joe’s folks, Mike & Debbie. Aunt Emma & Uncle Tony and Aunt Carmela. The house was very nice – and open! Dellaina & Wyatt had a big time playing with Owen and Claire. It was nice to get together with everyone. We just picked up frozen pizzas, wine, beer and brownies and had a casual evening.

I know it’s blurry, but wanted to show the openness and riding scooters in the living room!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wyatt and “Ellie Mae”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Every time I came back to check, Claire had on less clothes! 

 

Here, she is completely naked! (she’d had an accident in the bathroom – and hadn’t reported it) And they are in bed together!

Beachy

Thursday, we FINALLY made it out to the beach on Tybee Island. I drove by the “old homestead” where we once had a large beach house in the family and it is now at least 6 houses or rentals jammed on the lot, but some of the fence is still there and some of the gorgeous trees. I told Dellaina about climbing up on the fence and holding onto the tree limb and jumping off and she almost gasped, “was your mama scared?” cute.

I told them to run up and tell me when they saw the beach. . .

 

 

they could hardly wait/stand it and Dellaina was building sand castles in the soft sand before we got through the dunes. 

I finally got them closer to the water to set up. 

 

 

 

“My” beautiful conch shell. That elusive beauty that is a rare find. . .I thought of both Cassi and her search and Granny and her love of the beach and shells.  

 

 

 

 

 

there was still a creature inside the conch shell or I would have snatched it up immediately. Instead I felt guilty and didn’t want to disturb the natural cycle and wondered if I should throw it back in, but I didn’t think it was really doing well, and decided to let nature take it’s course and let the seagulls take care of the creature and then I’d take the shell.

   

I LOVE that all of my pictures of Wyatt on the beach are one-footed, high stepping, because it truly captures his constant action.   

and sweet girl content just playing in the sand and working on her “collection” of shells. No wonder the back of her little neck got so burned! I pulled up her hair and forgot to put sun screen on her neck after doing so! It was pretty bright for a day or so.

 

 

   more pictures of my beautiful shell…

 

and the seagull that came to feast. 

I moved us all back so Wyatt would stop scaring him off and let the gull eat. . and along came another woman who shooed him away, flicked out the creature and took my shell. *sigh.  Wyatt’s sand castle:

Dellaina’s collection:

 

I loved watching the Pelicans diving and tried to capture it – caught a few of the huge splashes, but didn’t get the speedy dive. 

 

 

 

the water was pretty chilly, but we had some wet bottoms. . any ideas on how that happened?

it was really hard to see what I was taking pictures of. . . 

ah! the water was coming!