Matheson Hammock and Sundays

That cityscape. It never gets old looking at it from afar-so beautiful. Now, driving INSIDE of there, that's another story. 

Last week, since playgroup is indefinitely suspended until more people are home from summer vacations, I invited people to play at the beach. Come to find out several people had already planned on going to Matheson Hammock--so I invited myself! Haha. It was such a great time!

Matheson Hammock is GREAT for little people. My kids do really well at the beach. They love sand, they love water, and they LOVE waves. Funny, I never even thought about it until I read about another little girl being terrified of the waves and not liking to put her feet in the sand. My babies don't have that problem, haha. But it is a little scary to take them to the busy beaches in Miami (and by busy I mean, busier than used to be able to comprehend) and so I have never done it without Sterling along to help keep head count. Although, I think Molly is old enough now that I might brave it soon by myself. But Matheson Hammock is a special little oasis. It is ocean water, but it comes in through these little grates, so you basically have your own little swimming pool of ocean. Much easier to keep track of kids. And since we ended up with five moms and fifteen kids--we really appreciate that!

You can tell the sand is not quite as clean and gorgeous as South Beach, but the kids still love it! They ran RIGHT in! Good thing we put floaties on back in the parking lot so I don't have to worry!

Those two lately. Best of friends and WORST of enemies. Sigh.

Actually, after writing that ^^ caption, I remembered a sweet story about those two. We had to have some blood work done on Molly the other day, and it was a bit traumatic. The health worker was obviously uncomfortable with how small Molly was, and after getting her to scream for ten minutes while basically doing nothing, she eventually went and enlisted a more experienced worker. Then they drew two vials of blood while Molly screamed and Ruth and Will looked on in horror. Haha. So I decided a trip to Burger King, the play place (it is too hot for an outdoor play ground these days) and a chocolate frosty was in order. Luckily, we got the play place entirely to ourselves, and it was in a really nice neighborhood I've never driven through before so I relaxed and we had a great time. Unfortunately, the steps to get up the play ground were JUST out of reach for Will to climb up. I was thinking about getting Molly cleaned up and helping Will, when I noticed--Ruthie crouched down on all fours while Will crawled up on her back and up to the next level. He used her as a stool the ENTIRE hour we were there so he could get up and down!!! Sweetest thing ever!

Matheson Hammock even has a lifeguard! So nice! 

This was before the other twelve kids got there. Haha. But when they did arrive, my kids had a BLAST playing with everyone!

Molly thought she owned the place and WALKED all over. Crazy, tiny, little person.

On Sunday Ruthie wanted an Elsa braid. Not a Rapunzel braid, which is straight down her back. But an Elsa braid. I had to try three times, but I was pretty proud of the results!

Sweet sisters. Even if Molly is resisting, haha.

CUTEST BABY ALIVE!!!

The girlies. Oh how I love my girls. (Will always sleeps on Sunday until the LAST POSSIBLE SECOND in hopes he won't be cranky during church. But he always is. Considering his three hour nap is reduced to a half hour on Sundays, because he won't go to sleep any earlier, we can't expect very much. He is usually so ornery when we wake him up that we just put him directly into his carseat and change him in the parking lot. When you have 1-4 church and his nap schedule is 12-3, there's not much you can do.)

We need to get to the pool and get swimming! I feel like we've been really busy doing errands. Which is no fun for summertime! And then when I have a break, it's raining. Typical summer in Miami. It usually rains (POURS) every afternoon and evening, so I need to just get in the mindset that we will wake up and go to the pool first thing. Haha. Other than that, not much else is new. Except that Sterling has been having some issues (for like two years, but worse in the past couple of months) so we are trying to have him eat gluten free for three weeks, because we are pretty sure that is the cause. HOLY COW any help and suggestions and most importantly-recipes!-would be welcome! I've started following a few popular blogs and it looks like I'll have to invest in some cooking equipment and a lot of foreign (to me) ingredients in the really near future. I am completely, completely overwhelmed, but we have made it through one week alive, so I guess we can do this!