Uncle Spencer's visit

  Uncle Spencer came back to visit us last month and it was great having him here. Kate and Abby totally adored him.  He stayed with Jared and Kristen the first 3 nights he was here and upon hearing that he was not sleeping in our guest bedroom, Kate was on the brink of tears. And since he has been gone Kate has asked for him a few times.  The last time he was brought up, Kate told Abby, "It's okay.  We'll see Uncle Spencer at Christmas."  After I told her Spencer would not be here for Christmas she asked, "Why not?  I want him to come though. I thought he loved us."  Haha!
  The timing was off a bit because Andrew was tdy the entire time.  He left three days before Spencer arrived and returned the day after Spencer left. The silver lining was that the girls were distracted from Daddy being gone a week and a half.
  The first 3 days Spencer was in town we went to a different beach each day.  It was a nice treat for me too because I had never been to these beaches either.
  The first beach that we went to was on the sound side of Hurlburt Field.  It was right next to Outdoor Rec and had beach chairs set up for free use as well as a sort of bouncy-castle-water-thing.  It was great.  There's a much larger bouncy-castle-water-thing set up that is closer to our house but I've heard it costs anywhere from $30-50 per person, for two hours.  Sounds like a rip off to me, but, if you wanna spend your money that way, go for it.  I will gladly relax at the beach for free.  And now that I know about Hurlburt's sound side, I can go there instead too!

Ellie really enjoyed playing in the water and it was nice that there weren't too many waves.

  The second beach that we went to was Oakaloosa Island. This was in a cool location with lots of places nearby at which to eat.  Ellie was quite entertained by the seagulls. 

  The third beach that we went to was down in 30A.  It was a 80 minute drive for me and the girls, something I would NEVER have done if the plans were up to me.  In my family's defense, the plans were passed by me and I agreed.  And I'm so glad that I did because it was my favorite beach and place by far.  There were so many cool shops and places to eat near by.  What totally won me over was the bike ride that we all went on.  There are bike paths all along the roads there so it was easy to travel by bike.  I haven't been on a bike in years and I quickly realized that biking is a happy place for me.  It was totally wonderful.

One of the shops that we found had a ton of cool, fun toys but because everything cost its weight in gold, we could not afford to buy anything.  This fluffy llama that Abby is holding up is the *softest* stuffed animal I have ever felt in my entire life.  It felt like a fluffy puppy.  If it didn't cost $65 I would've bought it. 

Like I said, cool and fun  :)

Kate went on a tag along bike with Uncle Spencer and loved it just as much as I did.

Right before heading out

The first few second of our magical ride:

Abby and Ellie were in a trailer attached to my bike

It was HOT but Abby told me afterwards, "Mom, that was fun."  Made my day that much better.

We got rained on while on our bike ride and because I hadn't sufficiently prepared, my phone got wet.  I didn't realize it until it was too late and was only able to snap this picture of the beach we went to and no more pictures of Spencer's visit.  :(  The beach was SO wonderful though.  When walking out to the ocean, there was a good 20-30 feet of water that was only 1-3 inches deep before it dropped off a bit.  Perfect for Ellie to be sat in to play and not worried about.  I'm telling you, it was perfect.  And to top off this wonderful day, I bought a "stuffed" snow cone to share with my girls. "Stuffed" in that it had a scoop of frozen custard at the bottom of the cup.  Amazing! 

  Like I said, I have no other pictures of Spencer's visit, however, we did have lots more fun even though it was undocumented.

  We went to Pensacola on Monday and walked around a very old cemetery.  The oldest headstone we found was in the late 1700s.  Afterwards, we grabbed some delicious lunch from The Tin Cow and headed to a nearby park.  We ate lunch as we waited for the solar eclipse to happen.  We tried viewing it from the pin hole viewers I'd made out of cereal boxes.  We didn't realize how bad they worked till someone offered us to look through her homemade craft.  It was a piece of glass that she'd held a flame to to smoke it up.  And it worked great.  The whole time Kate and Abby were running around the big trees and having a blast together.  After the eclipse passed we headed home.
  We went to the neighborhood rec center on Tuesday with Jared and Kristen and got to play a bunch of table games while we waited out a storm.  We were hoping to use the pool but had no luck that morning.  It wasn't what was planned but ended up being a good time together.  We successfully went to the pool that afternoon and then dropped Spencer off at the airport the following day.  

  I'm so glad we could have Spencer visit us and look forward to next time!