What a great day!

Woke up this morning around 6am with Ginny. Got our gear together and woke up J to get ready for Dad to bring us to the beach. We went to Clearwater Beach for about an hour and a half. As a child I hated the salt water...any in my eye would leave me in pain. As an adult, however, I find that the Gulf has lovely warm waters, dolphins swimming in the distance, Pelicans and Seagulls dive bombing for food, and the salt isn't as bad here as it was where I grew up (New Hampshire). I didn't wear a bathing suit, but Tim wore his swim trunks. Justin is a big fan of digging huge holes and sitting in them, then begging to be buried alive. :) We all swam (except for Ginny of course, Tim or I held her while standing in the water)....Justin, Ginny and I sat in the surf and she loved to wiggle her toes. We got some great pics of the kids, I'll have to load them onto the computer tomorrow. Even got some video, as well.

Justin still has that rash on his face. I've been using Lidocaine with hydrocortisone in it...slathered it on his face until he almost looked blue like a smurf while he laughed hysterically. It's looking better tonight, so I'll have to keep his face slathered with the ointment and hope for the best. He's telling me it's itchy now, and it hasn't been in the past, no spread though.

Came home, everyone showered off and got into clean clothes. Went to Sweet Tomatoes for breakfast/lunch in hopes we'd see N, my step-sis. But she wasn't coming in until 3:30pm...ah well, maybe next time! We came home, J watched his Pokemon movies and used his new school supplies to do a lot of drawing in a notebook while I put G to sleep and then Tim and I took a snooze...Tim had been up since yesterday evening working 5pm to 7am this morning. G and I woke up about an hour later and skedaddled out of the bedroom to let Tim get more sleep. At 3:30 we woke up Tim and watched some Ninja Warrior with Justin and played with Ginny. Made the girly some more baby bling (anklets this time) and of course she bent over flat to the ground and tried to eat them. Silly girl! Made pasta w/ meat sauce for supper, spent some more time with Tim and the kids and about 20 minutes ago Tim passed out on the couch, he'll be working overtime tomorrow so he set the alarm to wake himself up. I suspect, though, that he'll be up at like 3am, go to the fitness center and work out, come home, shower and go to work.

Put G down to bed about 7pm (same time Tim passed out on us!), writing in my blog and watching Brainpop.com with Justin on erosion, oceans, shark attacks, minerals, you name it...lots of new movies I haven't seen on there yet. (gotta love http://www.Brainpop.com !)

Time to unwind, slow down the noggin and prepare for bed. We go to bed 8-9pm most nights because Ginny gets up so early...the dog barks wanting to go out, Ginny wakes up, you get the picture.

All in all we had a great family/together day. Thank goodness for days like this....really helps this mama recharge!

Blessings!