The "Finnster, et al."

Friday was Finn's last day of 1st Grade.  While he looks thrilled, he is really quite bummed about leaving Ms. Brigstock's class.   Sam does not graduate from K4 until later this summer. He has grown so much this year - check out those long legs! Michael, Gran and I attended the awards ceremony.  Finn made all As this years so he made the "A Honor Roll".  He also received an award for receiving 100s all year in his Bible Class.  I was very, very proud of him.  After the ceremony the boys went home with Gran while Michael and I went back to work. 

Finn and Sam give Will absolutely NO personal space whatsoever.  They are always in face yelling and grabbing on him.  For a few minutes he will tolerate it. Then he gets mad and starts swinging those arms.  I have warned both boys that they deserve whatever Will dishes out.  Last Thursday was Finn's field day.  He wasn't too excited about it because he didn't get to participate at all.  He was even more upset by the fact that he only came home with a "participants" ribbon.  I guess Finn expected to get a ribbon for "Best Score Keeper." 

On Monday we packed up and left the Keys.  As always it was a sad moment for me.  I hate leaving vacations.  I took a few pictures of the property and then hopped in the rental car with Emily and Zac. We stopped for lunch at Alabama Jack's again on the way to the airport.  It took 45 minutes for our food to arrive so I was scared that we would miss our flight.  Well, we didn't. We arrived in plenty of time to catch our very bumpy flight home.  Once in town we went straight to Sea Star to meet Gran and the boys.  I was so excited to see them.  They seemed really excited to see us too.  Sam was in the middle of swimming lessons, so he missed the picture.  After class we got a quick bite at Casa and then we went back to the house.  We showed the boys the shells we collected.  And we gave them their t-shirts.  Thank you Gran and Nana for keeping the boys so that we could have such a nice vacation.  

On our last day we woke up early and met everyone for breakfast at "Blue Heaven."  It is an outdoor breakfast spot famous for their pancakes.  It definitely lived up the hype.  After breakfast Michael, Zac, Emily and I walked back to the hotel and spent out last day at the beach.  Around midday we hunted for shells to bring back to the kids.  That evening we went out for dinner at an Italian restaurant on Duval street.  On the way back we took a look at the side view mirror on the rental car. Zac was sure that it had been swiped by a bicycle.  Emily assured him that the mirror was made that way.  Long story short - Emily was right. It was a glorious moment.  Next we all went back to our hotel to take in the night.  We sat in front of the fire pit on outdoor couches and talked until well after dark.  Here we are taking advantage of someone else's wedding venue. 

May 20th was the big day.  Our day started out at the pool.  It was so hot.  I think that I reapplied 70 SPF every hour and still burned.  We spent more time in the pool and less time laying out.  When it got unbearable, we went down to the ocean.  This is the only spot on the beach that was seaweed free  - so we claimed it as our own.  The boys reading.  They spent much of their day reading.  Zac read an action/fantasy book that had a cover that looked like a romance novel.  Lauren's dad actually asked me if he was reading a romance novel, to which I said, "of course."  Michael brought one of his devotional books.  I listened to my audiobook.  While we were lounging, the wedding party was getting ready.  Lauren invited us up to the room to get ready, with the girls.  M.J. and I went up for a few minutes to see how everything was going and swipe some food.  They were unsurprisingly very busy, so we went back down to the pool to cook our i