Following our fun beach morning we ALL enjoyed nice naps! Then it was time to get decked out in our festive 4th gear to go celebrate with the Hitchcock family. It’s been a tradition of ours for several years now to meet up at their beach condo (they happen to have a family tradition of vacationing in St Augustine the week of the 4th like we do!), visit, eat, and celebrate Independence Day together. Zach and I LOVE it as we adore Katie and her family and never seem to get to see them often enough! Life with kids right?
Sadie was dressed for the occasion too!
We took some family pictures before heading over to their condo…we LOVED this cool tree outside the hotel from our other stays there but sadly it either fell or got cut down 🙁
my cutie!
his shorts have little lobsters on them, aren’t they cute?
proud that Zach remembered to pack festive clothes this year 🙂
I love comparing these pictures with the one from last year – Kye enjoys playing with the flags still!
intense
thinking about what to say he loves about America
Katie, Mrs. Becky, and Hannah
Kye is always great around people and in social settings. He’s like his parents I guess because Zach and I both enjoy people too 😉 He doesn’t know Katie’s family very well yet still jumped right in and made himself comfortable with them…it was ADORABLE how much he took to Mr. Keith. He called him “Papa” which he totally came up with on his own (Mr. Rusty is “Big Papa” and my dad is “Pepaw”) and just thought he was super funny. Even the next day he was talking about Papa and how funny he was. It was so sweet!
The whole Hitchcock Family
Zach thought this was an awesome close-up of us….really Zach?
SO thankful for our longtime friendship and can’t wait to go to VEGAS soon!
many attempts at a family photo…
guess we need to burn that flag huh?
best one of the day!!!
We had a wonderful time visiting with the Hitchcocks and had a tough decision to make when we left. St. Augustine has the LARGEST fireworks show along the entire East Coast and we enjoy watching it every year. At what point should we let Kye stay up to see them with us? They didn’t start until 9:30…and Kye’s in the bed at 7:30 each night (8:30 is the latest he’s ever been up!). We debated and debated about it…we had our ultrasound the next day and wanted him in a good mood for it so we were scared to keep him up but at the same time we thought he’d enjoy watching them. We thought about putting him to sleep and then getting him up to watch them but I’ve always heard broken sleep is worse than no sleep at all for a little kid so I didn’t like that option. We decided to let him just stay up and watch them. It was just one night and he’s only going to be young enough to want to spend that kind of time with us for so long ya know? Is anyone shocked I did that?!?! I am still pretty shocked by it actually! A big reason I wanted to try it was for Disney World…if he LOVED the fireworks then maybe it’d be worth keeping him up to see them there too!
Poor kid was EXHAUSTED and we had to work hard to keep him awake, which made us both feel guilty. He enjoyed making lots of forts on the bed (you can see the video here) and drawing with Levi!
We can see the fireworks perfectly from the porch of our room so we pulled some chairs out at 9:20 and got ready for the show…Kye wasn’t too pumped for pictures…
In awe of the show
can you tell he’s beyond tired?
watching with Mommy
watching with Daddy
I’m not saying I regret keeping him up necessarily…but it honestly wasn’t worth it. He was too tired to even enjoy the fireworks. He was literally talking gibberish and couldn’t even focus. Seeing him like that made both of us feel a lot of guilt and we didn’t like it! He did okay behavior-wise the next day and it didn’t overly affect him long term but he never mentioned the fireworks again either. I don’t even think he remembers seeing them, he was that tired. Oh well! Maybe next year he’ll be better able to handle it! At least we know with Blitzen to not even try it until he or she’s at least 3 🙂
We got up and checked out of the hotel as quickly as possible so we could get back for Blitzen’s ultrasound! It was a CRAZY morning!!! I slammed my fingers in Zach’s car door so hard that the door actually shut on them and I had to open it to get them out…so painful. We ate breakfast in the car and went to the house to drop off the dogs when we realized we’d locked Zeke in the nursery the whole time we were gone. Yikes. Crazy ending to an AMAZING vacation!
Kye enjoyed having a travel buddy 😉
Another successful St Augustine trip!!! Can’t WAIT for Blitzen to be with us next year 🙂
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I love your red stripped dress…you look great!
what a fun tradition….your dress it super cute!!
Super cute 4th pictures! Adorable family!