Baseball with Dad

As part of the Library's Reading Challenge, the kids all received free tickets to another Blowfish game!!  I stayed home with Judah and sent the older kids with David for a little night of fun!

 Despite what Jacob's face looks like in this picture, he is the one that LOVES baseball and would LOVE to play :)

These two LOVE mascots!!  :)  This is Blowie!

What can I say?

It's been an exhausting few days!!!

My baby

Panthers Training Camp

When we first moved here and went to Choral Festival for the first time, we discovered that the Carolina Panthers training camp is held at Wofford College in Spartanburg.  With Josiah and Jacob's new obsession with football, we thought this would be a fun opportunity to get to go see training camp since it's all free and open to the public!  We decided to go for the big Back to Camp extravaganza - it was opening practice and so they had lots of extra fun things for the spectators.

 All Callie cared about was seeing some cheerleaders - so she was thrilled to see one (and hold her pom pom!) at the entrance!! (Had I known, I would have asked Miss Cheerleader to hold her pom pom a little...ahem...higher. I didn't realize until later when I was looking at the picture!)

 Signing the fan wall

 The mascot (am sure he has a name but I have no clue)

 They had this AWESOME face painting tent sent up where it was airbrushing - so the designs were super amazing and it took no time at all.  The coolest!!

 Isn't that the coolest face painting ever?

Bojangles was there with some cornhole games and free $1 giftcards, music playing, free Krispy Kreme donuts, Panthers backpacks - it was a lot of fun.

We headed into the stadium to see practice 

 It was fun for the boys to get to see them practice!  And do stretches and warm ups and exercises just like they have to do. That it's not all glitz and glamour like you see on TV - it takes a lot of practice and hard work.  AND that even the stars on the team have to practice!!

Some players stuck around and signed autographs afterwards...the boys had high hopes but had no idea how many people would be there!

 Jacob got one - DJ Moore #25!  :)

 And THEN....Cam Newton came over to sign!!!

This was as close as he was to the boys...but he didn't sign their balls.  The boys were very disappointed...but we talked about how lucky they were to be able to be there and see them and see the players up close...that most people only ever see them on TV...that helped put it in perspective for them.  It was a really fun day trip for sure and Josiah is already asking when we can go back!

When did my baby boys get so BIG?

Brownie Taste Test!

Who do you think was the winner??

Our Beach Day!

I LOVE the beach.  David?  Not so much.  Much prefers the mountains.  Maybe its just because of the stage of life we are in - five little kids at the beach and all the STUFF isn't the most relaxing equation.  But I still LOVE it!  Because our family wasn't going to be able to do the beach vacation this year, we did want to make sure we at least were able to do a day trip.  So we packed up and headed down to Charleston for the day :).

It was CRAZY crowded.  Don't enjoy that at all.  Makes it very difficult to keep track of five little kids that are everywhere (Caleb did wander off at one point but went straight to the lifeguard station like we had told them all about and waited there until we claimed him two minutes later :) ).

 This girl turns into a different person at the beach.  Sits and plays and swims and jumps and digs for EVER....all without saying a word! The girl that never stops talking!  It's amazing.

 We had just gotten to the beach.  Put Judah down and he started crawling RIGHT into the water - it was a hoot!  Never seen anything like it before.  No fear!  The water would lap up over his arms and he just kept right on going!

 So much stuff.  Ugh.  We ended up having to move it back about a hundred times because the water was coming in higher and higher....but I didn't want the chairs and everything so far back because then I'd never be able to see the kids!  That was a big pain.

 He did lay down on me and take a little nap, which was nice.

 One of Callie's favorite things is to be buried :)

 Poor Judah.

 MOM!  What is he doing to me??

 The boys were out on their boogie boards for hours!  Jacob could stay forever.  Absolutely loved it. The waves were REALLY big and it made me nervous...I just kept telling them "Stay together!!"

 Another little nap with daddy...

We had SUCH fun!!  We stayed longer (because David loves me) than we thought we would.   :)  It was great.  We left around 6 pm and headed downtown to see the pineapple fountains and find some dinner.