Dampened Weekend, Not Spirits

I'm back and happy to report that the "sleep strike" is slowly coming to an end.  Naps have, for all intents and purposes, returned to normal.  Bedtime seems to be going smoothly again, but Jude continues to wake up too many times at night .  Here's hoping that nighttime will be back on track soon too.

We are home from a Labor Day beach trip to SGI.  It might not have been the best place to head to, you know, driving closer to the coast and closer to an approaching tropical storm, but TS Lee didn't scare us away.  It was a nasty, windy, and stormy weekend with little time to get down to the beach, but we still had a nice time away from the busy-ness of home.

It was pretty ugly most of the weekend.  The sun would peek out a bit between bands from the storm, and we tried to get down on the beach a bit.  Never succeeded for more than a half hour or so.  Eli got a bit scared after hurrying back up to the house and up the stairs as the wind started picking up again, blowing his flip flop away (rescued by Uncle Steve...whew!) and blowing the rain horizontally.

Eli had fun reenacting the wind blowing him around. The wind whistled through the windows much of the weekend and physically rocked the house at times.  Rain would pelt the windows so hard, it sounded like someone was throwing rocks at the house. But, we found ways to have fun and keep ourselves entertained.

I have been making Super Hero masks for Eli since he loves dressing up and pretending to be a super hero so much recently.  Got the idea from a blog and then pinned it on my new obsession, Pinterest.  Anyways, we brought them along and everyone, at some point or another, got roped into playing superheroes with Eli.

We watched the storms while listening to the college football season kicking off (finally! woohooo!) on the XM radio.  The Gators sounded pretty good.  Hoping for and looking forward to a fun season with the new coach building his program. Along with the kickoff of a new season comes fun football food like this yummy go-to favorite (thanks, Matt B.): Jalapeno Pie.

Indulging in snacks and fun food is a great way to spend time cooped up indoors.  But most of all, it was just fun being together with each other.  Quality time.  Relaxing time. 

And in the evenings after the littles were in bed, the grown ups enjoyed slinging some Angry Birds and talking late into the night (morning?). The drive home was no walk in the park either.  The wind and rain turned my knuckles white as I drove our precious cargo home.

Glad to have weathered the storm safely and with such wonderful people.