Will I ever stop being nervous every time I publish a personal blog post?

My heart tells me it’s totally fine. Our blog readers have always said they love reading about our lives & our travels & our family, and I’ve always told myself that when personal posts stopped getting a response, I’d stop posting them. I enjoy writing these posts as a record of how our family is growing, and what’s going on in our lives. I think it keeps my writing fresh & honest. We love that it helps new clients get to know us better… it so fun to meet people for the first time and hear that they feel like they’ve known us for years.

But my brain? Oh, my brain freaks out when I write these posts. “Who are you kidding? No one CARES what you guys did at the beach last week. Yeesh, how self-centered are you? You look ridiculous doing this. Give up.”

My brain is kind of a jerk sometimes, you’ve noticed.

As is the pattern my whole life through, my heart usually wins out over my brain, and you get a post like the one today. Nothing ground-breaking, no photographic amazingness to melt your eyeballs… just life. Summertime. Adventures with our family. Memories we’re blessed to have made, and happy to share.

If you read this, thank you for siding with my heart. 🙂

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We took the kids & my parents with us last week to Port Aransas, and stayed once again at the Mayan Princess resort way at the end of the island. We just love that property. The beach is always so much more empty, and the condos are nice, and the pools are wonderful. We typically don’t spend much time in the pools at all, but if you’re friends with us on Facebook, you read about my little encounter with a stingray. :/ I’m feeling fine now, just a bit achy, but that definitely threw us off the ocean for a day!

Rather than saving my favorite images for last, I’m going to lead with them for this post. I love that we have been coming to Port Aransas for so many years in a row, and our kids know the town and love it. I cherish these images of them we capture every year, on the same beach, showing how much they’ve grown. Our beautiful children…

We went on a Dolphin Watching tour one morning, out of Woody’s. It was SO fun. We got to see lots of dolphins (although my pictures of them aren’t that wonderful), and the boat was really big & nice.

As part of the tour that Jack REALLY loved, our boat got attacked by pirates! 🙂 They shot us with water guns and came aboard to sword fight with some of the passengers. It was such a blast!

Dorothy wasn’t such a fan.

I think my favorite part of the morning was when the first mate (a one eyed, scarred up old sailor with stories about shark attacks) pulled all sorts of sea creatures up in a net and let the kids hold the safe ones!

It was just a short walk from our room at the Princess down to the beach, which is nice when you’re the kind of people that take a lot of stuff to the beach. 🙂

My dad bought a really cool kite, and it brought back so many memories of him flying trick kites when I was a little kid!

We didn’t get any pictures of the stingray that got me, nor did we photograph my foot when it was huge & purple & bleeding… but we got a picture of the crab that stabbed Mack, so that’ll have to do. 🙂

On Friday before we made the 6.5 hour trek home, we went to the USS Lexington in Corpus Christi. My dad is a WWII buff, so he’s been wanting to go for years. We all really enjoyed the tours!

There’s no such thing as an attractive group picture on the beach. Someone is always squinting. No one’s hair is done. WHATEVER. These photos of our family together are priceless. We’re so grateful for such a great relationship with my folks, and fun travel times together!

It’s hard to believe that school will start for Jack in less than two weeks, and that after our upcoming wedding in the Dominican Republic and a quick trip to Vegas, the fall wedding season is going to kick off with a bang. What a wonderful summer it’s been!