The McGarys : Madly in May

For the 40th anniversary of Brad's parents, all their kids participated in a surprise gift. Every McGary child was assigned a letter with which their family was to take a picture. In the end all the pictures spelled out "McGary". I asked my friend Molly to take ours and let me tell you what stresses me out: stuff like this. We haven't had professional family photos taken since Kallie was a baby and I have no clue what I'm doing! So many details to forget. I was scarcely able to find - somewhat - coordinating outfits but I didn't even think about matching hair accessories for the girls. The cherry on top of my stress: heat. Being outside in hot weather will flatten my hair, stick it to my neck, send my make-up melting down my face, and make me mad because I hate sweating. Here are a couple of the pics with our letter:

I changed a couple of the side photos too ---->

So I called Molly and complained to her all of these thoughts (I'm some friend, right? Telling the photographer how much I hate the huge favor she's doing me). In the end, the Lord blessed us with perfect weather (although for a photographer the bright sun wasn't ideal) but it wasn't too hot! That's all I cared about. Although I've realized after seeing these pictures I've been penciling in my eyebrows way too much. I felt they didn't grow far enough to the center and then I ended up looking like I need to pluck them. My cosmetology skills are a painstakingly slow work in progress...

This is going well.

this looks like more of a one-way kiss. *tsk tsk*

"...and I just think we need to do something about it."

Something happened to my knee that scared the heck out of me. It started locking as I walked without my permission and then one day as I stood up from the couch it completely buckled and I couldn't even walk on that leg. It felt inflamed and I walked with a limp for a couple days. After doing a few stretches my doctor recommended it seemed to heal back to normal just as fast as it ailed. So weird.

Jayda Faces

Something has been up Jayda's butt for the past few days. Come bedtime she is the crankiest little thing I've ever seen and I've been staying up late soothing her. Then I noticed her sucking thumb is mangled! It looks horrible. I don't know if she's simply been chewing her thumb to bits or if something traumatic happened but I took her to the doc and her thumb and bellybutton are infected. Antibiotics all around! I'm trying to get Jayda to stop sucking her thumb by putting mittens on them at night. Talk about a hard habit to break. The age old question: Pacifier or thumb; which is better?

Jayda's chewed-up thumb

Well, Brad convinced me to give camping another chance. Wayne and Molly came with and this time we were basically right next to our neighbor campers without any privacy. It didn't take us long to find our groove with the kids; they both did great this time. Jayda fell asleep right away and we let Kallie and Sam stay up with us by the fire. When we all went to bed, I heard the tent rustle a bit on Kallie's side of the divider so I knew she was getting out of bed but this time I didn't get mad, nor did I say anything and what do you know? After a few minutes she got bored and went to sleep. Unfortunately Sam had a harder time so they ended up packing their stuff and heading home while we were snoozing.

When we discovered it just takes a little practice to successfully camp with kids we decided to go again one week later. This time we took it to the next level: a new place and TWO nights! This site was an hour away and it was on a lake that's actually swimmable! (Rare in Florida. Most lakes are alligator infested). It's interesting how much more we have to pack for one extra night. Our camp site was way more excluded from our neighbors and we were really close to the lake beach. There was even a little ship-looking playground for Kallie. The weather was absolutely perfect for us. I forgot how much easier it is to stay cool in the heat when we go swimming and then leave on our suits so they keep us cool as they dry.

static hair

Of course we assumed it would be even warmer this weekend than the past few so we didn't bring any warm clothing. It actually got a little chilly at night but if anything the warm clothes would have been awesome to protect us from the BUGS! Oh mylanta those were bad. The ONLY bad part of the trip. We had to drive into town after the first night to buy all sorts of bug repellants. And then Kallie decided to grab one of the incense sticks surrounding our camp site and got second degree burns on her little hand. We love to take walks around camp sites to see how other people camp and get ideas.