Amos Goes to School

Mosie!! I can't believe you're really going to school! I am so excited for you. You love to learn and already your 4 year old brain is so smart. Daddy and I loved going to meet your teacher and the other kids in your class and seeing your class room with you. I can't wait to see all of the things you learn this year. We'll pray for your day on our walk to school and talk about all the things you did on our walk home. We'll find fun things for show-and-tell and go on all the field trips. Little guy, the world is yours. Keep exploring and learning and filling that super smart brain with all that you can! Mama is so proud of you!

edisto family photo shoot

We had such a fun week with the entire Martin / Johnsen crew at Edisto this year. The boys loved playing with May, splashing in the waves, pushing Daddy & Papa into the surf (at least 100x a day), hunting for shells, and watching the dolphin. We played shag music and had daily happy hour. We took turns cooking meals and sat around the table together nightly. We put on our fancy clothes for family pictures. I think I'll always remember how our boys absolutely loved the beach this year. 

I've loved watching these family pictures grow over the past several years ... & am so excited to have another dinky guy to chase around (//keep from drowning) next summer! 

[IOP | 2016]   [IOP | 2015]   [Edisto | 2014]

Edisto 2017

Random snippets from our time at Edisto with the entire Martin crew. 

martin band of brothers | august 2017

august 2017

three little beach loving towheads 

Summer travel trip | Philadelphia - VA Beach

We finished up our trip with stops in Philadelphia, Baltimore & Virginia Beach. We loved Philly and I hope to take Mikey back one day to explore for a few days. We had super limited time here but were able to check out the Dilworth Park Fountain (splash pad) and snag lunch at Sabrina's Cafe and Spencers Too. DP & Mere were just in Philly about a week before us & DP had researched all the good food spots ... Sabrina's didn't disappoint! 

Baltimore was another short stop, BUT we were able to snag an Orioles game while there! We were able to walk from our Airbnb to the ballpark which was super nice. The boys loved their first taste of Dippin Dots and Mikey & I enjoyed seeing another MLB stadium! After Baltimore we packed up and headed to Daniel & Liz Sagan's house in Virginia Beach. (Daniel and Mike lived together for a semester our senior year at Clemson.) They have 2 little guys (oh, and a pool...) so our boys were super excited to get to hang out with them! It was so nice to have a spot to be for a few days before making the big push home again, home again, jiggity jig. We swam, stayed up late, checked out the beach, and just enjoyed being with the Sagan crew. It was such an unexpected treat to get to hang out with Daniel, Liz and their boys! 

We headed home...well, straight to the lake, on Thursday for a few days of catching up with Mimi & Papa and to rest. We thoroughly enjoyed our road trip and are counting our blessings for being able to go on this adventure with our little humans in tow...but there is such as sense of peace and comfort in coming home. As always, I hope that we're instilling an unquenchable love of travel in our boys when we take trips like these. I hope they'll always pack their bags & head out to see what's out there ... "there's such a lot of world to see."

Summer travel trip | Halifax - Boston

Mikey & I both decided that Halifax was one of our favorite places that we saw while in Nova Scotia. We actually stayed at Mount Saint Vincent University in a relatively nice dorm room because literally 12+ hotels were booked solid for the night when we arrived in town. We had a fantastic breakfast at The Old Apothecary Bakery & Cafe  and enjoyed strolling along shipyard before we had to head further south to Yarmouth! I even scored 2 old prints of the Bluenose for the boy's bathroom. 

We booked the CAT Ferry to take us (and our car) back to the US (Yarmouth, NS - Portland, ME). This ferry was another highlight of our trip! They played movies, had tons of space to walk around (a nice break from riding in the car all day), a little cafe and it took about 6.5 hours (which afforded us extra time with DP, Mere & May on the back end of our trip) as opposed to having to drive all the way back through Nova Scotia and New Brunswick to hit the US again! 

Once in Portland we found Taco Escobarr and thought we were in heaven. As a matter of fact, after a week of nothing but burgers & fries, I'm positive that we were. We'd planned to see Maine on the back end of our Canada escapade, but the forecast was pretty gloomy for the foreseeable future, and our family was only about 2 hours away .... so after a quick jaunt around town, we hit the road and headed back to Boston. DP & Mere were gracious to us in for another long weekend on very little notice! 

Having Mere & DP's house to crash was so nice. Most importantly, we got to catch up with them in their home, but we also got to squeeze in lots of fun things like: bowling, tennis (DP & Amos), ice cream in Concord, breaky at Helen's, a Moana movie night, and the boys even taught May how to climb on the furniture (haha). We're counting down until we get another full week with the Johnsen crew at the beach!