The Hud House: September 2014

We celebrated the end of summer and our last hoorah as a family of 3 by spending a few days at Kure Beach. We rented a wonderful little ocean front condo with the most amazing view.

We started out our adventure as every good adventure should start...with ice cream!

The beach outside of our condo had tons of beautiful shells. Lucas enjoyed looking for shells and playing with his trucks and excavator in the sand. That boy, his work trucks, and an endless amount of sand - he is in heaven.

We relaxed and cooked and enjoyed dinners outside.

We headed to the aquarium one afternoon and spent some time at another nearby beach.

The condo had an indoor pool as well which was great for a super windy day.

Our last full day was spent on an adventure to Southport. We took the ferry from Fort Fisher to Southport, something that was a first for all of us. Lucas thought it was awesome that we got to drive the car onto a big boat.

We got to Southport and went to a great little local place for lunch.

We walked around town for a while and went in a toy shop, and it was really just the best day.

It was such a wonderful trip and we made a ton of amazing memories. We cherished every minute on this special vacation as a family of 3, and wanted to make a big deal about celebrating this with Lucas. We're 30 weeks along, just 10 more weeks until we meet our sweet girl!

Every year we look forward to the Hudson family beach trip. Brandon's parents have a great time share in Myrtle Beach, and this year we got to spend a few days there also with Steph, Wes, and baby Hudson.

Brandon, Lucas, and I got our own unit this year and Lucas thought he was big stuff in his own big BIG boy bed!

The weather was cloudy, but we still had fun at the pool and on the beach. Our boy is fearless, y'all. He wanted to be thrown higher, run faster, and swim without his floaties.

He did pretty well with just the noodle, but he soon wanted to try without anything. How do you explain to a toddler who doesn't know how to swim that he will sink without any help? We tried to explain it to no avail, so we did what any good parent would do. We let him sink. Only for a second, then Brandon picked him up out of the water and the look on Lucas's face said it all. The little lightbulb in his head went off and he realized that in fact he cannot swim. Not yet. Coming up in our near future are swim lessons for sure.

Now this is a sight to be seen...the whole family "flying" down the beach with the seagulls...with a mama who is 29 weeks pregnant!

Lucas loved meeting his cousin Hudson. He was so sweet to him (except for the minor slip up of Lucas giving Hudson a "spanking" by bopping him on the head with his palm after Hudson kept spitting his paci out...yeah, not his greatest moment.) Seeing him with Hudson makes us even more excited for him to meet his baby sister.

We had some great family time and relaxed. Lucas got the hang of relaxation, that's for sure.

One of the pools has a great slide and Lucas went down it probably a hundred times. He went down over and over with Brandon. When they hit the pool at the bottom of the slide, Brandon would lift him up enough so his head wouldn't go under water.

Then he wanted to go down with MiMi, and the series of pictures below show perfectly what happened. Can you see it?

It was SO funny because it all happened so fast. As soon as they both popped up from under the water, Lucas just looked around in disbelief. We were all dying laughing and when they got out of the pool Lucas said "I went under water with MiMi!" And he would not go down with her again.

The rest of our time was spent playing on the beach. Lucas searched for Easter eggs in the sand dunes that MiMi had hidden with jelly beans inside. He was loving it.

Lucas looks thrilled to be sharing his mama's attention

B with his sister Steph. Love seeing her be a mom to Hudson!

Lucas loves his MiMi!

We tried to take some family pictures of the three of us and also capture some maternity shots of my quickly growing belly. We experienced pictures with a toddler in full force. Lucas was more interested in playing in the sand than posing for pictures.