"when the coast is clear...."

These photos were taken on a walk to the beach sometime last week. The only reason I feel the need to clarify that is because Hailey is still sportin' a pretty steak worthy black eye in these shots and now all that is left of her battle scar is a little bit of discoloration.

I know I have said it a hundred times before, but I LOVE where we live. I love that the lake is just steps away from our front door. I love that on a sunny day we can decide out of the blue to go hang out on the beach for a bit. I love that on windy days you can hear the waves roaring from right over the dune. I especially love spring and fall at the beach. The sky is a true blue and more often then not the lake is as smooth as glass and there is not a soul in sight. It always reminds me of Jimmy Buffets' "Coast is Clear" song.

I didn't realize until I was editing these photos that they were both wearing shirts with alligators on them. Very differently depicted alligators. There is not much description to go with any of the photos - they are just snapshots of a very entertaining couple of hours spent in one of our favorite places.

Photo note: I have been playing around a bit with some textures in PSE. The first photo of Hailey's feet and the black and white of the two of them have a texture added to them. I don't know how much it adds, just kind of fun to experiment with.

What we did instead of going to the baseball game...

Evan has been waiting for this day since he opened his new dinosaur umbrella on his birthday. We have had plenty of rain since then - we just never found the right moment.

Last night was that moment. Trent and Spencer were at the baseball game. We had every intention of following a bit behind them, and then the rain started to pour down. I was sure that the game would be called because of it, so I decided that we would abandon our plans to watch and just wait for Dad and Spence to get home while playing in the rain.

Evan grabbed his umbrella and Hailey begged to wear her new raincoat. How much do I love her raincoat? SO MUCH! There may be some other pictures soon to make an appearance on this blog of her in the same raincoat from the day before. My cousin knew that I admired little girls raincoats from afar and so badly wanted to purchase one, but didn't know if I should spend the money on something that Hailey might not wear very often. She told me last week that TJ Maxx had cute raincoats on clearance. I went the next day and found a little gem that Hailey has worn twice in the past four days.

And the game never did get called. Spencer came home very wet.


Evan so happy to be "singing in the rain"!

I LOVE this picture of Hailey letting the rain fall on her face. I am bummed out a bit by the blur though.

Cute, cold, wet, blurry toes! I couldn't resist. She does not have a deformed big toe. She just has it turned under in stubbing mode.

Photo note: These pictures were shot with my long lens - the 40-150mm in aperture priority mode. I don't know if it was the AP mode set to the wrong aperture that made them blur or if I am just use to my "good" lens where the blur seems nonexistent. I like the background blur I get with this lens but the lack of tack sharpness drives me crazy and makes me remember why I tend to keep it in the bag.