300 is a lot of weeks. When I started doing this, mostly as a joke, I was pregnant with Caroline. Now I’m only a couple weeks away from having a FOURTH child, which means I have documented every day of our lives through almost 6 years. Sometimes I wish I focused more on taking beautiful iPhone photos that made our lives look happier, cleaner, more photogenic than they really are. But then I look back at previous weeks and all I can think about is how nice it is to have these dumb, blurry, boring phone photos that would otherwise be deleted saved somewhere for me (and the kids) to look at. I mean, Week 3 was nothing special but looking at tiny Baby Evan is not a thing I will get tired of. I would regret it forever if I let this weekly post die now, even though doing it in a timely manner seems to be beyond me. We’ll give Baby 4 a chance to be overly photographed and documented for at least a few weeks before I think about giving it up again.

Sunday:

It’s too hot for pajamas OR covers, but Big Kids sleep in Big Kids beds

Brotherly tv watching

Or maybe he’s not a big kid, just a sweet lap nap baby

Monday:

We meet some really interesting people while hunting Pokemon

Important research

Too hot for real life so we hang out in the only room with a/c

Tuesday:

3 kids, 3 check ups, 0 cavities!

More hiding in the a/c

This only lasted 5 minutes

Wednesday:

Chair stealer

Lake life

AMAZING light for my photo session

Thursday:

Which Pokemon is that?

More air conditioned fun

There’s a rat on my daughter!

Friday:

Safety first when eating bread

Card night

Helping organize the cards

Saturday:

Good old-fashioned slip and slide fun

Watermelon stealer

SO DELICIOUS

It’s raining today, which means it’s cool enough in the house to actually BE in the house. I have big plans to Get Stuff Done – so far, some laundry, some dishes and this post are all checked off, let’s see if toy organization, finishing three photo sessions and napping happen. I feel like napping has a pretty good shot.

It’s only Sunday and I’m getting this done! Because it is too hot to do anything besides sit very still!

Sunday:

That looks safe

Middle of nowhere

Apparently, some of my relatives are buried at this obscure graveyard in Ohio (that’s my maiden name)

Monday:

Waking up at the lake means 8 am swim call

Books books books

Future captain

Tuesday:

The lake has a menu

My baby is on that tube

Chips are very exciting

Wednesday:

Everyone loves the swim platform

I guess that’s fair

He likes the boat a lot more than this face implies

Thursday:

Tired, hot, filthy children are finally home

That “mild” sunburn hurts A LOT more than it looks

I taught them how to send FB messages

Friday:

Back at our own lake

Recital in two weeks!

Catching Pokemon from our front porch

Saturday:

Caroline the Bond Villian

Camp food!

The birthday boy was not in the mood for pictures

All the kids had a great time at Linc’s party and no one died of heat stroke. This week is going to be busy with making up appointments and commitments we rescheduled when we went out of town, plus it’s my last busy week of photo sessions before I start telling people I’m too pregnant. I mean, I’m ALREADY too pregnant, but I still like working. I’m going to “take it easy” from now until the end of August (which will more likely be the middle of September, since I always have boy babies late). It will be easier to take it easy once it is not 95 degrees every day. When can someone work on that?

This week feels like it happened months ago. I was SUCH a mess just seven days ago, I can’t even believe I didn’t end up in the hospital. Fingers crossed that’s as sick as I get this pregnancy, I can’t handle any more than that.

You’ll notice a lot of messy house and couch pictures this week as a result of my convalescence. At least let’s pretend that’s why.

Sunday:

View from my sick bed

My children being kind and loving

My children being annoying because I don’t have the energy to stop them

Monday:

Big kid swings

Little kid naps

Big kids nap too

Tuesday:

He’s a Target Pro

With their Vacation Bible School goodies

He insists on walking up the stairs like this all the time now

Wednesday:

New pregnancy craving: fresh bread

Seems like a perfectly good place to park

Evening lake life’

Thursday:

HASHTAG REAL LIFE HASHTAG MY CHILDREN ARE THE WORST

Sea Swirl is my favorite

They’re all obsessed with this statue in Mystic

Friday:

A week of VBS plus lake equals SO TIRED

Bread thief

Storm’s a’comin’

Saturday:

I’m currently obsessed with film

Caroline is obsessed with changing diapers (we have a rash situation, I’m still using cloth mostly)

You should smell this lavender farm. It’s AMAZING.

Tomorrow Caroline starts Seaport Camp, which means she’s going to be an exhausted mess basically every night. But that just means she (and I) can go to bed extra early. I am toooootally fine with that. I’m getting to the point where I want to sleep as much as possible because I know in another 8 weeks I won’t be sleeping again for 2 years. I’m not really looking forward to that part of having a baby.

I actually couldn’t handle looking at vacation pictures yesterday when I was supposed to do this, because it was dreary and pouring rain and my house was a disaster and my children made me insane and basically it was too depressing to think that THIS is my life versus the beach. But today I am facing reality. At least until Friday. Then school is out and we can pretend life is all just vacation again.

Sunday:

Bubbles on the pool deck

He actually DOES like lunch, I swear

Bo ssam: aka the MOST delicious meal I eat all year

Monday:

As long as it’s not ACTUALLY raining, it’s a beach day

Tiny frog friend in the outdoor shower

Hand and foot, because we force everyone we know to play

Tuesday:

Vacation breakfast of champions

So much driving

That face is because this is NOT the beach house

Wednesday:

MORE DRIVING

A+ relaxing

Embracing lake life

Thursday:

Not bad

Super happy it’s almost summer

Tents for Linc’s upcoming party

Friday:

Cannot be trusted with my iced coffee

I think she’s tired of pictures

MORE CARDS BECAUSE ALWAYS

Saturday:

Visiting the cows

That was supposed to be MY beach lounger

Inescapable floaty is inescapable

Did I mention this is the LAST WEEK OF SCHOOL? I’m feeling a little unprepared for summer (who is going to feed these kids all day?) but I’m so ready to not get up at 6:15 every morning. Plus summer is exhausting, so EVERYONE will do more sleeping. More sleeping is basically my only goal in life right now at 28 weeks pregnant.

Our Kiawah trip each year is fun for a lot of reasons, but the number one reason is I LOVE the people we go with. These are my oldest friends, I have known them longer than I have known my husband (although some of them have their own husbands now), and somehow they still like me. They’re basically family, so the kids call them Aunt and Uncle, and they are the kind of people who let Caroline “help” crack eggs or read Linc the same book 15 times. My life would be 1000% less awesome if they weren’t in it.

There is a small…medium…maybe slightly larger than medium chance that we (the Davis family) will be moving in the next year, which means we might also miss a year or two at the beach house. All I can do is make everyone promise they will still go, so when we eventually move back to the east coast we can pick right back up with our favorite week of the year.

In case you haven’t seen all the previous years (here: 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011) and are wondering about The Beach House, it is the vacation home of a friend’s uncle who is incredibly generous and kind and amazing and allows us to use it for a long weekend each year. It’s nicer than any other house I have ever been in, on an absolutely stunning stretch of Kiawah Island off the coast of Charleston. There is a bunk room for the big kids to share, separate bedrooms for each adult/adult couple, and approximately one million bathrooms. The toddlers sleep in closets that are actually bigger than some of their rooms at home. It is air conditioned to a perfect 72 degrees, the pool is heated to 88 degrees (I know because the pool guy came to clean it and check the temp for us), and there is a house-keeping staff that scrubs the whole thing right before we get there and right after we leave. It’s basically heaven.

I promise these are the rest of the pictures. I won’t make you sit through a third post.

The first floor (the one that walks out to the pool, not the basement with the cars) is the movie room, where the kids can control the TV and no grown ups have to watch it.

All the kids, wearing Hanna stripey jams! Almost all looking at the camera!

These are from our first, not-s0-good family photo session. It was very dark and I messed up my settings and I don’t like my dress and Linc got soaked within 10 minutes. But I still edited all the decent ones.

We bought an inexpensive underwater camera for the trip, since we’ve had fun with them in the pool before. When this one eventually breaks we’ll spring for a much nicer underwater camera, because this are not what I was hoping to get. I really need something that shoots RAW so I can edit them nicely.

ALL THE TOES!

And the rest are our family photos – the good ones! – from the second try. Instead of a tripod I got my friend Erin (who is also a photographer) to press the shutter button when I wanted the whole family in the shot. MUCH better than a timer or a remote. I am so happy to have these.

Is it too early to start the countdown to NEXT summer??