House Tour

One big pull for us to move to South Carolina was living at my Grandma's house! After my Grandpa died, my Dad helped my Grandma develop their land into a mobile home park to support herself. After my Grandma passed away, my parents have hired people to manage the park. The pay is that you get to live in the house rent free. So here we are, managing the park, and I get to live in an adorable house that has really great memories of my Grandma.

The coolest part of this house is that my Grandpa built it with his bare hands! And he never went into debt. Every time he got his paycheck, he would go down to the hardware store and buy more supplies.

Here is the beautiful result:

I LOVE these trees. They are pecan trees, and we always used to help my Grandma pick up the pecans and she would used them to make amazing pies and desserts!

Not long after we moved here, we painted the living room. Here's the before and after:

When we first got here, the kitchen was a truly terrible pinkish-mauve color. With yellow cabinets. (Don't worry, it was painted this color by mistake. But then it was too late.) Anyway, the paint was peeling, too, because the wrong kind of paint was used. Needless to say, we gave the kitchen a nice face-lift, too.

The hall:

The office:

The master bedroom:

The second bedroom (not much going on in here; we don't really have a use for it yet, so we haven't redecorated it yet):

The bathroom (the showers doors have swans on them. Kind of awesome):

And the storage room. We recently got some great shelves so we could expand our food storage.

We have loved living here!

Family Fun

This summer, all my siblings and their families came home and we were able to spend some time together! Josh and I still had work almost every single day, but we managed to squeeze in a lot of quality family time! And we got to meet my new nephew, Tanner! He is so cute I can't even handle it...

We did so many things around the Myrtle Beach area:

We went and rode the SkyWheel by the ocean. They say it's the biggest ferris wheel in America, but I don't know if that's true or not. We also went walking on the new boardwalk and played some frisbee on the beach!

We went and saw the new show in Myrtle Beach, Pirates Voyage. It was an amazing show! Pirates would do amazing flips and dives into the water from swinging platforms and sea lions performed!

Here we are looking at the sea lions in their tank before the show:

We went and saw Le Grande Cirque (a Cirque du Soliel show) at the Palace Theatre. Kenzie loved swinging on the rails...

We spent one evening at a place called WonderWorks. It has tons of exhibits that are both educational and fun!

There was a simulator that lets you experience the power of a Category 1 hurricane.This picture is AWESOME.

This exhibit lets you feel the temperature of the Titanic water:

Kenzie loved doing the pully with Grandpa:

There were these bikes where you had to pedal as fast as you can to try and go all the way around. Josh and Hunter were the only ones to flip all the way over.

Seeing what it's like to lay on a bed of nails:

Kenzie LOVED this coloring screen:

There was a roller coaster simulator. You are enclosed in the "capsule" with a big movie screen in front of you. The machine moves you around in motion with the roller coaster on the video.

Dad and Halston doing a dance game:

Space Kenz:

At the very top of WonderWorks was an awesome ropes course!

On one of the days Josh and I got off work, we all went boating! Here's the Liljenquists' house boat. You can see everyone lined up on the top to jump off into the water:

The Liljenquists brought out their jet-skis, too, and were nice enough to let us use them. Josh and I had a very good time riding. But I might be a  little too crazy, because he wound up with a headache...

Riley and Halston on the jet-ski:

Riley and Kenzie swimming:

I don't have any pictures, but we also did some wakeboarding. Nick even showed us some of his jumping skills!

Because Kenzie is the bravest baby in the world, she went tubing. Nick and I took turns riding with her, and it was way fun. Twice, though, me and Makenzie were sitting on the tube and just as the boat started puttering, the tube would start to submerge (I think because we were sitting too far forward and didn't have enough weight there). So as I slowly sunk under the water, I had to grab Makenzie and hold her as high as I could over my head (obviously we were wearing life jackets, but the pull takes you under for a few seconds anyway). Everyone in the boat was laughing because they said it looked like I just disappeared, but here was Kenzie slowly rising higher and higher above the water. The funniest part is that most kids would have gotten a little freaked out and not want to ride anymore. Makenzie was unfazed and would just say "What happened?" When other people fell off the tube, though, she would be very concerned. Every single time, she would yell "We have to go help them!" and as soon as they were in hearing distance, she would call "are you okay???" until she got a response.

Went swimming in my parents' pool:

Rioz Brazilian Steakhouse (SO MUCH FOOD):

Kenzie showing off her ring pop and princess bracelet:

Hunter is a carnivore.

Broadway at the Beach:

Here's everybody looking at the repulsive fish:

Disgusting...

It was an amazing couple of weeks, and went by way too fast!