Every year since I was a baby my mom's side of the family take a trip to the beach for a week. This is always a highlight of the year for us. This year we stayed in a house at Ocean Isle Beach 18 other members of our extended family....mom and dad, ryan and shannon, kevin and paige, mary beth and david, aaron, jordan, anna-margaret and adam, andy and debbie, kyle, and nana along with justin, keegan and myself. It was a pretty packed house but we wouldn't have traded it for anything! (plus not everyone was there all week!) Keegan had a great time. He really did very well adapting to a different house, room, people, etc. I wasn't entirely sure how he'd do but he did great. We had to get creative with his sleeping arrangement though. When Keegan sleeps in the same room with us, he tends to wake up extra early. Sometimes he wakes up at 5 but goes back to sleep. If he sees us, he won't go back to sleep. So we rigged up this contraption to block his sight from his bed to ours.....
Since Keegan gets up early, we had to get him out of the house every morning so he didn't wake everyone else up at 6am when he likes to get up. Luckily my dad likes to get up early too (or he just likes to get up early when a certain toddler is around at least!) and he helped me out in the morning by taking Keegan and letting me go for a run by myself (which is much easier than pushing the jogging stroller....but I guess not as good of a workout....) He would take Keegan to the playground or boardwalk in the car and I would jog and meet them there. Here are some pictures from our early mornings.
On Tuesday, we went out to dinner since it was the last night everyone was going to all be there (some had to go back to work) so before we went, we took a group picture. Keegan wanted to help set the picture up...he insisted on it!
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| McAlister Family - 2011 |
Keegan loved going down to the beach. He had a lot of fun playing in the sand and the water.
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| Keegan and Mommy |
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| Keegan and Uncle Kevin |
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| Keegan and Anna-Margaret |
We took Keegan to get his first real ice cream cone one afternoon. He loved it. At first he wasn't so sure of actually licking it off of the cone, he preferred the spoon but after a few tries he got the hang of it and wouldn't give it back!
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| Looking at Weezie "batting" his eyes because she gave him ice cream |
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| Signing "cold" because the ice cream was cold! |
Keegan loved playing with bubbles on the deck. He especially had fun this particular day and I got some great pictures of him!
One day at the beach we got out this little kite we had for Keegan. Anna-Margaret's boyfriend, Adam, had been kite surfing all week and Keegan was so interested in it, we thought he'd enjoy his own kite. And he did! He thought it was so cool. He was even able to fly it himself!
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| Setting up the kite with Granddad |
We were fortunate enough to have a pool at our house. Keegan really enjoys swimming in the pool in our neighborhood, and this pool was no different! Weezie got some googles for him and Keegan thought they were pretty fun! He even kept them on for a whole 2 or 3 minutes!
Saturday morning before we left, we took Keegan to play Putt Putt and out to lunch. We needed to kill some time before we left so we could be sure to drive during Keegan's naptime.
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| Keegan loves lemons! |
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| and popcorn shrimp! |
