The beach photo shoot

We are all at the beach because it's my grandparents 55th anniversary. Our family is pretty big and it's always fairly chaotic when we all get together but we continue to do it because it's so much fun. For the occasion of 55 years of marriage, the mama's thought it would be a good idea to take a family picture. That is always easier said than done. Try to imagine coordinating 26 people from 3 different states who have jobs and lives outside of the family to all be together on a Tuesday night an hour before sunset on the north side of Anna Maria Island. It's no small feat I can assure you. But we did it......a little late, with no parking, and babies closer to bedtime than we like to think about, we did it. 

Here is the whole family waiting around on the photographer (BRENDAAA!)

Because it takes so long to take pictures we entertained ourselves taking some of our own. 

Here are the boys being a boy band. 
Shae had had 2 naps over the day and did a great job cooperating with the whole picture thing. 

Grammie and her baby
Then one with PaPa too. 
The original Murdocks
The Wilson Girls

Making our faces. 

and being rockers like Luke (except that Liz and Em don't know the rock symbol and did I Love You instead)

An Evening At The Beach

Here we are at the beach for the week.  Here's momma setting up her beach chair.

Luke is super-cool despite his lack of a swimsuit.
Cadence and Kagan waiting for the sunset.
Shannon showing Rylee how to skimboard.
Liz totally dominating Shannon in a footrace (he was so far behind he was out of frame)
We ended up leaving early because clouds covered up the sunset but we will try again later this week seeing as we are like 3 minutes away from the beach, unless you count the time it takes to load all of our stuff to go.  Then we are like 4 hours away from the water.  Oh well ;)

Playing at the House

Cadence and Kagan in their matching pj's............and so traditions continue :)Papa inparting great wisdom to Shannon
I love this girl and her hair

Showing Daddy how to make the face too. 

Fun with Friends

Last Thursday, Cadence and I got together with some friends to celebrate my birthday along with my friend Renee's birthday (which was last week). We ate Taco Salad and Peanut Butter Pie and the kids all played outside. We looked out and the girls had obviously finished their popsicles and had decided to go swimming - clothes, diapers and all. They were having such a good time that we just let them play. 

Blackberries

Last week Chris was home all week so one day we decided to go and pick blackberries. A couple of weeks ago we had been at the park with some friends and saw that there were wild blackberries growing in the woods that lined the park. So, off the Andersens went with a bowl to get enough blackberries to make a cobbler. 

Here was our start. 

Cadence was hot and only wanted to eat the blackberries out of the bowl. 

Chris found a shovel at the park because they were doing construction. He would use the shovel to hold down some of the thorns so that he could walk further back into the woods (we didn't really dress for the occasion)
I know these weren't black but it was hard to get a good picture of the black ones  on the vine - the unripened red ones showed up better. 
We finally had enough, came home to make the cobbler and I used the wrong kind of flour and the whole cobbler flopped. We all tried it but as Cadence said "dat yucky mommy"  It really was so I just threw it away. Maybe we'll do better next time :)

AppaLou and LUKE

Cadence loves her Appalou and Luke. They came up here to stay with us and Luke helped Chris out with a guitar clinic last week. Cadence had so much fun playing with them and still talks about them. Here are some of the pictures from their visit. 

Cadence wanted to play the guitar like LUKE




Going to the park to play. 

April dressed her for this excursion. 

It's always nice when there is graffiti on the slide. 

Driving home from FL.

The trip home seemed especially long this time. There was lots of traffic with it being a holiday weekend and then lots of rain thru Georgia and South Carolina and then I decided to take a "short cut" that wasn't very short at all.  Cadence did really well on the drive but some of the things we used to entertain her (since the DVD player was dead the whole time) was chocolate chip cookies and the camera. 

Here she is after eating a cookie. 

And here are a few of the pictures that she took while we were on the road. 

Just Playing around

Here are some more random pictures from FL of the things that Cadence did. 

In Janet and Scott's pool with Daddy. 

My parent's back yard seems to still be able to provide as much fun as it did when we were kids. Here Shae is playing chase with her Daddy. 

"I running"

On the swingset that we played on as kids. 

Chris was a little over-zealous pulling up her pull-up after she went potty. 

I think this is pudding. 

Cadence in yet another pair of flop-flops. She loves them. 


Playing with Uncle Shana and Baby Joy. 
Cleaning up at Gigi and Papa's house in Lakeland. 

Daddy's little Seminole!!