August 2012

Our beloved Ian turned 35 years old this past August 2012! On his actual birthday, Grandma Bonnie brought our niece and nephew, Kyle and Walker, to our house for dinner and cupcakes! Jude and Channing were elated to spend time with their cousins whom they don't see very often. Here's a picture of the Walker grandchildren in August 2012:
Walker (4 years old), Jude (2 years old), Kylie (6.5 years old), and Channing (8 months old)

We generally celebrate Ian's birthday with a trip to the beach, and this year was no exception! My parents joined us for four days at the beach to spend some quality time together. It unfortunately rained a lot of the time during our August 2012 beach trip, but we made the best of it and took the babies to the Aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores. Here's a few pictures from our August 2012 aquarium adventure:

Another fun part of our August 2012 beach trip was a visit to the Atlantic Beach Town Park with Nana and Papa! Channing and Nana spent time swinging while Jude showed Papa his great climbing skills on the playground apparatuses.

One perfect beach evening, Ian and I took Jude and Channing to the Bogue Inlet Fishing Pier to watch others fish and to just enjoy the atmosphere. Jude saw a woman catch a fish and he was tickled that she let him touch the slimy fish!

One of my mother's treasured highlights of trips to the beach in the summertime is always a visit to the Dairy Queen for some delightful ice cream!! On this particular evening, we picked up some Dilly Bars from the Dairy Queen and brought them back to the beach house for an after dinner treat. We knew this would be a messy treat for our two year old Jude, so we stripped him down to his diaper, brought him out on the deck, and let him enjoy his ice cream! The following are pictures of how this ice cream experience progressed:

What these picture don't illustrate is the sticky ice cream mess that covered the deck after Jude had finished his treat! Thank you, Nana and Papa, for providing us with the perfect beach location to make memories as a family, year after year, and also for joining in on our fun!

One evening towards the end of August 2012, Ian, the children, and I had been to a function at The Graduate School at Duke University and decided to follow it with a walk around the campus. Duke has a gorgeous campus and I wanted to capture a few pictures of Jude and Channing with the beloved Duke Chapel in the background. Here's what I got:

On August 16, 2012, Channing turned 9 months old! At 9 months old our girl weighed 14 lbs, 8 oz (3rd percentile) and was 25.25 inches tall (3rd percentile)! Channing had learned to crawl when she was 8 months old, and although she did the "army crawl" for quite a while, by the time she was 9 months old, she was getting pretty fast!

With the end of August came the end of summer and the Walker family had enjoyed an abundance of beach trips and visits with friends and family while creating a plethora of lasting memories.