June 2012

We spent a lot of time down at our swim club this past summer. Jude and Channing both seem to really enjoy playing in the water and Jude even participated in beginning swim lessons! Here are a few pictures of Jude and CC enjoying the water at the pool in June 2012:

Another highlight of our month of June 2012 was a visit with Grandma Bonnie's good friends, Gail and Rusty Marion. Bonnie and Gail were in music school together at East Carolina University. Gail and Rusty live in Clemson, SC, where Rusty is a professor at Clemson University. Here's a picture of Jude and Channing visiting with Gail and Rusty:

Father's Day weekend was a fun one- we went downtown to the Raleigh Fire Department's 100th Anniversary Celebration. Jude was thrilled with all of the fire trucks he was able to look at and climb on but he was a little unsure about the sirens blaring loudly. Here are a few pictures of Jude and his daddy enjoying the fire trucks:

Channing wasn't so sure about the fire trucks either!

Another highlight that we enjoyed throughout the summer of 2012 was our many trips to the beach! We are lucky enough to get to stay at my parents' beach house in Emerald Isle, NC and we try to go a few different times each summer. Our first beach trip for the summer of 2012 was in June! This was Channing's first trip to the beach! At 7 months old, CC was barely sitting up on her own and she spent the majority of her time on the beach eating handfulls of sand!

Jude spent his time at the beach digging in the sand, running around wildly, and playing in the shallow waves with Mommy and Daddy. Jude thought it was great fun to use shovels and dig in the sand.

While at the beach, I thought it would be fun to set up a quick photo shoot with our darling boy.... here's what we got:

Channing has really started to look more and more like me. Here's a picture of 7 months old CC and Mommy in June 2012 in Emerald Isle, NC:

These next pictures remind me of something that I recently read. Ever since Channing was born, Ian and I have regularly had people say to us "wow, you've got your hands full!" With our children only being 18 months apart in age, I definitely agree that we do have our hands full, but they are FULL OF LOVE and we wouldn't want it any other way.

Another thing that we always love to do during our beach vacations is to spend an afternoon in Beaufort, NC. On this particular day in June 2012, we stumbled upon a church in downtown Beaufort that was having a cook out and selling hot dogs and home made ice cream. We had so much fun just spending time with eachother and the locals at the church enjoying food and fellowship. Then we decided to take the kids on the open air bus tour of historic Beaufort. I had been on this tour previously and remembered it being really neat. Jude had a great time talking about the bus and all of the cars we saw. He also loved waving at people as we rode by!

One last photo shoot from our June 2012 Walker Family Beach Adventure: (Jude is 2 years old and Channing is 7 months old)

Following our June beach trip, Jude reached another milestone in June 2012 - he "graduated" from sleeping in his crib to sleeping in a toddler bed! I had hoped to keep Jude in a crib until he was three years old because it was so simple to be able to put him in the crib and know that he would be right where I left him. Jude had other plans!!! Jude figured out how to climb out of his crib and then was not able to get back in the crib to go to sleep, so it ended up with him falling asleep on the floor after playing in his room (when he was supposed to be sleeping). After many nights of this and my realization that my original plan of keeping our little guy in his crib was not going to work, we pulled out one of the toddler beds that had been gifted to us by a very generous friend of ours and took apart Jude's crib. Jude was excited for his first night in his "big boy bed!" I was thrilled when he went to bed without a problem in his new bed. Here's a picture of Jude's first night in his toddler bed (2 years old:

June 29, 2012 was "National Mud Day" and the Duke Children's Campus had their very own Mud Day that our children participated in! Here is a picture of Channing that her teacher had sent to me from Mud Day 2012:

Well, that about sums up the highlights of the Walker Family's June 2012!