Here are some more pictures from the beach. We have been having a wonderful time, sleeping late, eating junk food, watching way too much TV, staying up until almost midnight... Oh! and playing at the beach, of course!
Nathan stands in the waves!
We have several come up to shoulder height! Pretty good In our opinion!
Meanwhile the sand is not forgotten...
They start out just digging holes...
Then burying legs...
Then brothers!
Nathan even became a volcano!
Wish ya'll were here! This is our first blog update from the beach, and I (Abby) will show you what we're doing at eight o'clock Wednesday morning!
Nobody's posing. They're all sound asleep!
We've had a great trip so far! We left home late Sunday afternoon and arrived around midnight! There was a full moon that night and we think that must have been the cause of the great waves we've had for the past couple days!
Daddy took this picture to show one of the things we've been doing here: watching TV. Actually, in this picture we're watching one of the early Star Wars movies. Nathan chose this movie as his birthday movie, because...
Monday was Jesse and Nathan's birthday! It wasn't a regular party, of course. The gifts, guests and party food will wait until we get home, but it was their actual birthday, so we celebrated with cake and ice cream!
You'll probably have to click on this picture to blow it up before you can really see it, but this is Jesse's chest with two hand-prints printed in it! Someone slapped two sun-screen covered hands on his chest, but never rubbed it in. When Jesse came out of the sun that evening, he had two bold white hand-prints!
Here's a sample video of us playing in the waves on Monday. These waves were fun, but the ones yesterday were huge!
In anticipation of a silence on the blog (nothing new, of course), and since I've got nothing else productive to do, here's a quick update.
Tomorrow (Sunday) is going to be a busy day. Early tomorrow afternoon, we'll head off to a combination piano recital/awards night. Now usually, the year end recital is held on a separate night from the awards, but everyone's schedules were so packed this year, that Mrs. Shugart decided to combine the two. After that (it should be around eight in the evening) we'll head off to Florida! There's a lot of preparing to do, and since Samford is in the middle of graduation, Daddy hasn't been home much to do it.
Meanwhile, there are several other projects we're wrapping up today and here are some pictures.
We've been working on these two beds for about a week! For those who don't remember, this area was once a place for a swing set, but we took that down recently, and it was just a area of dirt and rock surrounded by landscaping timbers. Well, Daddy and the boys built up these two triangular beds in the corners, we dug dirt out of the woods to fill them, and Mama's already got plants in them!
Those strange objects behind the bed constitute a make-shift fence to keep the dogs from getting in the cool, wet dirt. You can see Frisky still likes to sleep as close to it as possible!
You can tell that the new work is the yellow timbers. Mama's planted Thrift along the walls which, by next year, should fall down and conceal the wood.
The other project is setting up the new pool. We had planned to reuse last year's, but after it sprang a leak we had to get a new one. Still, the old pool stayed in place all winter, and had to be emptied of the collected rain water, dragged away, cut up and tossed in the trash!
Skip through these pictures to see the new pool open up! A hard layer of sand is under the tarp to protect the pool from any punctures.
More pictures after it fills up!
The four mothers: Mary, Grandmother, Aunt Pam and Mama!
Grilled chicken with white sauce, mashed potatoes, butter beans, Italian bread, tomatoes, corn salad and...
Cake! Chocolate filled chocolate cake with chocolate filling, covered with chocolate sauce (ganache) piped around with chocolate with chocolate curls on top!
Not to say that anyone was excited about it, of course!
Little cousin Evie worshipped Nathan all day!
Isn't this sweet?
Jesse's graduation cake!
With the graduate!
Friends and family.
And of course he played the piano, gown and all!
Piano medals, football, basketball, Bear's jersey, Astronomy magazine, Fernando Ortega CDs, family pictures, a bible, a hymn, a cross and much more!
It sure is hard to believe! 
Thanks Mr. Anderson, for the pictures! Now if we could just find out what Sam is doing...
At the reception.
One last family picture! (that's our cousin Sarah in blue)
CONGRATULATIONS JESSE!!
