More than a Tumor: Nathan turns 1!

As we got ourselves through the rest of July, we decided to take a little vacation to York Beach, Maine. It would be Nate's first time seeing the ocean and we knew it would be good for Benjamin as he loves the beach! Plus, we were going with a few other families and Ben would get a chance to play and run around. With the sadness still lingering from the sudden passing of my Dad, I knew it would be good to get away.

But, first came some unexpected news. We received a phone call from the caretaker of our property in Florida. Our condo was flooded and it had been "raining" in our place for at least four days. Awesome, just what we needed to hear. Well, long story short, our upstairs neighbors' toilet began leaking and it had nowhere to go but down, for who knows how long. We ended up having to completely renovate (including furniture) one bedroom and one bathroom from top to bottom, a portion of a hallway and another bathroom. All in all, a $30,000+ mistake on our neighbors' part. Thank God for insurance, but difficult to manage from 1,300 miles away. This ended up being an ongoing issue until November 2012.

Nate loving the ocean!

But, there was absolutely nothing we could do and
we had to leave it in our caretaker's hands. We
continued on to the beach and enjoyed every
minute. We laughed and made some wonderful
memories. The boys loved the sand and playing in
the water. Nathan wasn't quite walking yet so it was still somewhat easy to manage both of them!

Nate enjoying the beach.

Benjamin doing some bowling on the beach.

When we got home from the beach, it was time to plan Nate's first birthday party! We were excited and knew we had a lot to celebrate. There were so many tears that first year. We were finally getting to a point where there were more smiles! We celebrated with a BBQ and both sides of our family came. Despite the threat of a tornado which turned into an incredible rainstorm, we didn't care; we had so much to celebrate!