Club Med 2010

Just home from a week long trip of heaven in Club Med and I think this picture says it all about the fun we had.




Lily made friends, took a snooze or 10, swam like a fish, played her little heart out and suddenly became an avid dancer who wanted to dance with any earshot of a song remotely in her area. We were unpacking our suitcases in the room and she kept saying "dans, dans" as I'm trying to find local stations on the clock radio to let her get her groove on. Going on stage for her was a bonus. I couldnt believe my eyes and seeing her moves, asking for more ideas for dance steps was hilarious. Teaching her the sprinkler, picking cherries, and ice cream swirl were some of the favorites.




Seriously, is there anything better in life than seeing your kid(s) so happy? I felt like I was being offered a happy drug on every corner and I legally accepted. During shows, I watched Lily and her priceless reactions more than the actual show.




To have unlimited time with Lily and David, with no laundry, errands, places to be or responsibilities was more than my little heart could handle. Felt like our little family triangle was sharpening its saw getting ready to be a family square in October. The best part of Club Med is that you check your brain at the door, everything is planned, paid for, activities are around the clock and you can be as busy or 'un-busy' as you want. Did I mention the food is out of this world? I was first turned on to Club Med as a teenager when Allison's family KINDLY took me two different times with their family to St. Lucia and then Eleuthra a few years later. Allison and I had gone to this location just to trapeze in college, but never did I dream it would be this lifelong love affair with Club Med where I'd be going with my own family. Holy full circle.



Jen O. from Coconut Belly told me every blog you read is approximately 20% of that person's real life and I believe that. These pictures tell only 20% of the trip because I tried my hardest to find the balance between capturing it all through pictures snapping away and actually letting myself sit back while truly "vacationing" if that makes any sense.




Lily looks like she's in a hip-hop-off with her friend, but they were really sharing moves with each other trying to figure out how to be like the big kids. And of course, our little narcolepsy Lily had a take a little rest from all the swimming (bottom left). She gives new meaning to the term 'resting pool side'.



They gave us a stroller when we checked in and Lily wanted to push it more than ride it so we took a wee bit longer to get places. And did she read the sign that said 'shower before entering the pool' because she was adamant about showering before and after entering the pool. David got down with Lily on stage and he was even called up on stage by himself during the circus show to be a part of a 4-person human chair. The mime had a field day with him and it was hilarious. (videos to follow) He had to do whatever the mime told him to do, like fall down, do silly things and the crowd was laughing while Lily kept saying "daddy sad. Daddy boo-boos" with her big blue eyes looking up at me to help him as he was falling and laying in weird positions. so cute.


Lily must've heard the news that Kobe is coming to Miami because she flip flopped between swimming in the pool, then desperately wanting to play basketball. It was a nice break for her poor little puffy chlorine filled eyes.



See this picture (bottom left) of her holding a smoothie? Well, that's the face she made at every show (see why I couldnt look away?) and this happened to be a puppet show that she talked about all week. Still does since we've been home in fact. It was a cute, wholesome puppet show and everything was hunky-dory until the last 5-10 minutes some little kids started getting up on stage petting the puppets. As. the. puppets. were. performing. Ummm, not so sure if that's legal, but kids were doing it and parents were snapping pictures as they did reinforcing the fact telling the kids that it's ok to go up on stage and interrupt it all. So that's all well and good, but 1 kid turned into 15 kids swarming the puppets, essentially upstaging the puppets. So it was a little awkward to watch because it was difficult to hear the actual puppet show, but then things got out of hand. A few kids thought it was cool to actually put their hands in the puppet's mouths as they were talking and then a few others thought it was cool to HIT the puppets! Like 10 year olds are pounding the face of the bert-look-alike puppet. So we had parents pulling kids off stage left and right, disciplining them, as they ran back up on stage so we had mass chaos. Finally someone from Club Med shoo'd everyone offstage, but I couldnt believe my eyeballs. David was gone to refill our drinks so he missed this 5 minutes of craziness, but saw my horrified face when he returned as I retold it. Ha-lare-ee-us! I wanted to take video or pictures of it, but didnt want people to think I had a kid up there causing the ruckus. I know a lot of people there were French, but isn't it a universal rule to respect puppets at a puppet show? Can't decide if Lily remembers the actual funny 30 minute puppet show or just the last 5 minutes?

It was such a whirlwind of fun and happy memories all loaded in one! I bought some new clothes before I left hoping to look cute, but felt a lot like Bethany did on her honeymoon, but didnt stop me from trying and helping lily to look super cute in the process too. Um, can i tell you how much I love this dress? I want one in my size. I attach Lily's clothes with specific memories and this one will have giant Club Med memory on it for its entire existence.




The night shows were late & Lily was getting to bed every night around 11pm so we had one tired toddler on the way home. Definitely with a full heart too. We kept thanking her for allowing us to take a "family vacation" together because she makes us a family. She was our "pass" to get into the family resort. Kinda like our token to ride the rides at an amusement park. ha It felt like a family honeymoon. I literally can not believe we get to experience this joy all over again with #2!


Life is good.

Have I mentioned I can't take off my Club Med bracelet yet? :)

Round Da' House

Things have been a little crazy around here. As in our house has been taken over where every square inch looks this:


Oh, you think that's not so bad right, but get a load of our bathroom. No, this is not a picture we're sending to apply for the show "Hoarders"


David and I like things somewhat orderly in the house, but that hasn't been the theme the last few weeks:


dont even think about taking a bath...


What? You don't like an entertainment center in the middle of your kitchen? So uptight.



I especially like to watch TV in the kitchen while cooking...


and relax by the pool after a long day of swimming. on our couches??



or we could take a nap on our bed that has been placed outside as well. Do you see my stress level rising?


No, we haven't been robbed:



This is our new foyer...don't u like it? We're even putting the kids to work. That's how in the weeds we felt...


Well, the good news is we're all but finished with the house projects except some of the nursery.It's almost there and it'd probably be finished by now, but we've had a major hold up with the crib. As in it's taken almost 3 months to get a crib in his room!

Ready for this?

We've ordered the SAME crib FOUR times and each time it comes completely broken or damaged. So we send it back, order another one, wait 2-3 weeks and bam it arrives broken or damaged. Same section, same damage sometimes less or more than the previous one. The 4th crib arrived and all was well except for one little scuff mark that we are working on now to fix because we just can't go through the ordeal again; especially when the box it comes in weighs over 100 lbs!

So we've slowly, but surely put our home back together (cleaning out every nook and cranny in the process) amazed at how much JUNK we have that we purged immediately, feeling lighter and ready for a little R&R we have planned. Seriously, this vacation could not have come at a more perfect time because we wont have to do all this stuff to face when we return and can sit back, drink a cocktail (n/a for me) and soak in the rays. Lily is getting an early start. If you ask her where we're going, she says "Cub Med" which is cuter than the real thing.
By the way, this is her favorite way to stand now and even walks like this sometimes. lol


On top of everything, Charley got very sick, but is doing a lot better now. I think Charley wants to come too.

There'll be lots of fun in the sun and lots of snuggles too.

Oh and lots of eating too! I won't be surprised if people ask me if I'm expecting twins once I return. The food there is unreal! Lily ate like Kobayashi last summer when we were there.

She wants to eat with big people utensils (vs plastic) so badly she'll do anything to prove she's ready. She was putting a blackberry on the fork one at a time, then carrying it to her mouth to show what a big girl she was. I told her she could eat the blackberries with her fingers, but she kept saying "Lily-self" something we're hearing a lot of lately.




I showed her how to poke the blackberry with the fork, but got the same response....."Lily-self" meaning "back off mom, I got this"


and suddenly she wants to sit at the dinner table with us and insists on doing the prayer every night that she does at school. She asks for it multiple times throughout any given meal:


and Lily has been in panties for almost 2 weeks now with amazing success. Do I dare say it? Nah, I dont wanna jinx it, but it's been nice to not have to wash diapers and as much as I miss her big fluffy CD booty, it's nice to have shorts that actually fit her. I can't believe how little her booty looks these days.



While away, I'm sure she'll wanna call home to check on Charley and her friends.


and baby will be sure to call home too to check in...



This is from Father's Day, but I snuck in front of the camera too...





Could she have anything more around her while reading? She takes about 10 minutes just to prepare herself for her next read-a-thon.


While snapping, I even got her licking her fingers to turn the pages. Oh my adorable!



Jen took this one when we were out to dinner one night and I can't believe how little she looks. We can still talk her into the highchair at restaurants which is nice to enjoy a longer meal where getting down isn't an option she thinks of....yet. :)



I think Lily is getting mentally prepared for a lot of lounging because she's practicing by randomly resting wherever she can find a spot in the middle of playing. This girl loves her some sleepies! This is her after playing mommy for a bit too long in her opinion...



she was reading and randomly crawled up in bed to rest for a few minutes...


and outside playing with bubbles was just too exhausting for her...



and the funniest yet was when she said "night night" and layed down in the middle of the water park. She was there long enough for me to go and grab my phone. lol


so we're all (over) packed and ready to go, but are excited to take this little one along too....


and to leave you with Lily's new favorite book that she reads about 20 times per day and insists on it every night before bed. She likes to read parts of it too. Oh that little voice is just too much for me to handle.

to view the video, click here

life is good. :)

First Haircut

I mentioned her first haircut in the last post so here are pictures to prove it. I fought a haircut for so long because I was so afraid I'd lose my "pig-tail-ability" and David has been pushing me to have it done. Yes, she's over 2 years old, but in my defense, she didnt start getting substantial hair until 14 or so months so it's really hasn't been that long. Okay, maybe it has, but it was one of those milestones I got super hung up on for irrational reasons and just couldnt bring myself to do it. When she kept wiping her hair out of her eyes while playing with dolls, I said enough is enough and made the appointment with butterflies in my tummy. You'd think I was getting her first training bra the deal I made out of it! When she woke up and wanted to play in her jammies, it just seemed to be odd to put a bow in her hair as soon as she woke up so I took the plunge. Here's her before shot. Poor thing and her neglectful mother.


Also, in my defense Lily is scared of scissors. We've given her a healthy fear of them and taught her they can give her boo-boos so every time she sees them she says with a worried face "No touch. Boo-Boos". So I imagined a stranger coming at her with scissors and there'd be wailing, thrashing, screaming, and code 10 tantrum right in the chair. Um, she kinda did the opposite and didn't move a muscle. There she goes making me look like a liar again. I still say the barbie car and barney video helped matters greatly.



this is when I got teary. when i saw the first snip of the wet bangs, i knew we were in trouble. i wanted to scream "way too short lady, how could u do that?" and push her down, scissors in hand. sure, they look decent length now, but once they dry watch out...



Not so bad, but now we have all these flyaway pieces of hair that are part of her back that creep up and want to be part of the bang crew. they're growing slowly but surely back in to a normal length and it's aged her at least a year! No joke, if u ask Lily how old she is now, she will say "free" for 3 90% of the time. She was at kindermusik the other day and the teacher asked her in front of the whole class how old she was and she waited about 5-7 seconds and I was just about to answer for her thinking she was being shy, but little ole' pinocchio affirmatively shouted out "free". lol




These pictures may be a few weeks old, but we are knee deep in house projects right now and have a serious deadline to get them all finished. If you saw our house right now, you'd think a serious bomb went off and we shouldn't have our C.O. to live here. I thought we had the whole summer to casually tackle them all, but we're heading on vaca then David is having surgery on his elbow when we return (sniff, sniff) so once he scheduled that he informed me he'd be out of commission for 6+ weeks after that. Gasp. Gasp. Gasp. He'll be better just in time to juggle a baby and toddler so we're doing our best to finish the nursery, while creating a new guest bedroom/playroom/office in the den. Wish us luck!

life is good.

4th Fun

I don't know about you, but I see this cute little thing and want to stand up and say the Pledge of Allegiance! She recently got her first haircut (post coming) and she bought herself a pair of bangs. I almost cried when I saw how short the lady made them (ok maybe i did a little) but they're growing in and change her entire look. After her haircut, I stared at her like she was a newborn and I was trying to study her all over again. Bangs or no bangs, she had me at 'hi mommy'


we have reason to celebrate and we did...


I can't get over how much more fun the holidays are seeing them through the eyes of a child...


Last time Lily was with "gamma", my mom casually mentioned to Lily it'd be fun to make cupcakes after seeing one in a book. well fast forward a few weeks and when I mentioned "gamma" was coming to town, Lily's first response was "cuptakes peez". And they did and watching them together was sweeter than the cuptakes. Lily is still talking about them 3 days later.

We went to the parade and I found myself very emotional; actually crying at the parade; (can u say "hormones"?) during certain songs and they really got me when we all stood to say the pledge or how a man was standing beside me and must've been wearing a secret coded shirt or hat because every service person who walked by made a special point to run over to him, thank him and shake his hand. Molly asked me if he was famous in the community. If I didnt have a shy side, I would've asked him who he was, but I just took in the moments.


there's nothing like 2 kids holding hands that make my heart melt every time.

and Lily is still talking about the 'fiwerwurks' she saw this weekend. Sometimes I dont give her enough credit because I could've sworn on a stack of bibles that she wouldnt want to hold a sparkler, but she was first in line. I sat back in amazement as she kept asking for more.



I think Lily will put down "pool" as her address when she gets older because she practially lives in there. Katie should be paid a babysitting fee every time she's with Lily because she swoops in, takes over and Lily never looks back...





and seeing the big kids jumping in made her squeal in delight every time.




there's something about the 4th of July that makes me very reflective like wanting to peek back at old pictures because we've started somewhat of a tradition feeling like 4th of July is as special as Christmas time so I take a peek back in time and see us last year...

and today:


or our very first 4th of July as a family of 3...


last year...
and this year. it's crazy cool to think there'll be 4 of us on the beach next year. happy sigh.


and the famous herd minus Katie who got to watch the fireworks at the glorious hyatt and we missed her so very much; all of us were green with envy....mixed in with a little red, white and blue too.

(tires screeching)
I feel like I should have a new entry to show off these amazing pictures taken by jen who seems to capture all of our hearts when we're not looking and sends them to the family afterwards as post gift to the fun we had.

they. melt. me.



who's that cute little thang running through the sand?



Jen is like a fly on the wall capturing moments you didn't even know happened right under your nose.



seriously, she makes a cheese sandwich and milk look meaningful. simply wow.



love those little feeties...


you wanted a belly pic so you got one. this is probably my favorite shot ever. i saw one like it on Kelle's blog so I tossed Lily up in the air as high as my swollen back would allow and jen started snapping. when mom saw it she said it encompassed everything that's meaningful in my life, but David had some words to share with her as he did an obvious throat clearing. haha


more belly shots and nothing but joy in my face...



and Lily was off to the races...



my only hope for lily is she always feels this supported in her life even if she's not actually holding our hands....



probably her favorite game right now is this, along with catch which she could do for hours. thank you jen for capturing her joy in its purest form.



life is good.