For the 13th year in a row, my step-dad’s family spent Memorial Day weekend at the Disney Vero Beach hotel. This was the first year we got the three bedroom cottage.. and oh man, was it ever so sweet. Three bedrooms and three bathrooms downstairs, a huge living space, dining room and kitchen upstairs, and four balconies. The cottage was RIGHT ON the beach, so two of the balconies faced directly onto the ocean, with nothing but sand and some foliage between us and the water. I can’t believe I never took a photo of that view. Here’s a view of the cottage from the front though, with Halle standing on the front step.

And Halle on the swing out front.

Halle had an AMAZING time all weekend with her Mia, Pop, Tia and the others. I love how happy she gets when she sees them. In fact, the only bad thing about her extreme excitement and love for them is watching her heart break every time she has to say goodbye to them, knowing it’ll be awhile before she gets to see them again. :(

One of the highlights of the weekend was watching Halle’s confidence explode in the pool. For the longest time, Halle has loved swimming, dunking, jumping in the pool as long as she was holding on to one of us at all times. She absolutely would not let go of us for any reason. I don’t know why, but I always resisted getting her floaties or a swim vest because I wanted her to learn to swim without them. I thought they were a crutch she didn’t need. But apparently I was wrong. We finally decided that she needed to learn to swim without us so we bought her floaties (or water wings or whatever you want to call them) and she had no problem swimming on her with them. We went to the pool several times a week for 2-3 weeks and let her kick her way all around the pool by herself with the aid of these floaties, and she learned so much about kicking and keeping her head afloat in the water. Her confidence grew like crazy. So anyway, while we were at Vero Beach this weekend, only 2-3 weeks after first buying the floaties, she started swimming, jumping, and playing in the pool without holding on to us and without floaties! She only swims short distances, but the confidence change is just amazing! (Of course, watching Annabelle do all these things last week probably helped a lot too!).

Here are some pictures of her swimming to Jason

And swimming to the wall

And big jumping!

And her favorite, being thrown in the air!

I’m sooooo happy that she’s catching up on these skills, feeling confident in the water, and having a great time in the pool! It really makes vacations like these so much fun for us!

Another fun part of the weekend for me was finally having confidence myself.. in myself. For the first time in a long time, I wasn’t self conscious of my body, even in a bathing suit. I wore a cute little sundress and felt kinda hot in it. :) I got tons of compliments from my family on how great I looked. It felt so good! I wish I got a better picture of me in the dress, but I love this picture anyway.

On Sunday morning, Erica stopped by to take Elena’s 1 year pictures. You probably saw them already on Erica’s Facebook account or her website, but here’s my favorite from the ones she’s posted. I picked up the cd of all the pics today but haven’t gone through it yet. So I may post others soon.

Hope everyone else had a great weekend too!

We’ve been hanging at Justin’s house a lot lately, having lots of fun.  Here are a few cute pics from the last couple days…

Elena at Justin’s pool (the location of her first birthday party next month)

Halle, the pianist.  She LOVES Tio’s piano and has told me several times that she wants lessons to learn how to play.  On the list, Halle Bear.

Sweet sisters.

And some shuttle pics at the beach in front of Justin’s place.

When I told my mom I was coming down this weekend she was a little bummed because she’s going out of town on Saturday for her nephew’s graduation party and was going to miss seeing me and the girls.  When I realized it was Mother’s Day weekend, I decided to come down a couple days early as a Mother’s Day present to her so she would get to enjoy a few days with her girls before she left.  She was ecstatic and immediately asked me if I could bring the girls to school at the end of the school day on Friday so her kids could meet them.  She teaches third grade gifted students and she raves about her granddaughters constantly, so the kids were actually just as excited as my mom was about this visit.

When we got to the front office, two of her students were waiting there for us.  They gave us a tour of the school (their mascot is the Gators so they had adorable alligator murals all over the school and Halle loved them!), which was really sweet.  The two kids, Zeyad and Lindsey, were perfect tour guides.  Courteous and smart and so happy to be escorting us around.  When we got to my mom’s classroom, the kids had made a sign on the door that said “Welcome Halle and Elena” and as soon as the door handle turned you could hear shrieking inside as the kids realized we were there.

My mom had warned the kids that running up to them would overwhelm the girls, and told them they should plan activities to do with Halle instead.  She told them Halle’s favorite things (reading books, drawing, playing on the computer) and they set up little stations in different parts of the room so they could take turns entertaining her.  It was SO cute!  First one of the girls read her a story while three or four other kids sat around in a circle with her.  Then she went to a desk where a few of the kids drew pictures with her and watched her write her name.  After she wrote her name, three different kids gave her a high-five.  She was so proud of herself!  Then they took her to the computer, and showed her some of the lower-level games they had found.  By this time, Halle was totally comfortable so they just showed her around the classroom and we took some group pictures and, before we knew it, the bell rang and the kids went home.

After the kids were gone, my mom brought the girls in to the front office to show off her babies.  In the front of the room there’s a large circle rug with the alphabet on it.  Halle ran right up to it and started dancing around the rug pointing to the letters while singing her ABCs.  The teachers all commented on her star talent (she’s good at putting on a show) and how bright she was to be singing her ABCs already.  Totally unprompted she then starts singing the letter sounds song (The A says “ah” the B says “buh”..).  They were all VERY impressed with her letter sounds.  Then, again totally unprompted, she starts dancing around the rug saying “GO GATORS!  GO GATORS!  GO GATORS!”  My mom (and I!) couldn’t have been any prouder to see Halle SUPER happy showing off her beauty, charm, intelligence, and team spirit!  I so wish I had the video camera out during that entire time in the front office.  I hope that’s a memory my mom and I never forget!

Here are some pics I took of the kids playing with Halle.  I will be posting these on Halle Heaven as well since that’s the website these students check.

Thank you Lakeside Gators for a PERFECT visit!

We went down south this weekend to visit little Miss Tori and to take advantage of our awesome down south babysitters. So, first off, huge thanks go out to my mom, Gary, and Teryn for being absolutely incredible. Not only did they take the girls all day Saturday for us, but they even kept them in their rooms overnight and let us sleep in Sunday morning. Sooooooooo much appreciated. Thank you, thank you!

So what did we do with our Saturday? First we had lunch on my mom’s patio with the family (cuban sandwiches from Las Vegas… mmm). It was a beautiful day to eat outside. Then around 3:00 we went over to Nic and Min’s for a few hours to hang out with them and hold their newborn beauty. It was great to just sit and talk with them while Tori slept in my arms for almost three hours. So yes, I spent the first three hours of my childless day hanging out with someone else’s child. :) Then we decided to head over to Bash, a restaurant that one of our high school friends owns. And she’s the Executive Chef. Unfortunately she wasn’t there that night, but the food was delicious and we’re still glad we got to check it out.

We decided to go see He’s Not That Into You but the movie didn’t start until 10:25 and it was only about 7:30 at this point. So I convinced Jason to take me to IKEA and walk around with me. :) It killed some time, I got my IKEA fill, and we didn’t spend a penny. IKEA closed at 9 so we still had time to kill after that. We met up with Tim and went to Flanigans for drinks and dessert. And then we went and saw our movie (which we liked.. it was cute and entertaining). Sunday I slept in until 10 and then went back down for a nap from 3-4. It was awesome. I love grandparents and awesome aunts.

There are a lot of people we would’ve loved to have seen while we were down there, but we really wanted a lazy weekend without too many plans. We’ll have to do it again soon though and plan to see more people.

And now I leave you with this super happy photo of Tori. I think she liked me. :)