Vero Beach Weekend
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!
