Lovin Cabo

Bella can pull herself up now. And thanks to my blog archives I can tell you that she did this one month sooner than her brother did.

Sunrise at the villa.

We've been in Cabo for 2 days now and I am loving the place were staying at. It is a house with a pool overlooking the ocean. The ocean is just a short walk down the driveway and your on the beach. The waves are too rough to actually get in the ocean, but we've been down to play in the sand. We were told there is a cove with calm waters for swimming just a few minute walk away, but we haven't explored that far yet.

The pool was nice and warm when we got here the first day, and the next morning it was BRRR cold, so the boys figured out that the heater was on a timer (probably to save the owners money) and they turned the timer off and turned the heat up. By the end of the day yesterday the pool was 95 degrees! It was so nice, but I made them turn it back down just a bit. We decided on 91.

At the end of the pool they have a "kiddie pool" which is really a hot tub with the heat off. We specifically asked if it was a hot tub and they said no, so we are guessing we aren't supposed to crank up the heat, but leave it to the boys to figure it out, we got that part up to 99 degrees.

They have a chef here that you can hire to come into the villa and cook for you but the prices are high so we planned on doing most of the cooking ourselves, but after the first trip to the groccery store and eating grilled ham and cheese sandwiches for our first dinner here, we decided we might want that cook after all. It also just so happens to be low season here, although I don't know why, it's perfect weather, but we haven't seen hardly anyone around, the beach is empty, it's like our own private vacation. So the good part of that is that we were able to work a good price out with the Chefs, and our second dinner her was way better, we had beef fajita's, fried rice, beans, fresh guacamole, and homemade salsa, (and they even made me a special vegetable stirfry without the meat). In Jamaica where I've been before and we have a cook, we buy the groceries and they cook the food. Here, they bring it all with them. It was really nice and stress free and so good. Way better then going to a restraraunt with 3 babies.

The kids are having fun, Bella and Tony are getting along with Taylor. They play together in the house with the very few toys we brought along. They all seem to like the tractors the best of all the toys, they usually fight for it. As for all the books we brought, they all seem to want the same book, a book that Taylor brought called "My little word book". They all 3 want to read it. So one book and a few tractors would have been suffice on the toys. Outside they are usually attached to an adult, but they all love the water.

Time change still hasn't kicked in yet, Bella starts our day at 6:30 and Taylor shortly follows, then Tony hears the two of them and wakes up too, and before long the whole house is up. We are usually done with breakfast and on the deck by 8:30. It's not bad though, cause it gets dark here early, usually by 6 the sun is set.

Anyway, speaking of Bella, she is sleeping in the laundry room, poor girl, but we have a 3 bedroom house, and Todd's mom came along to help with the kids so her and Tony are in one room, Brett and Jen and Taylor in another, and Todd and I were supposed to sleep with Bella, but Todd got the bright idea to stick her in the laudry room. Which actually is a good idea, but it kinda smells like detergent. Todd claims babies don't have a sense of smell like adults do so it wont bother her. I don't know if I believe that, but it is nice having her sleep there. His theory is based on the fact that they don't complain about a stinky diaper. So now it's a 3 bedroom villa with a bonus room!

Well I hear babies stirring so I better wrap this up. I hope you all appreciate the effort to blog, once you quit doing it, it's so much work!

Here are a few pictures, it takes a long time to upload them, so I just picked a few.

Bella
Tony's waterlogged toes.
Tony and Nana playing in the sand.
Taylor
Todd in the "kiddie" pool with Tony and Bella.
Tony lovin on Bella at the hotel in Chicago the night before we left.

Weekend at Natalie's

This past week we ended our week long family reunion/vacation at my sister Natalie and her husband Adam's house. They live on a lake on the eastern side of the state. They have a good size house, but for 11 adults and 11 kids, it was a little crowded. We still managed to have a great time, and we decided that my sister Natalie was the perfect sibling to host all of us at her house, because she is the only one that was not bothered by the constant state of messiness in her house. No matter how much you clean up, with that many people there will always be a mess somewhere. We asked Natalie if it was stressing her out having her house such a mess, and she said "not one bit".

I took a ton of pictures, and tried to upload as many of them as I could throughout the day, but we had a little accident this afternoon which put a halt to all of that. Tony dumped water on the laptop so my it no longer works. All my pictures are on it, thankfully I was able to get the laptop to the farms computer specialist and he was able to back up my hard drive so when I get my new computer I will get all my pictures back with it. In the mean time I'll share what I had already uploaded.

My son Tony and my niece Grace had many battles over this little chair. Too bad they are too young for Place Backs. To read about "place backs" go HERE to my sister Rachael's blog.
Bella was the center piece to dinner one night.

My Brother's wife Lisa and her daughter Grace
My niece Hannah (Also my brother's kid)
My niece Katya and nephew Ben playing on the boat together. (Rach's kids)
Tubing on the lake. My brother in Law Adam is merciless when it comes to tubing. We had hand signals for speed up, slow down, even out and stop! He ignored all of them except stop. There were definitely times where we were a little scared.
My step dad Bob on the left, me in the middle in the sumo tube, and my brother Ryan, on the right.
My sister Natalie in the Sumo Tube.
My sister Rachael.
I didn't let Tony go out on the boat, but he had fun playing in the sumo tube on the dock.
My sister Shannon and Bella.
Tony eating a fudge pop. I tried to take it away just so I could hold it for him to not make such a mess, but there was no way he'd let me pry it out of his hand.
My nephew Ben blowing bubbles with Natalie's dog Walter. Ben thought it was rather funny when Walter would try to eat them.
Walter loves the boat, he usually got left on the dock since the boat was too full, but a few times he got to go along. He can't swim, but he hung over the side of the boat trying to eat the waves.
Adam letting Katya drive the boat. He pushed her in the water and she got mad at him, so he let her drive. She went from "I hate Adam" to happily sitting on his lap in about 5 seconds.
Nat was the first brave soul to demonstrate the sumo tube.
My dad with all his 11 grandkids. My two kids are of course both acting up.
My brother Ryan, his son Ryan and my step-dad Bob.
My mom with all her grandkids. I think this must have been take 1, since no one is looking at the camera. Dont worry mom, I'm sure I have a better one than this to send you.
Me and Tony with my dad.
My sister Francie and Bella.
Tony having breakfast on the deck.
My mom and Francie with my two kids.
My nephew Matt (brothers kid) and Kristen (Rach's kid)
Shannon and my nephew Ryan tubing.

California Vacation

We are finally home from our week long California vacation, and oh it's so good to be home. The best part of being home... Anthony loves all his new (old) toys. He has been completely self occupied since we got home last night playing with them all. He also seemed to be happy to be back in his own bed, the CA time change didn't even seem to mess him up too much, he went to bed at 9pm last night and woke up at 8am this morning. So hopefully we are back on schedule with MI time (surely it can't be that easy). Although I must say, even while we were on vacation we didn't have too much trouble getting him to sleep at night. Poor thing had to sleep in the bathroom most nights because when we stay in a hotel room we have to put him to bed where he can't see us or he will not sleep. (Which was somewhat of a problem for me, cause being 8 months pregnant I can't exactly make it all night without a few trips to the bathroom.) After he fell fast asleep and Todd and I were ready for bed we'd pull his crib out into the room.

I finally figured out that the problem with uploading pictures was an internet connection problem because now that I am home, I was able to upload the pictures without any problems. Of course now I can't seem to rearrange the pictures to put them in chronological order of the trip. They are in reverse order, but rather than worry about it, I will just share about the trip in reverse order.

The day after the farm show was over we drove up to Sequoia National Park to see the giant redwood trees. Most of the routes and sites were closed due to the snow, but we still got to see the trees and it was a nice drive through the mountains. There was no snow when we started our drive, but we soon encountered lots and lots of snow the higher up the mountain we drove.

At the top we stopped for a few pictures. Yes it was cold, why we don't have coats on I don't know. I guess it just seemed like a lot of work to pull out the coats just to take a few pictures and get back in the car. Here is Todd's parents with Anthony.
On the drive back down the mountain we were following this car (who against the law decided they didn't need their tire chains) until it slid off the road and got stuck. Todd and Russ got out to see if they could help, but it was really really stuck and thankfully someone who works for the park drove by and offered to go get help to pull them out. I did feel bad for them cause they had 2 little kids in the car with them.
Another quick picture in front of a great big red wood tree.

I took this one from the car, I was worried that the snow was going to ruin my camera.

Okay, now go back to day one of the trip... Todd and I took Anthony to Riverview Park in Bakersfield, CA. He liked it a lot. He hasn't really been to a park before, last summer he was too young, and then it's just been too cold all winter to take him. I think this summer we will be spending lots of days at the park. Look how happy he is in all these pictures. I especially like the ones of him on the swing.







Of course we did go to CA for a farm show... so we were in the heart of farm country... and Todd is a farmer... so you know we did our fare share of driving around looking at farms. I didn't take too many pictures of them, since that isn't really my thing, but I did think the orange trees were pretty cool looking.

We stopped at a little family owned fruit stand/petting zoo on our way to the park in Bakersfield. They had all kinds of yummy canned stuff inside. We walked around the fruit stand for about 15 minutes, Todd looked at all the produce and Anthony and I sampled all the canned stuff, (pickled asparagus, mushrooms, okra, bread and butter pickles etc. etc.) . I felt like we needed to buy at least something before we left after indulging in all the free samples, so we bought a jar of bread and butter pickles... we were both shocked when we realized a pint jar cost $7. Admission to the petting zoo however, was only $2, so that made up for the really expensive pickles.



Halfway through the week the farm show started and Todd's parents flew in the day before the farm show to go with us. All in all the farm show was pretty boring (from a non-farmer prospective) but Todd and his dad seemed to really enjoy it. Anthony was a pretty good sport about it too. The highlight for everyone was letting him play in the tractors. (of course we didn't really need to go to CA for that, we have lots of tractors here at home.) For the second day of the farm show, we let Todd and his dad go alone, and Janice, Anthony and I went to the new outlet mall down the street. Turns out shopping all day is kind of boring too, there is only so much you can buy on vacation when you know everything you buy you have to fit into your suitcase to take home. We ended up going to a movie in the afternoon. Only 3 other people were in the theater thankfully. We sat on the row in front of the aisle so Anthony could play and move around on the floor. I was hoping he'd nap, but no such luck, he crawled all over that theater, and when we left his white socks were brown on the bottom. Gross!!
Here is a picture of him sleeping in the bathroom in the hotel room. I took the picture because I thought he looked so cute, Todd put him to bed with no pants on, and apparently Anthony pulled one of his socks off. I tried to move this picture to the top of the post, but I can't, so here it is, smack in the middle of the farm show pictures.
Grandpa had to buy Tony a John Deere hat of course. Apparently Todd had one just like it when he was a little boy.


They gave us badge holders to wear at the farm show, I gave mine to Anthony and hooked his pacifier on to it so it wouldn't fall in the dirt every time he decided to throw it. See it hanging around his neck?

On our second day in CA, Todd and I woke up to snow! We were quite unimpressed. We did after all come to CA with the hopes of warm weather after all the snow we'd had at home. Although we were staying in Tehachapi which is in the mountains. A co-worker of mine got me a good deal on a condo there for the week through her time share. It was a really nice condo, and for a really good price, but the location was not so good. When we woke up to snow, we decided to drive south to the coast for the day. We weren't sure where exactly we'd go, but we ended up at the Santa Barbara Zoo (a 3 hour drive). So the zoo wasn't exactly so cool that it was worth the 3 hour drive, but it was okay, and the drive along the coast was nice, and at least it was warmer than Tehachapi. For some reason this is the only picture I took at the zoo.
This picture was taken the morning in Tehachapi before we headed to Santa Barbara. Can you blame us? When we left this place to go to the farm show for 2 days we took all our stuff with us and turned in our keys. We weren't sure what the weather would be like the rest of the week, but if it was snowing, we weren't coming back. Turned out to be a smart move on our part, cause when we were driving back down to LA after the farm show to go to Disneyland we noticed the road to Tehachapi was closed due to snow. So if we hadn't taken all our stuff with us, we wouldn't have been able to get it.
This was the view from our deck of the mountains in Tehachapi before the snow started.
Then the fog set in, this is the same picture taken 2 hours later. The weather there is very unpredictable.

Aren't these orchids pretty??? When we first arrived in LA we drove to Rodeo Drive to sight see. In the parking garage there was a flower shop full of orchids that were so pretty I couldn't help but take a few pictures. I wish my one orchid looked this pretty. It did the day my mom and step dad got it for me when Anthony was born, then the flowers fell off and it's been bare ever since. I keep watering it hoping it will someday bloom again.

Here we are on Rodeo Drive. We were quite a bit underdressed for the location. I felt like a poor person in comparison to the trendy dressers all around us with their designer clothes, handbags and sunglasses.

We mostly just wanted to window shop, since I was pretty sure we couldn't afford much of anything sold in a store on Rodeo Drive. When we walked past this store I couldn't resist going inside to take a peak. How cute are these matching father-son swim trunks? They can't cost that much, right? Of course there were no price tags on the clothes, you had to ask the sales person the price. When she said the infant sizes started at $100 and adult sizes started at $200 and went up from there, we decided we better stick to just window shopping.
More pictures from Rodeo Drive



That pretty much sums up our trip, with the exception of our day at Disneyland. Disneyland was so much fun and I took so many pictures that I feel it deserves a blog post all by itself, so I will work on that and hopefully post it later today or tomorrow. For now, I am going to take advantage of Anthony's nap time and get a few things unpacked.

P.S. While we were gone in CA it warmed up so much at home that all the snow melted. Then it started to storm and then the power went out at our house. Luckily my sister Francie was staying at our house to take care of the dog and the house. When she called to tell me the power was out, I began to panic about our basement flooding. We seem to get a lot of water into our sump pump well when it rains a lot or snow melts, and if the power is out, the pump doesn't work. I had her check it and it was 6 inches from overflowing. Poor thing, I had her manually bailing water out in the dark to buy time while Todd's sister and brother-in-law went and got a generator to hook up. Apparently it was quite an ordeal. Francie blogged about it in detail HERE if you want to read her dramatic and entertaining story of it. Long story short though, our basment didn't flood and we are so grateful for everyone who helped prevent it.