Aaahhh...vacation

Top 10 Things I Loved About our Recent Family Vacation

10. Breakfast at Starbucks, and Long Island Iced Tea with dinner, S'mores at the hotel every night (OK, I'm combining a few things).

9. Natalie's recent maturity. We only used the stroller once (and didn't need it then), and ditched the diaper bag entirely - getting by with just a spare pull-up in my purse just in case. She's not a baby anymore! (also a little sad...)

8. Liam's new confidence in the pool: Swimming underwater (even without goggles), floating on his back, and having contests with Jim to see who can sit on the bottom the longest.

7. Natalie creating a new Olympic sport. Two year-old pool running! A big part of the pool was so shallow she could stand with her head above water, and she loved it! She wasn't much into putting her face in the water (if she did go under, she popped up saying calmly "I'm done."), but she loved walking or running between me and Jim.

6. Once-cautious Liam jumping like a crazy man in the hotel bounce house - chasing all the older girls, and making friends right and left. I think we would be hard-pressed to describe him as shy these days.

5. Natalie's unabashed squeals of joy at any and all animals, fish, reptiles, or creature of any sort, at the aquarium, etc.

4. Jim's outright disgust at any creature or plant life that lives or swims in the ocean or sea. I was afraid he was going to scare other people's kids at the aquarium, the way he carried on about the "disgusting" octopus.

3. Natalie's vocabulary. Including her way of emphasizing every syllable of a word, and sometimes adding syllables that aren't there. Choc-o-late. Neck-a-lace. Brace-e-let. Ghost-es (plural of ghost). Dwarf-es (as in- you play the 7 Dwarf-es, and I'll be Snow White).

2. Nightly ritual of one bed yelling Go Bengals and the other yelling Go Packers!! It started while Jim was making us watch Sports news before going to sleep, and Natalie happened to comment out of the blue "I love Packers!" She has no idea what that means, of course. But it got such a reaction from Jim that every night she would yell "Go Packers!!" and Liam would yell "Go Bengals!"

And the #1 thing: Serious family bonding without the marathon road trips that we usually attempt. Very nice!

We love sharks!

S'mores, yess!!!!

Aaaaah...the beach

Natalie fell and skinned her knee and is NOT happy about the picture taking. An expression we know we'll see a lot in about 11 more years...