DISNEY WORLD

Well, we just got back from Disney World and of course, had a blast! We went with Wesley's parents as well as Clint and Kara (Wesley's brother) and family. We went to Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom (twice) MGM (Hollywood Studios) and Epcot from Tuesday thru Saturday. It was hot hot hot all week long with occasional thunder storms, which we were lucky to only get caught in one big storm and got poured on. It was very family-friendly, allowing us to use the stroller pass, letting your party ride the roller coaster and the ones that waited with the babies got to jump to the front of the line afterward. We took advantage of the fast pass so we never really waited long on any ride, even though it was super crowded, being spring break and all. The house we stayed in had a pool so there was lots of swimming when we weren't at the parks. Now that we are back, we are just exhausted! People say we need a vacation from our vacation. Here's some fun pictures from our trip (lots of pictures):
Here we are at MGM by Mickey's hat: We saw a few 3-D films, I think 3 or 4 and they were all so much fun. I think my favorite was Filharmagic at Magic Kingdom. Here we are sportin' our 3-D glasses, a pair of cuties, no?:

I think this was at Hollywood Studios... wait, I mean San Francisco. See the Golden Gate Bridge in the background? Our old stomping ground:

Our daily ice cream stop... so refreshing with that heat. Jake really enjoyed his Zazookie, if that's how you say it. No, we didn't give him the whole thing, just a taste and he loved it!

Enjoying our ice creams:

His first time at Disney World wouldn't be complete without a set of Mickey ears. Our little cutie!

Clint, Kara, David and Max riding the Whirl roller coaster, I don't remember very many names of the roller coasters but this was in DinoLand at Animal Kingdom and that was a fun one.

Okay, this ride... I went on it twice, this first time I closed my eyes during the majority of it. The second time I was feeling pretty confident and got through most of it without much screaming (okay that's a lie... that's all I did was scream and pull on Wesley's arm just like you see in the picture below) but when it got to the last part of the ride, boy did I scream - since my eyes were closed during that part the first time, I was in for it b/c it freaked me out! It was a fun ride though. I think Wes enjoyed my freaking out more than he enjoyed the ride.

My cute boys. We were on our way to see the gorillas and Jake was just loving being with Daddy. They are such a cute pair, Jake loves Wesley, but who wouldn't?

All of us together, right after riding Soarin' at Epcot - the best ride ever, we just loved it!

Our future astronaut:

Our little family in the Nemo ride, which was adorable! Jake fell asleep on a lot of the rides he could go on, including Winnie the Pooh. I think he may have fallen asleep on this ride as well.

Jake in Bruce's mouth from Nemo:

Mine and Jake's favorite ride. A cute dino ride that one morning we rode 3 times in a row. We loved it!

Jake tried pudding for the first time and it was a hit! He loved it, as you can see:
At the house we stayed at, Jake noticed that their cabinets were not baby proofed so he took full advantage of playing IN them.

Jake's new favorite thing is playing in the pool. He could have stayed in there all day! Notice the mohawk... you will never see him without one if Clint is around. He's mastered the mohawk on Jake, although it hardly stayed in Florida because of the humidity. This is one of my favorite pictures. Jake was pretty clingy all week but on the last night he decided to go to grandma and grandpa and they read to him and it was so cute!

Easter Weekend

After we got back from Hawaii on Thursday, Abuelita and Grandaddy Vick came for Easter weekend, which we were so excited for. It was great for Jake since he had been with them for the week and just seen them the day before and he was so comfortable with them all weekend. Our neighborhood had an Easter egg hunt on Saturday morning. We let Jake get a couple of eggs before it started since he really wouldn't be able to participate. There were crowds of children and THOUSANDS of eggs which were gone in less than 5 minutes.

There were some eggs with money in it. The kids quickly went through each egg looking for the lucky money, which no one around us found. Here's Jake with some of the empty eggs. I think he's actually playing with the tape from the egg, of course:

We found the Easter bunny and were anxious to see how Jake would do. He wasn't fazed at all, in fact, he went right for the bunny's face and body. We couldn't get him to look for a picture, he was too mesmerized by the bunny.

After the egg hunt, Wesley and my dad went to Home Depot for some things and got me a new faucet. Ours was beyond annoying and made washing dishes so hard. My back ached all the time. So here's Wesley putting the faucet in and Jake helping:

Just checking to make sure everything is in order! (Nope, no plumber's crack! I bet you checked, too)

This is by far the CUTEST outfit ever! Ella (Clint and Kara's baby) was so cute with her little easter shirt and pants with ducks on it. She looked adorable!

While my mom and I went shopping, my dad took Jake on a walk. I think we all enjoyed our time, my mom and I at Target for over an hour just perusing each aisle, and Jake, who fell asleep on his walk with grandaddy.We loved having my parents here, they were a lot of fun!

You might think that Jake is patting Ella's back or comforting her... NOPE. He typically just goes for her face or tries to grab her, which I'm sure he was doing in this picture. I'm so excited that they'll be in the same nursery class, though. THey'll, hopefully become good friends!

Uncle Clint (Wesley's brother, if you can't tell) with Jake and Ella. Clint is by far Jake's favorite. And he was a bit bothered that he had to share Clint, he wanted him all to himself. It's so cute how much he likes him!

So that was our weekend. I didn't get ANY pictures on Sunday, what's wrong with me? Well, next year... or I can just have us wear our outfits again next week and take another picture.

Aloha!

Thanks to my wonderful husband for making his quota for last year, he made "President's Club 2008" and since I'm the wife, I got to tag along on the bonus trip - to the big island of Hawaii at the Four Seasons Resort! We dropped Jacob off in San Francisco with my parents, which we were both happy about. It would have been too hard to bring him with us and they were able to spend a lot of time with him. We left Saturday morning to Kona, spent the afternoon walking the grounds, checking out the beach, the pools and everything else. While walking on the beach, we found some sea turtles sun bathing: Once we were in our room, we were more than impressed with the accomodations. Here's the view from our room, very pretty:
There were 4 pools, one pool for snorkeling which had thousands of tropical fish as well as sting rays, an adult only pool (where mostly the much older people hung out), a "quiet" pool where they'd walk around offering evian mists, sunglass cleaning, cold towels and sliced cucumber, you name it. At first I wasn't sure if these things cost money so I declined but after seeing others get it for free, I quickly joined in on all the freebies! The last pool was more kid friendly. At the kid pool, they would come around and serve ice cream to you and pineapple sticks. HEre's a picture of that pool:

My goodness, it was so relaxing! When we weren't doing a group scheduled activity, we seriously just lounged around. Our favorite place to lounge was on the beach chairs on the sand drinking our lava flows (yummy smoothies). We were able to snorkel two separate times. One was with a zodiac tour, which was a blast! The second was on our catamaran trip. Here's my honey snorkeling:On our way back to the dock, we were able to come across some spinner dolphins (they get their name literally from the way they spin in the air) and it was amazing to have hundreds swimming with our boat. We were in arms reach and that was a definite highlight of the trip.

This one is doing one of his spins in the air, but we had a hard time getting a good picture of that.

We couldn't swim on our beach due to all the lava rock, but they were able to block off a section of the beach with reef to allow for some playing in the water. HEre's a picture of our beach:

I think my favorite part of the trip was our group trip on a catamaran. There were about 50 of us that went and so we split into 2 groups and spent a good portion of our day on the boat and then snorkeled, saw some whales. It was just gorgeous. Wesley and I loved just hanging out on the trampoline mesh area b/c you can see right into the water below and it was the most gorgeous blue I've ever seen!

Our last evening we had a farewell dinner with hula dancers and fire dancers, which was amazing! They also gave out awards to each sales person for the work they'd done. Here is Wesley with his boss, Chad (in the middle) and the sales guy, Mike that he works together with, receiving their awards.

We were able to take a walk on our last day around the coast and it was just gorgeous!

I've always wanted to get a picture of us walking to our plane and up the stairs:

I loved how you waited outside at the terminal.

We were just so fortunate to be able to receive this trip and we had such a great time. I was really really anxious to get back to Jacob, I missed him too much. I was thrilled that he wasn't fazed by our absence and he did great. So great, in fact, that he decided to take his first steps while were gone! Stinker! He gave us a little taste again on Sunday, thankfully. When we went to get him though, he didn't want me (sob sob). He went to WEs and every time I tried to take him, he'd cling to Wesley more. WEsley loved that Jake wanted him so much! That didn't last long and by morning he was happy to see me again!

St. Louis, Visitors, California, Estes Park and then some!

I know, I know. It took way too long for me to post new pictures. And it's not because I've had nothing to post, believe me, I have. In the last month, I have been to St. Louis and California and had guests come visit. Yes, I travel A LOT. Too much, and Jake is less than accomodating these days, so the traveling is going to subside. In Jake's short 10 months of living, he's been on 9 trips, been to 7 states and been on 20 airplanes. He's been an angel on 19 of these flights and the one that he was not an angel was enough to make me never want to fly again.

So let's get to what's been happening with the 3 of us. I went to St. Louis to visit my sister Lea and her family and we had a great time! Lea was my fashion consultant and filled me in on how to dress cute and still have mom friendly clothing, which I have to say has been a big struggle for me. Sadly, I don't have any pictures to show for that trip. Why do I take more pictures at home and forget to take pictures when I'm away? After St. Louis, my sister Felecia and her husband Logan came out to visit. He is testing at some police depts here in Denver, the first in Colorado SPrings. We went down to the Garden of the Gods and walked around, and it was so pretty and a perfect day for that. Here's us at the Garden of the Gods:

Next was a trip to California to visit my mom and dad. Wesley was going to be on a business trip and I HATE being home without him. So many times, I take a trip when he's away. On this specific trip, I was scrambling to get everything all packed. Jake was with me, "helping". Here's how he helps:

I'm sure some of you other moms are nodding because this has happened to you as well. And this was just in a couple minutes that he did all this. Nap time couldn't have come at a better time otherwise my packing wouldn't have ever gotten done.

The only picture I took while in California was of Jacob with Uncle Alex, my brother, whom Jake just loves! Alex can make Jake laugh more than anyone I know, it's so cute.

After California, we decided to spend a Saturday enjoying the Colorado scenery, it's just gorgeous, so we went to Estes Park and drove around Rocky Mountain National Park. We had a blast! And Jake did so well the whole time.
Here's Jake and Wes at Bear Lake in the park.

Is this not the most beautiful view? And it was such a warm day, in the 50s in the mountains, not bad! We came home to 70 degree weather (and a lot of snow the next day, what's up with the weather?)

I love going downtown and walking down the streets and seeing the cute shops, that's one of my most favorite things to do. We saw a place called the Glass House. They had free demonstrations and show you how they make glass things, it was really cool. They gave Jake a souvenir, which was cute. Here's Jake and I outside of that shop, with all of the glass items in the window.

I haven't really updated on Jake's progress, but he's crawling, he not only has his 2 bottom teeth, but has his 2 'fangs' as well... yep, I have a little Edward (Twilight) in my home, he can stand on his own and is eating all sorts of grown up foods. He's just growing up too fast! He can tear apart an orange like no one I've ever seen. I was eating a clementine the other day and gave him one to play with and this is what became of this poor clementine:
He sure can tear things up, huh?

So that's my forever long update on our latest adventures. This month: A trip to California to drop off Jake before leaving for Hawaii, afterwhich we will have my parents come for Easter and then we are off to Disney World... Busy month to say the least! Thankfully though, Wesley will be with us as we fly and I can have him by my side to help with Jake.