A visit from Grandma, Grandpa and Auntie Bri

More visitors!!!  We're very lucky to have so many people willing to come and see us :)  This time it was Grandma, Grandpa and Auntie Bri.  As soon as they got here, the girls went straight for the pool ;)

Sadly, the pool didn't end up surviving the jumps by the girls, but they enjoyed it while it lasted ;)

First day at the beach on our vacation

Ok, so back to our vacation (maybe by the end of September I'll have blogged about the whole vacation!)

After a lovely time in Atlanta, we headed off to Hilton Head.  I had been there many years before, and I absolutely loved it, and looking back now, I'm so glad we picked it as our destination this year.  I can easily see me spending every vacation there..not sure how Joacim feels about this though.  It's not as though it'll be within reasonable driving distance next year :(



We got to the rented house a little later than planned, but still with enough time to enjoy it.  Oh, geesh...I guess I forgot to mention that my friend Emily and her son, Will, joined us at this point of our vacation.  They met us in Hilton Head, and got there an hour or so before us.  We weren't able to make it to the beach on the first day, but still had a good time getting settled in the house.  We got unpacked, and then Emily and I headed out to the grocery store to stock up for our week.  And apparently everyone else had the exact same idea...that Piggly Wiggly was HOPPIN'!  Rentals on the island are from Saturday to Saturday, and you can see the wave of people coming to the island.  It took us about an hour to get to our house once we got on the island.  Later in the week it only took us 20 minutes.

The house we rented was great..it was LIVED in, so we didn't have to worry so much about making a scratch on the wall or anything, which was a relief.  But the house was really nice, with a private pool downstairs.  Here's a link to the house we rented.  Speaking of the pool...here's Izzy and Joacim taking their first dip in it.

After the kids were in bed, Joacim, Emily and I hung out, had a few drinks (ok, a little more than a few), and an impromptu dip in the pool. Great way to start off a great vacation!

And for some reason, I woke up early the next morning.  I take that back...Izzy and Bri woke up early and woke me up.  I let Joacim sleep off the gin hangover I thought he might have, got the girls some breakfast and got ready to walk to the beach.  Emily and Will woke up and decided to join us.

And what I was most excited for when planning the trip was Brianne's excitement at experiencing the ocean for the first time.  I was not disappointed.  She was just awestruck and giddy as we hiked over the sand dunes and she saw it for the first time.

Her excitement made me happier than I could possibly describe, and I'm so happy that I got to experience this with her.  It's a memory she and I will always have, and I treasure that.

What I love about Hilton Head this time of the year is how warm the water is.  When we took Izzy to Ft. Lauderdale a couple of years ago, the water was freezing.  Granted, it was in late April, but it was still frigid.  Not here though...the water temperature was around 84 degrees, which suited us just fine.  Even Will didn't mind.  Here he is taking a dip. This isn't his first time at the ocean, but he was only a couple of months old the first time on the west coast.

I love Izzy in this dress.  She started calling it her "fireworks dress"...I like it!

 And both of their expressions in this photo crack me up.

 And what was even better is that after our dip in the ocean, we came back and took a dip in the pool (this pretty much became a daily occurrence).  Here's a video of Izzy swimming...there was a pretty strong jet of water that ended up creating a little whirlpool effect.  In this video she ends up getting stuck in a little, and getting quite upset.

And at the end of the day, a cute little baby in the bath :)

Publish Post

Time at Grandma and Grandpa's pool

On July 4th, we headed up to my parents house to go swimming.  We didn't make it up there last year...seemed like we were so busy.  I gotta tell ya..our trip to Sweden made me really think about things.  I mean, I'm always busy, but I have a choice, and I'm trying to prioritize Izzy a whole lot more.  She's always right up at the top, but it's the type of time I'm spending with her that I'm working on.

Hnyway, enough gibberish...photos and videos!!!

She wasn't too excited early on, so she sat on Pappa

I don't know what it is about my Dad, but she warms up to him instantly now...Awesome.

Is this not the biggest cat you've seen?  It's like Beetlejuice...tiny head, big body.  Funny thing...that cat's name is Runt.  Yes, it was the runt of the litter...couldn't tell that now though :)

I was surprised at how quickly she did take to the water...jumping in from the ladder first

We had some pretty funky weather this day.  Occassional rain storm, then sunny skies...these were beautiful!

and the jumping in from the side with hands, to eventually jumping in without any hands at all :)

Here's an awesome video I took of Bri underwater!

There are a few things I miss about living in the country.  I miss how you can see storms moving across the sky.  I miss how the air smells when the rain is coming, and then immediately after the rain.  I miss being able to walk around in my swimsuit without fear of the neighbors seeing me :)  I miss gettin' dirty

And this is Izzy on the way home...interesting way to sit in her seat, wouldn't you say?

Swimtime Sunday with Cristian!

So it was H.O.T. this weekend. I had run a bunch of errands on Saturday morning/afternoon, and then did a photo session in the evening with an unbelievably cute/adorable/active 15-month old, so by Sunday, I was spent. And I didn't want Izzy to have to get in her carseat at all, so we just hung out at the pool all day.

Here she was in the morning playing in her pool. I couldn't figure out what she was doing, until I realized that she was trying to make a slide out of the side of her pool! Very creative, my lilla loppan!

After her nap, it was time for a snack...yogurt


Then we got in the pool (or I should say SHE got in the pool...I dipped my feet in a few times ;) She played for awhile until Liza and Cristian came over. It took a while for Cristian to warm up to the idea of playing in the pool, but once that happened, I think they had a great time!



Love the look on his face here...


He's kissing the book :)

They look like little brainiacs!

Liza was trying to get Izzy to crack a smile! Goldfish crackers turned out to be the magic touch.



I love this look on her face....so grown-up and disgruntled :)


We had a great time! Looks like this weekend is going to be the same. Yay!!! More pool time!

Day 3 - Ft. Lauderdale

Day 3 in Ft. Lauderdale was much sunnier when we woke up, so we decided to hang out at the hotel in the morning/early afternoon, and then head up to Las Olas, which is a shopping area, later that evening.

So, after breakfast, we headed to the pool. It was VERY warm that day, and most of the shady spots around the pool had already been taken, so we couldn't stay very long, but here are a couple from our pool time:




I took a few more cute ones on my phone, but I haven't uploaded them to my computer yet, so I can't add them here yet.

After we were done at the pool, we decided to take a walk along the beach to see what was around. We couldn't exactly walk on the beach with the stroller, but there were plenty of things to see from the sidewalk. We were in an area north of Ft. Lauderdale called Deerfield Beach, which I understand is a very nice area. The beach is lovely, with nice clean, white sand. It's not a very wide beach, but it's really nice. By our hotel, it's pretty tame, but go farther north and there's a lot more action. Lots of retirees absorbing the sun, kids playing in the water, people playing vollebal...very nice. Here are some pics:

This is a view of the north end...


Izzy had a nice little nap on our walk:


Here's a view from the pier:


After we got back from our walk, we wanted to take a dip in the ocean. Now, I'm not much for this whole thing...I mean, I love to LOOK at the ocean, and LISTEN to the ocean, and PHOTOGRAPH the ocean, and dip my TOE into the ocean, but that's about it. I don't need a full-body immersion to appreciate the beauty and awesomeness of it, but I decided to suck it up and try it. I could see how shallow the water was from our hotel, and it was clear and there were no fish anywhere that I could see, so I went for it. It felt good! Very refreshing..and as I'm standing there in the water, about waste deep, Joacim's looking behind me and he says, "Now that's a REALLY big fish".. I'm pretty sure I've never moved that fast in all my life. Ever. It ended up being what was probably a small ray of some sort..and by small I mean at least 6-7 feet across. I'm pretty sure I won't be getting into the ocean again anytime soon....

After that little adventure, we got cleaned up and decided to drive up A1A to the city and do a little shopping and get some good seafood, which is about a 30 minute drive. We figured we had the GPS...what else could we need? Well, as usual for us...we needed a better plan :) We drove up to Las Olas, and it was a nice little area, but the first shop I went in was having a 50% off sale, so I'm thinking, "SWEET!!!!" Until I look at the price tag of the first shirt I loved, and it was $285...."Not so SWEET :("....so after a walk around looking at the restaurant menus along the street, we realized that there wasn't anything that sounded good except seafood, so we got back in the car and used the GPS to find seafood restaurants in the area. To make a long story short...we did a LOT of driving, only to eventually eating at a seafood restaurant a few minutes from our hotel :) Here's Izzy having her dinner:


And one of her and me being silly :)


End of Day 3....