Wednesday, December 26, 2018

Christmas 2018


Our first family Christmas in San Antonio! We had so much fun and definitely helped break in the new house. Nothing like a fire in the microwave, the kids "testing" out all the new furniture,  Dad and my brothers slinging pizza flour all over the kitchen floor, and of course, Bob and his leaky bladder.  All in all, everything held up and we made great memories of our first Christmas in their new house. We were so fortunate to have my grandparents from Florida with us for the holidays. It was a full house of family, fun and a lot of cheese. 
Seriously. 
Happy hour with an epic cheese board every night.
 I'd say that makes a Merry Christmas. 

I'm kinda in love with this view. Hill country living was pretty relaxing.

We arrived just in time to see their pool getting filled. So, of course, the kids had to test it out. 

It was coooooold.

This is how they got their faces wet. lol. 


Just life-guarding over here.

Did someone say happy hour?

Christmas Eve - one of my favorite family traditions!






Prepping the dough. Steve took footage of the evening...wondering if that video will ever surface?

Hayden decided she was obsessed with this booster seat. 
Mainly because Cora was using it. oye.

And these were the cutest boxes that Claire made for all of the kiddos! Each box had Christmas jammies, cozy socks, silly glasses, reindeer food, a themed mug with hot cocoa & fixings. They were ADORABLE and my kids were so excited! 


This little guy loves a theme! He was so excited to bust into his new jammies!




Cora wasn't into the picture taking.

AND then Claire whipped out sugar cookies for the kids to decorate! It was kinda late at this point - the kids actually were asking to go to bed...so we ended up decorating them and leaving a plate out for Santa. Oops!

 Santa came!

Christmas morning was filled with lots of excitement - love watching the kids open their gifts. We spend the morning playing & eating. Perfection. 

My sweet three. 

Pro Papu & Pro Yiayia with three of their grandkids!

Merry Christmas to All!

Wednesday, October 31, 2018

BYOP - At the Parks (Year 8)

Given the current state of our backyard, we were in no condition to host. 


Luckily, Lindsey & Colin offered up their amazing house for the festivities! So the pumpkin carving party tradition continued.

We had a crazy Sunday with each kid needing to be in a completely different area of Dallas at the exact same time. 
Grayson and Hayden both had soccer games and Ryan had a birthday party. 
Grayson scored 1.5 goals and he was so proud. A friend texted me and said how cute he was when he scored - he looked for his dad and grandparents and gave them the biggest smile! Love how proud he was! 
And across town, I was with Hayden at her soccer game. It was a scorcher. I love how she runs around on the field and participates...but she isn't really into kicking the ball. Maybe next season...

After Hayden's soccer game we ran home and grabbed our stuff for the pumpkin party! I attempted to make The Baker Mama's Halloween Snack Board.


but mine kinda turned out like it's weird cousin or something...
Oh well. 

To save us a little work, Kevin and the kiddos prepped their pumpkins the night before by scooping all the insides out. We also saved the pumpkin seeds and toasted them in the oven! 

The kids were super excited about carving their pumpkins. 

Well, Grayson and Ryan were - Hayden just sent her request in. 

Ryan wanted something scary
Grayson wanted a wolf
Hayden wanted a unicorn kitty cat.

I quickly got to work on Hayden's - she was SO thrilled with the results.  Pretty sure she didn't even sure if she stopped what she was doing to see the end result. Lol! Four-year-olds.

Grayson helped Kevin by holding his iPhone with a picture of a wolf template on it.  And I am sure encouraging words. 

And then we both helped Ryan (maybe Kevin a tad more) to carve his scary skeleton face. 

And for some reason, I still haven't taken a picture of the pumpkins. Coming soon!

And then we ate chili and hot dogs...and the kids ran around and all played. 

It was a magical fall night. 

Even though it was like 80 degrees. details.

The kiddos had so much fun together!

And so did the mamas! 




Monday, October 8, 2018

Los Cabos, Mexico

Year FIVE girls trip did not disappoint!

Our latest trip was amazing. It was the ultimate girls trip - so many giggles, lots of lounging, amazing views and of course, delicious food & drinks. And I was totally reenergized when I returned to Dallas. It's Monday morning and although I miss waking up to the beautiful ocean views, I feel ready to get back into my routine. I am guessing that is what a true "vacation" should feel like.

I'm not gonna lie - I was a tad nervous about the whole Mexico girls trip. There hasn't really been any recent news about violence but of course, we were made aware of everything that had been happing in the past five years.

Once we arrived and were picked up by the hotel arranged car service, I felt immediately at ease. There were families vacationing with small kids, and I had also overheard a girl on the plan talking about how she brings her entire family down every Christmas and has never felt unsafe.  Whew. That helped a lot.
I always love a good welcome drink - our sweet driver asked us what we wanted and called the hotel on the way to put our requests in! Gotta love that personal touch. 

Cheers!

Once we arrived and settled into our rooms we headed down for some lunch. 

And then a little pool & beach time...

Lindsey, Nat and I walked down to check out the crazy waves - they were insane. Soooo crazy that they stole Nat's flip-flops right off her feet! Oops! We saved one...but the other was long gone. The good news was that I had already managed to break one of my flip-flops (damn havianas) and my remaining one was the left one - which was the one Nat needed! So together we have a complete pair.  Didn't want poor Nat to have any shoe drama on this trip!



The sand was super grainy. LIke it felt like you were getting a nice exfoliating scrub when you walked. Well, after a while it started to hurt. Some of those baby rocks were sharp!
Ta - Da!

  And then we walked back. It was a nice little workout - uphill in the sand definitely brought that heart rate up! Around 4ish we headed to our rooms to get ready for dinner out.

All cleaned up and ready for dinner! 

We headed out to Flora Fields Kitchen for our first dinner. 
More drinks of course!

This adorable restaurant is located a little outside Cabo in San Jose del Cabo and everything that you eat in the restaurant is grown on the property. Now that is farm fresh. The modern farmhouse is ridiculously adorable with outdoor seating and twinkle lights at night. There is an extended patio with a beer garden and outdoor bar with live music. Our reservations were at 5:30pm so it was still pretty hot when we got there. Although there were fans all over, we were pretty sweaty and there was a serious fly situation. 






Our dinner was delicious - and our only complaint was the crazy amount of flies that were constantly buzzing around us. The restaurant staff tried their best to rid them with fans and even brought us over some rosemary to burn. By the time we were leaving it seems that the flies had also decided to call it a night. All in all, we would totally recommend this place - maybe just plan to eat a little later once the flies have called it quits.

Day TWO

Sleep late. 
Breakfast buffet with an ocean view. 
Beach. Pool. Spa.
Dinner. 



It was beautiful!
Here we are relaxing - and Nat got stuck with a beach vendor. There is actually a rope that the vendors are not allowed to cross unless you "engage" in conversation with them. "Engage" is very loose here.  It seems that something as small as a little eye contact is considered a welcoming gesture.  Anyhow, she struggled with this man for a good 15 minutes before we were able to get him to leave. I totally understand he is just trying to make a living, but the fact that he was trying to charge Nat $90 for a fake silver cuff was absurd. 

The waves didn't seem as aggressive as they were the day before AND there were actually some people in the ocean so Lindsey and I decided to check it out. We scoped out the perfect spot and sat down on the shore.  As soon as we sat the largest wave blasted us off our bottoms and tried to sweep us into the ocean. For real. It was shocking.  

We decided to stay on our feet and just walk the beach...and eventually decided it was time to head back up to the pool area. We found some chairs on the "Whale Watching Terrace" that worked perfectly! 



We grabbed lunch at the pool bar & then spent the rest of the afternoon lounging at the pool and at the spa. Each of us got a massage at the spa and then got ready for another dinner out.



Arriving at Edith's and loving this yellow wall! 

So bright and fun!

We arrived early and had planned to walk around and maybe shop. We started to walk over to the Plaza but about halfway there we felt a little unsafe and decided to head back and just walk down to the water. We stumbled upon The Office (we had plans to have lunch there the next day) and grabbed a drink at the bar. 

Just hanging. Watching chaos. The whole scene was kinda crazy.  

At 7:30 we walked up the street for our reservations at Edith's. 

It was hot. At the end of dinner, they bring you cold wet towels...and Nat really loved them. We headed back to the hotel afterward and called it a night!

Last day in Cabo...we didn't leave the hotel. It was amazing. 







Just reading my book...

And dinner at the hotel resturant Vela. 


Not a bad view! 
My stomach actually started cramping up so I was ready for bed pretty quick. 

Next morning we had one last amazing buffet breakfast with a view, a little more lounging by the pool then we packed it all up and headed back to the BIG D. So much fun with these ladies. Next up Arizona! 

Previous girls trip:
2013 Lindsey's Bachelorette in Napa was sort of the initial trip that we all took together. It was there we decided we needed to make a yearly girls trip - and so we did.
2014 Fredericksburg
2015 Nashville
2016 New Orleans
2017 Charleston




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