Vacation

We made it back!! On one hand I was ready to come home but boy it was hard to leave the 82 degree weather and come back to the lower 30s!! (I'm not sure I ever said where we actually went - we spent the week on Sanibel Island with my parents in their time share.)

Alex did great on the flight home. He learned what airplanes were on this trip and every time he saw one in the sky, he had to point and say "Airplane!!!!!" When he discovered that we were getting on an airplane to come home his brain just about exploded he was so excited. :)

Sunday night my cousin and her husband went out to eat. My aunt, uncle and my cousin's two kids came to our condo for dinner. L. is 3 1/2 and W. is almost 2. Alex had so much fun playing with them.

Alex LOVED L. He wanted to hug her all the time.

He tried to do everything that L. did. You can kind of see it in this picture, but he was sweating he was playing so hard.

Here he is climbing on my mom.

Here's W. - isn't he cute!! (that's my uncle in the background)

Here's Alex at the beach for the first time. He wasn't too sure about it.

On Monday night we headed to the tip of Captiva Island to a restaurant called the Mucky Duck. It's a great place to get pictures at sunset. I really wanted to get a family picture taken. Unfortunately, it was pretty cloudy that night, it was really windy, and Alex was REALLY not in a mood to cooperate.

Do you see how windy it was??

We then tried to hand Alex to my parents to get a picture with them. Well - he wanted NOTHING to do with that. We have about 10 pictures - and video that looks like what you see below.

Here's my brother and sis-in-law. They are so cute they make me want to puke. :)

Here they are with Alex. Alex LOVED his Uncle Chris and Aunt Jamie. This is where he ended up most nights - on the couch playing with them.

There is a grocery store on the island that we went to. They were decorated for Christmas. As a northern, I found this pretty funny. I have to say that we don't see lizards on our Santa decorations up here. :)

They also had something that Alex really liked......

Birds!! They have about 6 parrots in cages around the grocery store. Alex loved going and looking at them.

There was also this big iguana that hung out all day Friday just outside our condo. He was really cool.

Alex seemed to learn SO much last week. He really started talking - he's added so many words - and he is now trying to say everything we are. (chickenbus is being used more and more in our household now!!)

He would go for "walks" with my mom and dad in the stroller every day. He loved this. He would go grab his stroller and say "bye bye."

My mom took him to the beach one day. He played in the sand for a little bit. We both tried to take him back another day and that lasted all of 30 seconds. :)

We did go to the pool every day. Alex really got brave. I did dunk him on the second day. I've never done that, but I felt like I needed to. He did good. He came up coughing and sputtering but he didn't cry. By Friday he was dunking himself! :) Not quite all the way down - but up to his nose. He LOVED it.

So we're back - back to work - back to daycare - back to real life. I was able to take naps every day, read a book and a half, and pretty much got to do what I wanted to. Between my parents and my bro and sis-in-law I didn't have to deal with Alex all that much. :)