We did it!

We actually managed to have a fun vacation where NOBODY got sick or was injured! Yay!! :D We had a wonderful second half to our week in Florida, a smooth trip home, and here are a few more pictures to share. (They kind of got jumbled out of order, so they jump around a bit from Key Largo and back to Fort Lauderdale.)

Getting ready to head over the bridge from the southern tip of Florida to the first Key - Key Largo.

The Everglades in the Southern tip of Florida, which you drive through for quite a ways on your way down to the Keys. They're pretty boring looking to be perfectly honest, but I still think it would've been fun to take an airboat ride through them. We just ran out of time this trip, but maybe next time!

I think this is the only photo of the two of us together for the whole trip - I guess we should've asked some strangers to take pictures of us on other occasions! But in any case - this one is while we were driving from Miami, where we stayed the night with our friends Kelly & Jon, down to Key Largo.

Chadmo drinking a tasty beer at our favorite restaurant in Fort Lauderdale, Flip Flops, on our last night of vacation. This restaurant is right on the Intercoastal Water Way, near a draw bridge, and where big yachts, sailboats, and little boats cruise by all the time. It was so much fun to eat there while the sun was setting!

Dylan & me on the beach in front of our condo in Fort Lauderdale - we did much better with the sun for the second half of our trip. 50 SPF sun block every hour seemed to do the trick!

A poster explaining the replica sunken 'ship wreck' we snorkeled around in Key Largo at John Pennekamp State Park. Basically they sunk a bunch of cannons and an anchor in this bay that you can snorkel in from the beach (no boat ride required), and it's much cooler than the average beach because the sunken stuff attracts all kinds of cool fish. We had a wonderful time snorkeling and decided we have to be sure to spend more time in the Keys on our next trip to Florida!

One of the beaches where we snorkeled at John Pennekamp - this one had the 'ship wreck' mentioned above - it was beautiful!

Eating at Flip Flop's (see, this picture was supposed to be close to the one of Chadmo with the beer, darn blog). Too bad we didn't discover this place till our last night there!

The house we decided Mom & Dad should buy on the ICWW. :)

A sailboat coming through the drawbridge while we were eating dinner. Dad keeps saying he wants a sailboat... ;)

The official dessert of Florida, which we forgot to photograph until the last bite, Key Lime Pie. Yum!

Heavenly...

So the only part of our trip that we totally dropped the ball on photographing was during our trip to Miami to visit Kelly & John. (Shame on me.) We headed down there on Sunday evening, where they took us out to a delicious dinner at a restaurant called Joe's Stone Crab (our favorite restaurant in all of Florida and definitely the fanciest place we went!) They were then kind enough to let us spend the night at their place so we would be closer to the Keys for our trip down there Monday. Their puppy Brutus, who I mentioned in the previous blog, wasn't much of a fan of strangers at first - but he warmed up to us eventually and we had a rousting game of tug and some good snuggles in the morning after his parents left for work and we were still sleeping in a bit. We really had a fun evening with them - a lovely dinner, a tour of South Beach, lots of fun catching up, and their apartment was adorable. Plus I got my much needed puppy fix to tide me over till we got home on Wednesday. :)

We really had a wonderful trip, but we're glad to be home with our poodles and sleeping in our own bed. I love going on vacation, but I love coming home too! (And of course, all of it is made 1,000,000 x more fun with a Dylan-roo kicking away to keep us company. One last tidbit: Dylan had her first case of hiccups while we were in Florida - too cute!)

20 weeks - we're halfway to meeting Dylan! :)

Friday was another beautiful beach day for us! My shoulders were still sunburned, so I camped out under our umbrella and read my book for 4 hours while Chadmo alternately read and swam in the ocean. Friday was a much busier day on the ocean and there were all sorts of fun things to watch - sailboats (see picture below), cruise ships heading out to sea, a constant stream of people on Sea-do's, planes flying low overhead advertising buffets, personal yachts, and either big military boats or fishing boats with little dinghies coming and going from them all day. It made me wish I'd brought binoculars with me! The beach itself was much busier too, and we had a couple with two adorable little girls next to us on the beach all day - the little girls were 5 & 2 and were perhaps two of the happiest, most agreeable little kids I've ever seen. The 2 year old of course made me think of Haley-Bug and how cute she would be on the beach in a swimsuit with a pink ruffle-y butt, and the enjoyment it gave me to think of Haley and what she would be like now definitely outweighed the bittersweet. Since we never got a chance to enjoy those stages first hand, it's hard for me to imagine on my own, but it seems like there have been 2 year old girls following us everywhere on this trip - the seat in front of us on the plane ride down, next to us on the beach, at the table next to ours at dinner - helping us keep an eye on what our little Bug would be doing if she were here with us right now. I'm so thankful we have Dylan with us on this trip, because I know it would be much harder for me to enjoy imaging our Haley-Bug if I didn't have Dylan with me to keep my head up for the present/future too, making it much easier to enjoy the 2 year olds around us as opposed to being saddened by them. If I get to feeling a little bit morose, I get a nice kick from the sweet little Roo in my belly, telling me to snap out of it! :)

Seaweed attacked our beautiful beach on Friday, but luckily for the swimmers it just all seemed to be right where the tide came in. Once they waded out a little ways they were through it and back into lovely, clear water.

My toes, hiding from the sun but enjoying the breeze, salty smell in the air, and the sound of the ocean while I read a good book called "Unwind" by Neal Shusterman.

Apparently Dylan makes me EXTREMELY sensitive to sunlight. This is the kind of sunburn I managed to get from less than 10 minutes in the sun, but apparently I still managed to burn sitting in complete shade for 4 hours. Our only hypothesis is the sun reflecting off the sand, because I was burned much worse on my left side as opposed to my right (Chad was to my right - he's not burned at all and spent hours in the direct sun!) Thank goodness I wore my sunshirt or I hate to think what my shoulders would've turned into. Luckily a pharmacist friend gave me a recipe for sunburn relief: 2 oz distilled water, 2 oz white vinegar, 2 oz hydrogen peroxide, & 9 shakes of salt - apply as needed. It makes you smell a bit like a potato chip or an Easter egg, but it helps better than anything else with the burn and the pain!

Since I'm apparently not safe from the sun even in the shade or with 50 sunblock on (definitely unique to this pregnancy!), we spent a relaxing Saturday indoors. We made rice krispies, went to the mall where I did lots of fun shopping while Chadmo played lots of 'Angry Birds', went to dinner on the Intercostal Water Way and watched yachts, water taxis, and personal boats of all sizes cruise by and go under the drawbridge, and went to the movies.

Today, Sunday, we're hiding from the sun one more day in hopes that tomorrow my skin will be recovered enough that if I put on sunblock every half-hour that we can snorkel while we're in Key Largo at John Pennekamp Beach. Tonight we're meeting up with our friends Kelly & Jon who live in Miami and heading out to dinner in South Beach, which should be lots of fun! They have also graciously agreed to let us spend the night at their place tonight, putting us 45 minutes closer to the Keys for our trip tomorrow. I'm very anxious to head to their place as they have a puppy, Brutus, and I've been going through extreme pet withdrawal on this vacation! Hopefully he likes strangers. :)

Vacation!

Chadmo & I arrived in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida on Wednesday evening at around 8:30 pm - we are so happy to be on a relaxing beach vacation! I kept forgetting to post about the fact that we cancelled our Paris trip because we weren't comfortable traveling overseas since I am pregnant (so much better than any vacation! :)), plus I was in the midst of horrible morning sickness during the time that trip was booked. So Ft. Lauderdale is our make-up trip, and I have to say that lounging on the beach seems to be just what the doctor ordered.

Here was our view when we woke up Thursday morning - I literally took this picture from where I was lying in bed! Heaven!

Chadmo relaxing under our beach umbrella on Thursday - our first beach day! Don't mind our paleness, hopefully we'll get a little tan while we're down here. :) (Though even tan for us is still incredibly pale compared to most of the beach bodies we see down here.)

Me (& Dylan) making good use of my maternity swimsuit again - I think it's my absolute favorite article of maternity clothes that I own! It makes me think of days floating on Lake Erie, Salt Fork Lake, Alum Creek, and the Ohio river when I was pregnant with Haley-Bug. Dylan doesn't seem to be as much of a water baby as Haley was - Haley loved it when I was in the bath or floating in a body of water somewhere. Dylan liked it when I was laying out and toasting myself in the warm Florida sun!

Chadmo headed for the crystal clear water - even when we were up to our shoulders we could look down and see our feet plain as day. The water temperature is perfect, we stayed in for about an hour and a half, just floating around, and only got out so we could lounge around and read our books again. 5 hours on the beach reminded me how much more relaxing it is to do nothing when you're not at home with lots of little projects nagging at the back of your mind!

Yesterday evening we headed down to Las Olas Drive for dinner and a cruise through all the cute little shops lining the street. It just happened to be an Art Walk last night from 6 pm - 10 pm too, which was extra fun. We got to go through all the art galleries that were open extra late, there were several street performers out, and of course we hit up the Gelato shop to make a certain Miss Someone happy while we were walking. ;) I discovered a new favorite artist during our gallery explorations - Loet Vanderveen - he makes bronze animal sculptures and his work is amazing, check him out if you get a chance. All in all it was a lovely day and evening!

And here's a little taste of what we have to look forward to with the rest of our week: :)

Forecast Summary - Ft. Lauderdale

TODAY HI: 92

SATURDAY HI: 90 LO: 74

SUNDAY HI: 89 LO: 75

MONDAY HI: 87 LO: 74

TUESDAY HI: 87 LO: 74

WEDNESDAY HI: 87 LO: 74

THURSDAY HI: 87 LO: 74

Love to everyone from Florida!

Mother's Day

It is a beautiful Mother's Day here in Logan, Ohio. As I write this I am sitting on the porch at my parents' house and it's wonderfully sunny and 68 degrees outside. Everything is green, the dogwoods and irises are blooming (up here on their warm, sunny hill anyway), the skies are baby blue with fluffy, decorative white clouds, and the sun is just starting to think about descending towards bed for the evening. There is a humming bird war going on about 6 feet in front of my face as the 4 earliest ruby-throats of the season try to keep one another away from the feeder, an endlessly entertaining battle to watch as they occasionally even smack into each other and the little ones let out out nervous chirps as the big ones chase them away. My dogs are laying like 3 lazy sentinels on the warm bricks of the porch around me, immune to the buzz of the humming birds but snapping at any stray bees who fly too close. As I look at everything that's green around me, the new buds on the trees and flowers, the fresh leaves on the trees, and the fine layer of yellow pollen covering anything that holds still for two long, there are two thoughts that run through my mind. One: it seems appropriate that Mother's Day is this time of year - the spring time, the time of new life for everything green, and the time of birth for most of nature's animals. And Two: I am so blessed to be counted as one among the many mothers to be celebrated this day, so fortunate to have had my beautiful Haley-Bug and so thrilled to feel all the fabulous kicks of Baby-Roo #2 growing inside me as I sit here right now.

Our weekend started out on Friday with a trip to OSU Maternal Fetal Medicine for our Level II ultrasound, where we received fabulous news all the way around and were introduced to the wonderful Dr. Samuels. Our ultrasound lasted about 1.5 hours and we got to see every inch of Dylan, from the lenses of her eyes, the normal shape of her cerebellum, the four fabulously proportioned and functioning chambers of her heart, her tiny stomach that was filled with fluid so they know that means she also has a normal esophagus and mouth, her lovely bladder filled with urine which means she has kidneys and they're doing what they're supposed to, her 10 fingers, 10 toes, adorable mouth and nose, many, many things in between, and all the way down to her other end where she was still proud to show us that she is a girl. ;)

After our appointment we headed out to Easton, where I must tell the world about the most delicious discovery ever: Godiva dark chocolate and raspberry shakes. Never in my life have I tasted anything so delicious, and I keep thinking of ways I can get back to Columbus to get my hands on another one. (If you have a Godiva store near you, I highly recommend you check it out.) That night we joined our friends Tom & Jess Steinbrink at North Star Cafe for a delicious dinner and lots of good conversation - Jess introduced me to yet another delicious discovery: home made Ginger Ale at North Star which was so, so good!

Saturday was a busy day - we went to my cousin's fiancee's bridal shower in the early afternoon, and later in the afternoon we went to the Klingelhafer-Gallenstein's 2nd annual Kentucky Derby Party where my horse WON the 137th Derby despite 20-1 odds! Go Animal Kingdom! (My winnings included beautiful red roses, a glass 137th Kentucky Derby commemorative cup, and $70 dollars - quite exciting for a non-gambler!) I've decided that if I'm going to get into sports, I'll have to start gambling because that makes it ever so much more exciting.

This morning I woke up to yet more deliciousness: Haley & Dylan had smuggled dark chocolate covered strawberries and white chocolate bug covered pretzels down from a Worthington candy shop (with some help from Chadmo I suspect ;)), along with a very nice card. Katy K had given me a gorgeous bouquet of flowers and a sweet card, and Mom & Dad gave me a book on Motherhood which I'm excited to read. I've made out like a bandit and am feeling quite spoiled, and this is all before the lasagna dinner Chadmo has been busily preparing for my Mom & myself - and who would've guessed, I'm hungry again?!? I guess I'd better go eat. ;)

Happy Mother's Day to all the wonderful Mother's, Grandmother's, & Mother's-to-be in our lives! :)

(P.S. I'll post new ultrasound pictures soon!)