Busch Gardens and Girl Night

Another beautiful day in Florida.

I just love the spring, when we have around 80 F weather, sunshine, blue skies...

And a nice cool breeze!

As long as I have taken my daily Zyrtec I can actually go outside, and the pollen count has come down just in the last few days.

Hubby had the day off so we decided we should take Julian back to Busch Gardens.

Hubby has been planting the seed though lol kept asking Julian since last night where he wanted to go and feeding him the answer "Busch Gardens!"

We were able to see a bunch of animals, ride the choo choo train (Julian's most favorite part),

and then the additional highlight of the day was Sesame Street World!

We brought Julian's new swim clothes (had to buy a 3T shirt and 2T pants for him) and we spent almost an hour just walking around the kids pool area.

To our amusement, Julian's favorite toys were fallen leaves.

He would pick them up, throw them in the water, pick them up again, throw them again, etc.!

We were on time to watch the live animal show as well, and Julian loved it!

Seeing the birds fly freely around in the arena, the dogs, cats, etc... so much fun!

Right after dinner, I was ready to leave for my girl's night with my dear friend Shelly.

We were neighbors many many years ago and stayed close friends all these years.

Just a quick girl's night out, but still great time to chat in the car and just watch a cute movie together.

We picked "The Vow", based on a true story.

A young couple gets into an accident, the wife wakes up not remembering her husband.

But he fights to win her back and of course.. happy end.

I just love Rachel McAdams and the male lead definitely was eye candy as well!

TGIF and grilling time!!

The one great thing in Florida is that we can BBQ all year long!

Two years ago when my parents were here to watch Julian for us, our grill was dying.

My inlaws gave us a small gras grill as a housewarming gift when we bought our house in 2004.

So my parents bought us thsi humongous stainless steel grill for Christmas in 2010.

We LOVE it!! It's so much easier to operate, to clean, it heats more evenly, and we can grill a lot!

Even has a rotisserie which we haven't even tried yet!

When we first got it we grilled all the time. Then we stopped, and only grilled every once in a while.

It has been so beautiful recently that we decided spontaneously to grill tonight after we got home from work.

We all ran to Publix to buy hamburger meat, tomatoes and onions and an eggplant.

I just love grilled eggplant... I just brush it lightly with olive oil, dust it with salt, pepper and garlic and that's it!

The hot dogs were for Julian, he doesn't like burgers :)

I love onions... these were delicious sweet vidalia onions so I had to add quite a few more after the pictures :)

Good night everyone, I hope you had a great start to the weekend as well!

Oatmeal to go

... is just available almost anywhere now!!! Starbucks, McDonalds, Steak and Shake! I love it! I know it's much cheaper to bring my own oatmeal and then microwave it at work, but it's still great if you are in a hurry. And I'm always in a hurry it seems! It's probably because I'm a procrastinator and never plan ahead :)

This was Julian this morning... hiding under the cover :)

Electric cars are cool!

No, I'm not talking about the Toyota Prius, I'm talking about these adorable cars for kids!

Where were they when I was a child??

Not that my parents would have ever spent the money to indulge and buy us something like this!

We didn't grow up poor at all, not rich either, just normal middle class, but my parents never believed in wasting money or buying us cool toys just because other kids had them.

BTW I don't think they have these cars in Germany yet. But I'm not sure.

I just remember when we were in Thailand on one of our family vacations, I must have been around 12?

We visited my parents' friends and their kids had a kid electric motorcycle they rode around their house, and it was sooo much fun!

Hubby has been wanting to get Julian one of these cars, but I have put my foot down and said no - not until he's at least 3.

I know they have those toddler cars that only go about 3 mph but even those run around $100 or more and I don't want to waste money on something that slow that Julian will outgrow very quickly.

So he will just have to wait until his 3rd birthday in August until he gets a cool car like one of these!

I wish I were small enough to fit into it with him!!

There was a little police car that he actually really loved... but didn't take a picture of that.

Other than that I couldn't tell if he had an absolute favorite or not.

We went to dinner quickly at Cheddar's, then  ran over to Babies R Us to pick up Julian's crib converter kit.

He's going to have a big boy bed with rails soon!

 Which means whenever daddy finds time to put it together.

Sure I could do it myself, but what do I have a husband for??

Mickey Mouse day!

We had such a great time with Julian at Epcot Center a few weeks ago, and he did so well that we thought we should take another family trip to Disney and go to Magic Kingdom this time.

Julian was a little disappointed that we didn't meet Mickey Mouse at Epcot.

He happily took a pictures with Donald Duck and that Teddy Bear, I forget his name.

But no Mickey :(

The weather has been beautiful for weeks now and suddenly there is a 30 - 40% chance of rain today!

Since it's Florida we thought we would still take our chances and hope that a short fat rainpour will take care of the 40% chance of rain.

Oh no... as soon as we got to Magic Kingdom it started raining. But it was misty, drizzling. So we hoped it would end. Typically we don't have these long rainy days in Florida.

We already made the hour long drive to Disney... why turn around and go home?

The other option would have been to walk around Downtown Disney, but then it was too late to turn around so we just said "What the heck" and went inside!

Ooh, I was so glad I brought hoodies for Julian and I, it got a little chilly with the rain and the wind, and you have to take the boat or train to get from the parking lot to Magic Kingdom. It has been so many years that I've been that I completely forgot about that.

Luckily it stopped raining and as we were finally inside, one of the parades started.

Hubby lifted Julian up on his shoulder and our little guy was sooo excited!

Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Pluto, Daisy, Donald, Goofy... all his favorite Mickey Mouse characters

and then some!!

I love watching him like this... face lit up, smiling, clapping and yelling "Yay, yay, yay!!!"

Then it was already time for lunch, hot dogs and corn dogs! Easy peasy :) And of course french fries.

Then the downpour started again... well, again just drizzling away, but constantly!! And the wind! We broke down and bought ponchos for all of us, $8.50 for an adult, and $7.50 for a child!!

But only using the umbrella just didn't make any sense. Despite his little hoodie, Julian's legs and arms were getting soaked, and so were we.

So here is the little man with his poncho, still a bit too long :)

He twirled around in it at first, loving it!

But then he wasn't very happy about it anymore, despite me showing him that literally almost everyone was walking around in a poncho!!

We went on two different short rides and the choo choo train, hoping it would stop raining.

But unfortunately it just kept going and going. Since we hardly paid anything for today's park entry (still had our 3 day passes), we decided to pack up and leave around 2:30pm.

But Julian wanted to stop at the Candy store first.

So we bought some chocolate croissants, hubby bought some chocolate, I scored a cute Mickey Mug for Julian and I to share, a Mickey cookie cutter form, and Julian scored a Mickey Mouse spatula. It's what he wanted and we actually can use another small one so he got it!

They also had a few older guys sing some old songs, the bee-bop kinda songs, and Julian was just fascinated.

We see more and more how much he likes music, dancing, listening, singing it...

It was about 3pm by the time we got into the car and were able to leave. Since it was warm enough in the car I just took Julians soaking wet pants off, and put a little blanket on him, which he loved.

Soon enough he fell asleep and actually only slept for about 1.5 hours, which was perfect since guess what...

We lost an hour last night! Spring forward time!!

With me trying to get Julian to bed earlier and up earlier in the morning, this worked out perfect.

Tonight was no problem, bedtime was early enough that I was able to wash my new mug and enjoy a cup of hot chocolate with whipped cream.

I low how the mug handle has a little space to put the porcellain spoon in it.

Sorry, not the greatest pictures, but all of my blog pictures have actually been taken by my iPhone.

I am starting to think I should rename my blog to

"My life through my iPhone"!

Lazy Saturday

We really had a very lazy Saturday morning.

Every once in a while doing that is such a bliss!

We are typically so busy with work and balancing that with being parents at the same time.

So on weekdays, it's always a rush it seems... getting up, getting ready, dropping Julian off at his nannny's, work, picking up Julian, making dinner, bathtime, storytime, bedtime.

On our days off we have gotten so used to getting out of the house with Julian because he has enjoyed this so much ever since he was a tiny little baby.

I can tell you that was hard!!

Both hubby and I are stay at home type of people. We love staying up late Friday and Saturday, sleeping in on the weekends, being lazy around the house, watching movies or TV, reading a book, doing things around the house, going out for late lunches and very late dinners.

Then Julian came along and he was such a busy little baby that we found ourselves going out and doing a lot of things with him, since he loved it and didn't get antsy so quickly.

And we have kept this up.

Whether we go out shopping, to the park, feeding the fish at the pond, the zoo, museum, theme park, lunch with friends... there is always something on the agenda.

And with Julian still taking a 2 hour nap in the afternoon it's typically something we try to do in the morning, so that we can have naptime after lunch.

I think we have gotten so used to it! And more than anything we enjoy seeing how happy Julian is when he's out and about. He really doesn't care whether he's at Ikea shopping with us or at the park running around, he is just so excited to be out, see people, see things, run around!

Just seeing him laugh, giggle and seeing the excitement in his eyes makes us happy!

So every once in a blue moon there will be a lazy morning like this one.

Sleeping in (which is typically 8am nowadays)...

cuddling up in bed and watching cartoons together...

wearning PJ's all morning...

late breakfast...

coloring...

playing in the backyard or in the frontyard...

Yep, today was one of those mornings :)

I made homemade wheat banana pancakes.

Julian loved the hearts!

Lunch was actually at McDonald's. Julian requested to go there, and since we actually don't go very often, I got both of us dressed quickly, and his request was to sit inside and eat.

Hubby was back pretty quickly, so once Julian woke up form his nap we packed our bagpack and headed over to Lake Thonotosassa to look at the area and scout it as a possible home site.

The plan was to rush a little bit, since daylight savings time starts tonight, so we will loose an hour of sleep!

Luckily I have been getting Julian to bed early this week, and we had to get up early this week as well with my work schedule. So rather than the typical wake up call at 7:30am, Julian has been getting up between 6:30am and 7am.

We decided to have dinner at Carraba's, we all love it there.

And it's the one place my very picky hubby will inhale the Spicy Sausage Lentil Soup :) if they have it.

Yep, they had it!

My favorite dish there is the Spicy Linguini Pescatore... Linguini with shrimp, scallops and mussels in a spicy marinara sauce. Soo good!

Hubby always orders lasagne. I vary once in a while. The cheese pizza was for Julian :)

And because it's the weekend, we ordered dessert.

Warm apple tart with vanilla ice cream, yummy!!

Julian ate the icecream (he got sooo excited when the dessert came out, jumpping up and down on the seat yelling "Yay! Yay! Yum yum yum!!!!!" I love it!!) and I ate the apple tart... now with vanilla sauce or what was left of it!

Look at my poor baby...

when I picked him up yesterday he was running around throwing a huge ball up in the air and trying to catch it.

Suddenly I saw him trip over his own feet and he was headed right towards one of the the nanny's corner tables and would have hit it with his face, so I instintively reached out to grab him... but I had my keys in my hand! So I scratched him on his cheek with my nail, and my car key hit him on the nose between his eyes.

Of course there was blood and lots of crying :( My poor baby :( I do still feel that it would have been worse if he had crashed into the table with his face.

After I held him and comforted him for a few minutes he was still crying but I asked him if he felt any better.

His response "Not yeeet!"... *sob sob sob more crying*

Ok, both the nanny and I had to laugh about that one, it was too cute! Yes, we tried as hard as possible to suppress it :)

More Vietnamese Food!

Last night I was busy packing a ton of things into boxes to mail off.

My best friend's little boy in Germany will turn 3 next week, so I got him a cute little shirt and jacket at Target (on sale here since winter time never showed up in Florida but hello... it's still cold in Germany, perfect!) and also some hex bugs. Julian loves these things, have you seen them?

You can check them out at http://www.hexbug.com/

We bought ours at Target, but you can get them at toystores or Amazon.

We first discovered these last year at my friend's house. I bought Julian his first two when we flew home to Thailand last October and he was entertained for hours.

My best friend and I were so thrilled when we found out we would have little boys just 5 months apart from each other.

A dream come true! Best friends, pregnant together, having kids at the same time.

But we were also so very sad that they won't grow up together... that we can't go on play dates together and really enjoy and grumble about motherhood together as we always had dreamed.

Pictures and emails of course help us stay connected, as well as videos and Facebook.

So every once in a while we see something that our son likes and we make sure the other "son" gets it as well :) Not overly often but this definitely made me think of my little man in Germany.

I also had a package for my friend in Mexico (they left their stuff in our stroller while at Disney), a birthday card for another friend in Germany, and a card that Julian made for grandma and grandpa.

And what did I discover when I got to the Post Office??

A new Vietnamese Restaurant!!

*Gasp*

Of course I had to head in there first, as I did not have any lunch yet.

Scanned the menu quickly, typical Pho and other items.

And yummy Banh Mi's!

Vietnamese sandwiches!

So I ordered one, as well as fresh springrolls, and then headed over to the Post Office to do my duty.

I didn't check the sandwich until I was back in the office... I was disappointed that the bread was kind of hard. I would have returned it at the store! But I have to admit, it was still very delicious.

I will be back to try out their Pho!