Showing off her vocabulary

About a month ago, Pumpkin's language just exploded. It has been such a joy listening to her learn new words daily. She can repeat quite a lot back to me. As you can see in this video, we have some favorites. Does anyone else think that "tur-tle" is the cutest word ever?

Merry Christmas (a little late)

Again, I've gotten behind on my posting. I thought I would do a couple of posts to catch you up on what has been happening in Pumpkin's world the last couple of months.

When my Mom retired almost 2 years ago, one of her retirement presents was a gift certificate with a photographer from her church so that we could all do a family picture. We finally did it in October, better late than never! They turned out really well. We all wore white for the majority of the pictures and I made Pumpkin and my niece matching dresses and my nephews bow ties for grandkid pictures. After the picture session, we went to my brother and sis-in-laws to celebrate my nieces 4th birthday! Here is Pumpkin in her Mommy made dress.
Pumpkin and her cousin, M.
More pics of Pumpkin's dress. Can you tell I'm pleased with how it turned out?
Pumpkin was a monster for Halloween. Everybody kept thinking she was a boy. Oh well, she was adorable! We're at our church trunk & treat.
She didn't know what was going on at first but by the end, she would not let go of her Halloween basket!
A had a 80's murder mystery thing at his work. He was Simon Lebon from Duran Duran and the lady to his left was Cyndi Lauper and the guy to the right was the guy from the Culture Club (forgot his name). They had everyone from Michael Jackson to Mr. T!
Out for a walk in our subdivision.
"I found a stick, I found a stick!"
Dressed up in an Eeyore costume from Aunt K. Pumpkin loves to dress up in this costume and her Halloween costume.
Pumpkin's first circus. She loved it and just sat watching it all very quietly.
Pumpkin at the park.
That's all folks! I'll post more later. A is home this week so I should get more time to post pics.

Fun in Mexico

While in Mexico we had a little adventure with 2 dolphins. We went to a place called Dolphin Discovery where you can swim with dolphins, sting rays, sea lions and manatees. We just swam with the dolphins, we were afraid Pumpkin couldn't handle anymore. She did pretty well as long as Daddy was hanging on to her.

A getting some dolphin love.
She did this by herself. All we did was say, "kiss the dolphin", and she did it! It was too cute.

Vroom Vroom

Guess what Pumpkin learned at church one Sunday?

More Mexico pictures

Great sandcastle, Mexico style.
Pumpkin flirting with the staff. They loved her.
Picture from our buffet. Love the watermelon sculptures.
Our room. It was very nice but do you see the steps down? Do you see the tile? Pumpkin did fall on the stairs once and cried for an hour. She was fine, she was just really tired and cranky. We used the crib to block the stairs, but we were glad to get back home and to carpet!

Pumpkin was not too excited about pictures at this point. She was very squirmy.
Look Daddy, a fountain!
She was so glad to spend time with her Daddy.

Pictures from Mexico

We flew from Orlando to Cancun, Mexico and then took a van to Playa del Carmen, which is about an hour south of Cancun. We stayed at the Riu Palace Riviera Maya which is an all-inclusive resort. The food was pretty good, even though I came down with some kind of Mexican stomach ailment the last couple of days, but it wasn't too bad and nobody else got it so we were ok. You could eat at the buffets the whole time, or they had restaurants on the property you could go to at night, as long as you had reservations. We ate at a Mexican restaurant, a Brazilian restaurant and a steakhouse. The steakhouse was the best, very tasty.

The first thing we saw when we came into the hotel was this gorgeous entryway.
Pumpkin checking out the fountain.


They had one of those infinity pools, it was pretty cool.

Pumpkin was not too keen on the beach most of the time. She is a pretty tidy little girl, she doesn't like to get her hands dirty and I think the sand was pretty crazy to her.
Our beach. Pumpkin didn't like going into the ocean until the very last day, then she stayed in for over 40 minutes. I don't know if it was the surf, or the waves or the taste of the sea water, but she just didn't want to have anything to do with the water.

Oh my goodness, it's been forever since I've posted

Well, I do have a pretty good excuse for not posting. A has been on sabbatical and we've been to Florida, Mexico and down South to see family. He goes back to work next week and we will sure miss him. I'm going to break up all the pictures into several posts as it may take me a couple days to get everything posted.

We flew to Orlando the first week of October so A could go to a conference at the WDW Dolphin Hotel. We had a great view. We could see the nightly fireworks at Epcot and the ones at Hollywood Studios. The Epcot fireworks were great. During the day while A was in the conference, Pumpkin and I walked around the Dolphin and Swan hotels and then also walked to the Boardwalk, Beach Club and the Yacht club resorts. We saw a Disney wedding, the bride and groom were dancing with Mickey, Minnie, Donald and the 3 chipmunks who were really grooving. It was pretty funny as there were all these people (not wedding guests) who were taking pictures while a white Cinderella carriage pulled by a bunch of Shetland ponies waited for the newlyweds. We did not go into any of the parks, it is really expensive for a day pass so we just played around the resorts and went to Downtown Disney one day.

The view from our room. The hotel across the lake is the Swan Resort and you can see the Tower of Terror at Hollywood Studios to the right.

We flew out of Orlando to Mexico. Pumpkin loved the Mickey on the wall and gave him a big hug. She is hugging everything now, it's pretty cute.

Pumpkin and Daddy hugging Snow White at the airport.

We went to one of the character buffets when we first got to the Dolphin resort. Pumpkin was fairly ok with Timon from the Lion King but she was scared to death of Rafiki, the monkey.

Impromptu photo shoot

Oops, it has been awhile since I've posted. These pics are from a couple of weeks ago when we went to a local park for a walk with Pumpkin and our dog, Lucy. She got the adorable outfit from our friends T and B. It had a really cute flower that snaps on the front but I left it at home, but it is still adorable without it. Love those ruffles.

Extreme close up!!! Oh my goodness, I just want to kiss those cheeks!




I've got some cutes pictures from Pumpkin's 1st trip to the zoo I'll be posting soon. She loved it!