My First Mother's Day :)

We had a fabulous time celebrating my first Mother's Day with some of the coolest moms around: my mom, my grandma, and Jolene.  We started by going to church, and it was a really cool service that included beautiful singing from an opera soloist and poetry written by women about motherhood.  The first song we all sang together was the one my mom used to sing to me when I was little, and it felt so right to sing it with her and with Skyla right there too. 

After that we went to our house and Tory and I prepared a delicious lunch.  I thought he looked so handsome in his pink shirt and my apron ;)

Geordie, Jolene, and Roma brought beautiful bouquets of flowers for all the moms, and Roma had a lot of fun handing them all out to us.  It was too cute! 



I only got one pic of the food, but it was all really good.  I made my mama one of her favorite Greek specialties, spanakopita.  We had my fave Caesar salad, and for dessert baklava and something I invented: Greek yogurt with cinnamon and Stevia, grilled peaches, and caramelized walnuts. Yum!

To work off all that delicious food, we went out to our backyard to play a little bit on the brand-new grass.  The grass didn't like it very much, and Skyla liked it even less :(

Since the backyard play time wasn't working so well for all involved, we went to the park.  It was a beautiful day so I expected it to be packed, but the playground was surprisingly quiet.  I got a few pics of the fun, and a very special one with 4 generations of beautiful ladies.  We had lots of fun playing, then the San Jose crew headed back down.  We stayed for a little fun with both of our "daughters."  Notice the pics at the end of Lily hangin out on her own street!

Florida Trip -- The Second Half

After having so much fun and doing so much each day, it was time for us to relax. We said goodbye to our Maine family and headed down to Ft. Lauderdale to visit friends. We went to see Amber and Tony as soon as we got to town, and they treated us to a wonderful home-cooked meal. We got to play with their adorable boys and see their new house -- it was a great time! Our hotel wasn't the nicest one we've ever stayed in, but it had an AMAZING location! It was one block from the beach, and also had a restaurant and bar right on the harbor. We had breakfast there and talked about how awesome it would be to have one of the 50 million yachts we saw there. Seriously, I had no idea there were so many rich people there -- cuh-razy! Overall it was a beautiful day for an outdoor meal with the fam.

One of the best parts of the location was that I got to go running on the beach almost every day. I went out one morning really early and paused just long enough to get a gorgeous shot:

We also got to hang out with Jackie and her husband Erik when we were there. We went out to dinner at a great restaurant on the harbor called Coconuts that Amber recommended. Then a couple of days later Jackie had us over and we had a great time. We hung out in their pool and ate a delicious home-made Cuban vegetarian meal. We finished off with these absolutely amazing cookies she made (I would have asked for the recipe but they were too delicious/dangerous!)

We took a really fun day trip to Miami because I had never been. We went right to the beach and had fun enjoying the scenery and beautiful weather. We wore our best clothes but obviously did not fit in at all in South Beach! We did find a little park and pushed our sweetie pie on the swings.

We strolled along the strip to find a place for lunch. At each beach-side place we were inundated with Euro-trash people stuffing flyers in our face advertising cheap lunch and drinks. We chose one that looked pretty good but didn't read the fine print and got totally duped into ordering a GIGANTIC $30 strawberry mojito!

We also got to spend a fun morning with Amber and her boys at the beach.  Skyla didn't love being in her carseat while everyone else was playing, so eventually we moved to a nice shady spot so she could do her "pre-crawling" routine.

I love those pictures of of the kids all together -- especially how none of the are looking at the camera!  Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of my evening out with Amber but we had a great time at a restaurant that features organic, healthy food, and then we balanced it out with some ice cream ;)  All in all, a great trip!