Now we're walking

Dominick is a walking machine! And he LOVES it.

Last night, Nick was sitting on the couch and I was sitting on the other side of the room on the floor playing with Dom. He was whimpering and reaching for Nick so I helped Dom stand up and he walked completely across the room to Nick, laughing the whole way! It was about 12-15 steps! Then he just laughed and laughed until Nick helped him stand up to walk to me. Then he would do it again, although never taking as many steps to me before falling face first and crawling the rest of the way.

Nick said he liked walking to Daddy better, but I think it's really that he was trying to get to me SO fast that he couldn't slow down and walk. ;-)

So now I guess we REALLY need to baby proof the house!

Half Marathon

Training has begun again. The St. Louis Half Marathon is 15 weeks from today and I'm training for it. I added a few weeks to the traditional schedule to ensure that I'm in the best possible shape. Here's my schedule for the week:

Monday - Stretch and Strengthen - I'm joining the Y today and doing some weight lifting
Tuesday - 3 Miles
Wednesday - 2 Miles
Thursday - 3 Miles and weight lifting
Friday - Rest day
Saturday - 30 minutes of cross training - probably laps at the Y pool
Sunday - 4 Miles

I'm really excited to get started. I'll keep you posted on how this one goes!

Some Vacation Pictures

HEADED OUT OF THE LOU

Nick and Dommie at the St. Louis airport


Pictures of our resort




Lunch at the bar (and me wearing the hat Nick bought Dom)


Playing in the pool


EPCOT CENTER

The boys toasting in "Mexico"


Nick and Dommie by the lake


Dommie giving Me a kiss


Me, Dom and Sleeping Beauty


The ball at Epcot lit up at night



BLIZZARD BEACH

One of the water slides (one I did NOT do!). You can see the "ski lift chairs" that took people up to the slide.


Me and Dom by the wave pool


Dommie just being cute



MAGIC KINGDOM

The Family on the ferry to Magic Kingdom


The Boys on the way to Magic Kingdom


Me, Ben, Mike and Dommie on the teacups


Me, Mike and Dommie on Dumbo


Nick and Dommie leaving (he's laughing but it kind of looks like he's crying)

DOMMIE'S FIRST STEPS!!

YES you read that correctly! Dommie took his first steps today/tonight!!!

My baby is such a big boy! He took a baby half step today at the villa and Nick was asleep. He didn't really believe us and he said it didn't count anyway since he only took one step forward and didn't bring the other foot forward after that.

So after dinner at Planet Hollywood, we went to their gift shop. We put Dommie down and he took two steps!! One foot and then the other so it officially "counts" to Nick!

My baby is SO big!

Next Few Days

Vacation is coming to an end. It really has been an amazing first family vacation. I've enjoyed every minute of it. Here's how the last few days have been.

Thursday - Magic Kingdom. It was GREAT! We did so much. We did a bunch of the "must do" rides. We started off on Splash Mountain which was a lot of fun. I had no idea how long the ride was before we got on it, but it goes through a whole story during the ride of the "Brer Rabbit". We had fun and, of course, got wet.

After Splash Mountain we moved on to the Pirates of the Caribbean. That was cool too even though it wasn't a roller coaster type ride, it was still cool. It was amazing to see how life like the statues were. Jack Sparrow looked exactly like Johnny Depp.

We then went to the Swiss Family Tree House, which isn't a ride at all. You just walk through the tree house, but I really enjoyed that. I loved that movie as a kid and walking through the tree house was pretty cool.

Then we wandered into "Tommorowland" to get fast passes for Space Mountain. The wait if you just got in line was a 40 minute wait and we didn't want to wait that long so we got the passes and went to the show "Monster's Inc Laugh Floor". That was actually really funny! It was an interactive comedy show.

After lunch we went to do some rides with Dommie. He apparently is NOT a thrill seeker! We started on the tea cups. He did ok but had to climb up into my arms to handle it. Next was Dumbo. He did not like that ride either. It went a little too fast for his taste. After Dumbo we got on "It's a Small World". Dommie LOVED this one. He was so fascinated by all the people and singing.

When we got off the ride we had to run back to Space Mountain to make it in time before our fast passes weren't good anymore. That was a good ride too. It was pitch black and had a lot of twists and turns. I liked it a lot.

After Space Mountain, we were pretty tired. We did a little shopping and then called it a night. Dommie was done and to be honest, so was I!

It was a great night though. After we put Dommie to bed, Ben and Mike stayed in with him and Nick and I went out to eat just the two of us. That was nice. A mini date night while on vacation. We went to the Black Angus Steak House. Delicious.

The boys were crazy and went to see Avatar at midnight. I slept. But they said it was awesome. They went to a theater on Universal Studios property and the theater was like the OmniMax and the whole movie was in 3-D. I will admit I'm slightly jealous. But I enjoyed my sleep too!

Friday - SHOPPING! It was a rainy rainy day so we hit up the outlets. Actually first we went to DownTown Disney, then we hit the outlets. I won't describe everything we got, but we did get some good deals. And I finally bought a second pair of jeans!! I now own TWO pairs of jeans! :)

Tonight for dinner we went to Planet Hollywood. Food was good and it was neat to see the memorabilia. I also had a fantastic Margarita!

The BEST part of today will be on the next post. It deserves a whole post of it's own. ;-)

It's so sad that vacation is almost over. I loved our first family vacation. Hopefully the next BIG vacation we do, we have more to our family. But don't think that means anything. We're hoping to do another BIG vacation in about 4 years!

First Half of Vacation

The baby is asleep, the boys are out drinking, so I thought I'd check in.

The first half of vacation has been great. No pictures yet, but I'll get them up early next week. Let's see if I can write everything down so I don't miss any of Dommie's first vacation.

Saturday - We got off to an early start. Luckily my parents kept Dom overnight so we didn't have to worry about him. We drove to Florissant and then my Mom dropped me, Nick, Dom and Ben off at the airport. Mike met us there.

Checking in to the flight was good. The check in lady got me and Nick bulk head seats so we had extra leg room and Ben an exit row, so that was great. The flight was ok. Pretty bumpy honestly and Dom didn't like it. He wanted to be down so badly. He slept for all of ten minutes in Nick's lap and then was pretty fussy the rest of the way. I felt really bad! But we all made it to Orlando in one piece.

We got our luggage and got in a cab. It was about a 20 minute drive to our hotel. And it is GORGEOUS! Nick and I bought a revolving time share and we used our "points" to stay here. It's beautiful. It is another company of time shares. If we promised to sit through their 90 minute presentation, then we got really cheap tickets to Disney, so we did. But that wasn't until Sunday...now I'm getting ahead of myself.

We couldn't check in yet so we went to the bar and grill. We ordered some food, some beers and settled in. Luckily Dom took a nap so we could all relax a bit. We stayed at the bar until 4. Then we got our room.

Our room is a 2 bedroom, 2 story villa. We have a full kitchen, a laundry room, a loft with basically a 3rd bedroom, a deck and a BBQ pit. It's so great. Nick and I have the master on the 1st floor. Mike has the bedroom on the second floor and Ben has the loft. It's working out really well. We got a crib put in our room for Dom. At first I was afraid of sleeping with him in the room but it's worked out fine so far.

Ok, on to Sunday. Sunday was the presentation. It was LONG. And they kept sending new people to try and sell us another time share. We were strong though. We held our ground! We left with nothing but a ticket for cheap Disney tickets! Go us!

The rest of the day we spent at the pool. Dommie LOVED the pool. So did Nick. In fact, he was so excited to get into the pool that he forgot he had my phone in his pocket. He jumped in and was in the pool for a good 5 minutes before realizing it too! But that's another story. We played in the pool for a long time and Dommie couldn't handle it anymore. We had to call it a night. That was Sunday.

Monday. We went to Epcot Center. This was a crazy day. Mike, Ben and I decided to drink a drink in EVERY "country" that Epcot has. So we started with Margaritas in "Mexico". Then we got beers in "Norway". Then more beers in "China". And even more beers in "Germany". And FYI, these aren't bottles of beer. They are 20 ounce draft beers. Then we got more beer in "Italy". We skipped "America". We've had Bud Light, so we moved on. We doubled up in "Japan" and got beer and sake. And lastly we got some beer in "Morocco". And then we had to call it a night. We missed France, United Kingdom, and Canada. We only rode one ride, the "Test Track", but it was a good one. We had fun. And Dommie was a good boy during the whole day.

That night we ordered fast food in (cuz you can totally do that at our resort!) and crashed.

Tuesday. It started off like a lazy day. I made us breakfast which I've done every morning, but I don't mind. I love it actually. I can't wait to cook and make meals for a big family! Then Mike and I went to the gym to work out. I've been cheating BIG ime on my diet so I needed to get some kind of workout in. Then we decided to go to the Blizzard Beach water park. It was AWESOME. Seriously. And I kind of hate water parks! It's set up like a ski resort and so much fun. I only did a few slides but they were great. We took Dommie on a slide kind of like Thunder River but only in that you are in a big raft. You sit on the ground and go down a big slide. Dominick was "just" big enough for it and we thought he might like it...we were WRONG! He hated it!! He screamed the whole time and climbed up on me so fast that I had to hold him in my lap and he screamed bloody murder the whole time down. I felt like the worst mom ever...we stuck to the kid section of the park from then on!

That night we BBQ'd and watched "The Hangover" on DVD. Hilarious! Then we called it a night.

Wednesday - Today. Today was quite the adventure for me and Mike. We decided to go to a Sprint Store and get me a new phone. Well it took 3 different Sprint Stores and a toll road but we finally got one that listened. The first time we went, the phone actually worked. Perfectly. So they told me I was crazy and sent me on my way. But right after we left, of course, the phone quit working. So we tried a different Sprint store, only to find that the first one we went to was the only one that does repairs. Oh and I forgot to mention that the first Sprint store we attempted to go to didn't exist and we were sent to a new one. So I guess technically we went to 4 Sprint Stores.

After going back to the one store, I was ticked. We had been gone for over 3 hours and I just wanted a phone. I barely told the guy what happened when he ran off to get me a new phone, free of charge. They didn't have my phone in stock, but they ordered me one and it is being shipped to Mike's as we speak. I can activate it over the phone Monday. And oddly enough, in the mean time, mine is now working like a charm. Weird.

Tonight we went to Zimmie's. A bar and grill here on our resort. It was karaoke night. We didn't sing but we listened to a bunch of people. Then Mike got brought up on stage to sound like a pirate and he basically got booed off the stage. It was hilarious. I have pictures. Don't worry!

And here I am. Sitting on the couch with the boys still drinking at karaoke and my baby asleep in the other room.

We are going to Magic Kingdom tomorrow and to the outlet malls on Friday. And then back to the Lou on Saturday.

It's been a great vacation so far. I can't wait to ride some rides tomorrow with Dommie! I'll take a TON of pictures tomorrow at Magic Kingdom.

Until next week! Have a great rest of the week!!

Countdown

I am sooo close to being on vacation it's nuts! I am now literally counting down the hours, minutes, seconds even. I can't wait to be in 80 degree weather and be able to sleep in (Dominick willing) and not even think about all the things I have to do here, for a full week. I'm not going to stress about work, about Christmas shopping, about anything. I'm going to enjoy myself and Dominick's first trip to Disney World.

Our plane takes off in 24 hours and 17 minutes...but who's counting?

Sshhhh

Dommie started this new thing, where he covers his ears if you are talking directly to him. At first I worried that he might be having ear issues but now I know he does it for an audience. When we talk he covers his ears, then he laughs when you laugh.

Nick's mom was talking to him on St. Nicholas day (we celebrate it every year with Nick's family) and every time she talked, he covered his ears. I have to admit it was pretty cute!

Here are some pictures of that night:






I can't believe it's already the holiday season!

WOAH!

I lost 6.4 lbs this week?!?!

My weight watchers leader and I picked my goal weight today. It's higher than I originally was thinking of my goal weight but I think it's more realistic for me to maintain. She said we can always change it if we have to.

So now I'm down a total of 21.2 lbs with just over 20 to go! Woohoo!

Good Search Banner

You may or may not have noticed the newest addition to my blog. I added a "Good Search" banner to the right. It's really easy to use. I made good search my home page and use it just like I use Google. Every time I enter a search, Good Search donates $.01 to St. Joan of Arc Catholic School in St. Louis. This is the school where a lot of neighborhood kids go to school and where Dominick will probably go. So if you can, and don't mind, add this as your new search engine. It's powered by Yahoo so it's basically a Yahoo search engine but raising money. You can always change it if you don't like it.

Thanks in advance! :)

Christmas Tree Farm

Here are a few pictures of our family at the Christmas tree farm we went to last Sunday:






We had a great time and definitely going back there next year if anyone wants to plan a mini trip next winter! :)