Black Friday Shopping and Brianne's First Movie

Marty and I are not big believers in Black Friday shopping, but we decided to take Brianne to go see what all the fuss was about and headed to Sawgrass Mills Mall. We got to Sawgrass around 9am, and the place was already packed. Apparently, people were there starting around midnight and were still shopping 9 hours later. I think I will take a full night's sleep over masses of people shoving and pushing in search of the next discount any day. And speaking of discounts, maybe we didn't go to the right places, but we didn't see that many special deals at all. But we still had a good time browsing around. Brianne got antsy sitting in her stroller, so we had to take a break and let her run around outside.

Brianne wanted to go in Bloomingdale's. That's my girl!


A nice family moment in front of the huge Christmas tree. Guess that means we need to go buy our own Christmas tree!


Since we were already in Sawgrass, we decided to take Brianne to see her very first movie in the movie theater. We saw Disney's "Tangled". While Marty bought a drink, I took Brianne into the little arcade where she got to try her first drag racing game. Her racing skills were amateur at best (it probably would have helped if she could reach the pedals).


Marty and I both really enjoy animated movies, and we both thought that this movie was hilarious. Brianne did very well and sat through the whole movie with minimal squirming. The key was having lots of snacks on hand.


We're looking forward to our next family movie outting!

Happy Turkey Day!

I can't believe how fast time is flying! It seems like we were just trick-or-treating, and now it's already Thanksgiving. Marty wanted to run in a Turkey Trot 5K, so we went up to Tamarac to visit the Alona and Bradley while Frank and Marty "trotted". We had a busy morning of Thanksgiving arts n' crafts, watched the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving Special, and enjoyed some special Pumpkin Cranberry bread, which I baked. And this was all before 9am!

Brianne and Bradley drawing some Thanksgiving pictures.

I made a turkey out of Brianne's hand, then let her decorate it.

Here is the finished piece of art. A master piece!


While the kids drew, Alona's dog ate one of their crayons. We caught Rudy in the act!

We made Brianne and Bradley indian head dresses. Mine had a design flaw, which was that I used glitter glue paint without waiting for it to dry. So Brianne had some nice glitter streaks in her hair. I ended up making 3 different hats before I got one that fit on her head and didn't get her clothes dirty.

Here are the finished products. Bradley is quite the little model, but Brianne tore the hat off as soon as I put it on. This is the closest I could get to a photo of them both wearing their hats.

Brianne and Bradley also sang some Thanksgiving songs. Here is Bradley accompanying Brianne on the piano.


And in case you are wondering what the Thanksgiving song sounds like, here is a video clip.

Addicted to iPad

Brianne has tons of toys, but recently is mostly interested in our toys, mainly our iPad. We have a few kid-specific apps, but her favorite is playing a game called "Nin-jump" with Marty. Really, Marty is the one that plays and she just likes to watch. The only problem is, she likes to watch so much that you can't have the iPad out without her wanting to see what you're doing. So unless you want to play Nin-jump and let her sit in your lap, don't even think about taking the iPad out unless you want to start a melt down. Now if I have the iPad, I try to show her apps that areeducational, so at least I feel she's getting something out of it.

Here is Marty and Brianne playing Nin-jump. You basically tap the screen to make a tiny ninja jump from side to side, avoiding bad ninjas, birds and squirrels. It sounds dumb, but is kind of fun.

Gettin' Ready to Rodeo

Brianne enjoyed her very first poney ride at her friends Nick and Abby Scalzitti's 4th birthday party. She waited patiently as the other kids took a turn, and was very calm when Marty put her on the poney. Only when it started to walk did she get a little freaked out. She rode once around the cul de sac, and was ready to get off. I think if she tries a few more times, she will really enjoy horse back riding. Soon it will be barrell racing and calf roping!

The Happiest Place on Earth

The first weekend in November, we took a little family getaway to Disney World in Orlando. Brianne was only 8 months old the last time we took her to Disney, and it was quite a different experience this time around versus last time. This time around, Brianne was not content to sit in her stroller. She wanted to walk around and see everything up close and personal. This was a bit problematic since Disney was absolutely slam packed that weekend. Even though it was really busy, we got to do most of the rides we wanted to do - Small World, Peter Pan, Carousel, etc. We didn't get to meet any characters as the lines were humongous, but fortunately, Brianne doesn't really care about collecting autographs yet.

Enjoying Marty's favorite ride, It's a Small World.


Brianne was not content to be carried, and wanted to walk the lines herself. She was excited to go on Snow White for the first time (she wasn't scared at all!).


Brianne saw her very first 3D movie, Mickey's Philharmagic. At first she didn't want to wear the glasses, but I managed to stick them on her right as the 3D started and she watched the whole thing (and I only had to hold her arms down a little bit).


Riding the carousel. This time around, she got to ride on her very own horse!

Waiting for the Mickey stage show to start. You may notice that Brianne is wearing a different outfit. This is because when I went to change her diaper, I noticed that she hadn't pee'd that much. Of course, as soon as I took her diaper off to change it, she started peeing.... and didn't stop until her clothes were soaking wet. It was a cold weekend (in the 50's), and my spare set of clothes were a tank top and shorts, so we had to buy a new outfit. We ended up buying her a super cute velour track suit (Disney branded of course).

A Spooky Little Sunflower - Happy Halloween!

Brianne was a sunflower for Halloween, and she was without doubt, the cutest little sunflower you ever saw. I wanted to get the biggest bang for my buck out of that costume, so we went trick or treating on Saturday AND Sunday.

On Saturday, we went to Hamptons Park in Coral Springs, and met up with our friends the DiPaolo's and the Lum's. We waited until we got to the park to put Brianne in her costume. I made the mistake of trying to pull the costume over her head, and I ended up ripping a seam on the side. It was under her arm, so you could barely see it. She still looked adorable! When we got there, there was a huge line, all with little kids dressed up in their costume. Brianne was the little social butterfly, and walked up and down the line of trick or treaters and admired their costumes.


Brianne and Kylie. Kylie was a butterfly, which was the perfect compliment to our sunflower :o)


We waited in line about 45 minutes. When we finally got up to the front, we were brought into a little forested area with a path. The event was put on by a local high school, so every 20 feet or so, there were high school students dressed in costumes. Brianne was thrilled to see all her favorite characters there, like Sesame Street, Mickey Mouse, Sponge Bob and more.


On Sunday, Brianne was back to being a flower. Cooper didn't want to be left out, so he dressed up as a daisy. You can tell from this photo that he was very excited to be a daisy.


We didn't go trick or treating until around 7:30pm, which is 30 minutes after Brianne's bed time. She was starting to drag, but found a second wind once we got going.

Here we are getting ready to go out. Marty and I attempted to be gardeners but we kind of slacked on our props. We'll have to prepare more for next year.

Stopping by our neighbor's house for some treats! Our neighborhood was packed with kids trick or treating. And many of our neighbors sat on their drive ways to hand out candy, which made it a lot easier.

We took the kids around the neighborhood in a wagon. They really enjoyed getting chauffered around.

We were out for about an hour, and that was all the fun Brianne could handle. A great night was had by all, and we look forward to next year!

Peter Piper Picked a Pumpkin

Halloween is one of my favorite times of the year, so I try to spread the Halloween cheer over as many weekends as I can. Part of the fun of Halloween is going to a pumpkin patch to pick the perfect pumpkin. There is a farmer's market/plant nursery about 5 minutes from our house that has a great pumpkin patch, so we went over to check it out. They had a huge selection of pumpkins, but even better than that, they had a bunch of little areas set up for photo ops, which, lets face it, is the main reason most families go to these places in the first place.

Before we went over to the patch, we stopped by the Town of Davie Halloween festival. There were hundreds of kids running around in costume, and Brianne enjoyed watching their shenanigans. They also had a petting zoo, where Brianne enjoyed meeting little farm animals up close and personal.

Not only did they have a child costume contest, they had a horse costume contest. This is Davie after all. Brianne didn't mind the kids in costume, but something about seeing horses dressed as pirates and cats disturbed her so much, she started crying. Can't say that I blame her.

We finally made it over to the pumpkin patch.

A Daddy-Daughter-Pumpkin moment. Aww.

Lots and lots of pumpkins to choose from!

Brianne had to inspect each one before we found our pumpkin.

After picking our perfect pumpkin, we brought it home to make a jack o lantern. Brianne wanted to sign off on the face I drew before Daddy started carving.

Here's our finished jack o lantern. Definitely a family effort!

Houston, We Have Lift Off

Despite all my worrying, Brianne is officially walking! At about 15 1/2 months, Brianne was ready to walk, and she hasn't stopped since. Here is a video of Brianne walking around the house. Enjoy!

Long Weekend in Sanibel

We needed to get away for a bit, so we decided to pack the family up and head over to the west coast for some fun in the sun on Sanibel island. The great thing about Sanibel is that we get to stay at my dad's house (which is available as a vacation rental, in case anyone is interested).

Sanibel is a great place for relaxing, but with a baby, you can't really lay around and read a book. So we are challenged to explore and find new things to do. The week we went (first week of October), was just right before the season started, so we had some difficulties finding things that were going on as scheduled. But with the weather a cool 80 degrees, we still managed to have a great time.

When we first got there, it took us a good 45 minutes to get all our stuff into the house. While we moved all our stuff, Brianne amused herself with the ice in the cooler.


The next day, we went to the pool at the recreation center. It had a great kiddie pool with a lot of sprinklers, and splashy things. The only issue was that it was really windy, so if you got out of the water, it got a little cold. What also didn't help was the fact that we forgot towels. We got to the pool before the kiddie area opened, so we killed time in the side pool, where the water slide came out. Here is Brianne sitting on the slide (she didn't actually go down).


A different day, we went to a really cool butterfly garden in Fort Myers. I need to get one of these butterfly benches for my back patio!


Here is the inside of the butterfly house. They had just released hundreds of newly hatched butterflies, so we didn't have any trouble seeing butterflies.

Brianne enjoyed spotting butterflies.

We got Brianne to sit still long enough to get a picture of her and a butterfly.

It was a little cool outside, so the one time we went to the beach, we went more to walk around and look for shells.

Here we are enjoying a walk and looking for shells.

We're looking forward to going back to Sanibel very soon!