Tooth(brush) Fairy

Brianne feels very strongly about good dental hygiene and has had a small obsession with brushing her teeth lately. Not only does she enjoy brushing her own teeth, she likes to brush Elmo's teeth. She also likes to watch me brush my teeth. On Sunday (January 23), she actually came into the bathroom while I was brushing my teeth, and said "Oh, brush your teeth?" The tooth brush nearly fell out of my mouth.

I'm sure teeth brushing doesn't sound too exciting, but when your toddler is doing it (and talking about it), it seems nothing short of a miracle.

Brianne doesn't limit her teeth brushing to the bathroom. Here she is in her bedroom, brushing away.


She is a good friend, and wants to make sure others also have good dental hygiene.


Exhausted from a morning of in depth teeth cleaning.

Love My Letters

Brianne continues to amaze us with the things she learns. And not just what she learns, but how fast she learns it. Around 16 months old, Brianne's verbal skills really started picking up. What started as one or two words (for the record, the first words I can remember her saying are "cake" and "cheese"), exploded into more and more words.

Of course, part of teaching her words are teaching her letters. As of today (January 25), Brianne knows almost her entire alphabet. And it's not that she memorized the alphabet song, she actually can identify letters out of order. The letters she is still working on are L, M, and N (she actually says "O" 3 times when we say the alphabet together). She can also say her letters in order, and knows which one comes next. She also knows most of the numbers between 1 and 10 (all except 4, 7, 9 and 10).

We are pretty flabbergasted at how fast she learned them, but are so proud of her! Now if we can just get her to say "Mama" and "Dada", we'll be all set - for now anyway :o)

In case you don't believe me, here's a video of Brianne saying some of her letters.


And here's some bonus shots of Brianne smiling for the camera.


I think I had my finger partially covering the flash. But Brianne still looks good!

Shopping Practice

Brianne got a tiny little shopping cart for Christmas. She has enjoyed putting all her toys in and carting them around the house. She knew what to do with it right from the start. A born shopper! Mommy is so proud :o)

Here is a video of Brianne shopping. Enjoy!

A Snow-Free State of Mind

This has been a brutal winter for 49 of 50 states - every state except Florida. Every other state has snow on the ground (even Hawaii), and what are we doing? Going to the beach! On Sunday, January 9, we spent the afternoon with good friends, enjoying the sun and cool breeze. Marty and Frank went for a run down the beach while Alona, Bradley, Brianne and I played on the play ground, strolled up and down the beach, looked for shells, admired the ocean (which was freezing) and chased the birds.

Here are the B's going for a little swing.


Looking for shells.


Making a break for the ocean. I almost dropped the camera going after her. I caught her before she did a header right into the surf!

Running through sand is exhausting! Here we are taking a break for a minute.

We went for a stroll down the boardwalk and came across this cool display - Guess Ft. Lauderdale is turning 100 this year! Who knew?

The B's getting a pretty sweet ride in the wagon. Brianne enjoyed eating pretzels, though she stuffed the majority of them down a hole in the bottom of the wagon. That explains the swarm of pigeons following us...

Being a couple of tourists!

Post-Cruise Christmas

Our cruise didn't get back until December 26, so Santa visited us a day late. Even though I knew we were going to be gone, I still wanted to get a Christmas tree and decorate our house. I did compromise this year and got a small tree that I put up on our dining room table (this also prevented Brianne from yanking it down).

Also, for the first time in I can't remember how many years, I put up a small part of my family's Christmas village. It is a beautiful little village with different houses, town buildings, little people, the works - even little street lights. It is a lot of effort to put up, but it is sooo worth it. My mom has probably close to 50 little buildings that make up the whole village (I guess it would be a city), but I only put up a small part at the base of our little tree. I enjoyed looking at it so much, I hope to put up more buildings next year!

Brianne checking out the tree, village and presents.


Brianne admiring her presents before tearing into them. Thank you Santa!

Cruise in Review

I have tons more pictures, and left so much out, but hopefully you can see how much fun we had. This was the first seven night cruise I have ever been on where I wished I could have stayed on a few more days. We crammed as much fun as we could into each day, but still didn't get a chance to see everything. I guess we'll just need to go again in 2011! This was absolutely the best cruise vacation we've ever been on, and we hope we can do it again soon!

Merry Cruise-Mas! Day 6 and 7

Throughout the entire cruise, the ship had Christmas activities. From holiday music being played poolside, to "Christmas Vacation" being played at night in the AquaTheater, Christmas spirit was definitely present on the ship. We even got gifts almost every night!

On Christmas Eve, they had Christmas Caroling on the Promenade. They even blew snow!


Here are all the ship's officers leading the carols (up on the bridge, in the gold robes). After we sang our share of songs, it was time to hit the hay to get ready for Santa!


Brianne woke up bright and early to see what Santa brought her. Santa didn't have room to fit all her presents, so he just brought the ones he thought she would like the best (and that fit in Mommy's suitecase) - a small stuffed Big Bird and Cookie Monster!


For Christmas morning breakfast, we managed to get into the Character dining again (it was sold out, but they squeezed us in).


Then we went to see Santa. They had an awesome set up in Studio B to see Santa. Santa's in the back left corner in this picture. The ship had an age-appropriate gift for every single child onboard (over 1,000!). All the staff was dressed like elves, and they were handing out egg nog. It was a great event! Brianne didn't mind seeing Santa this time around.

After we met Santa, Shrek and Fiona showed up!

Since this cruise was on the pricier side, we decided collectively not to do gifts for each other. But to keep in the Christmas spirit, we did want to do some gift giving, and settled on a Chinese Auction (everyone buys a 1 gift, puts it in a pile, and each person draws a gift in order of the number they draw at the start of the game. Each person can steal another person's gift, or pick from the pile.) We had a blast playing. We held the game in the Viking Crown Lounge, so got to enjoy some spectacular ocean views while we laughed our butts off.

Later that day, Brianne wanted to make her own Pet at Sea (like Build a Bear), so we went to the Boardwalk to check it out. Here we are building Brianne's own stuffed animal, a giraffe we named Charlie.

After we finished making Charlie the giraffe, we went to the AquaTheater to see the Madascar aqua show "Let You Entertain Me". The show was really cool, but the sun was blazing, so Brianne wanted to borrow my shades.

An "Alluring" Time Had by All - Day 5

We didn't feel like getting off on Cozumel, so we used that port day to try all the onboard adventure activities. No lines, no waiting! First up, we tried the zip line. Yes, you can actually zip line on the Allure. The zip line goes across on Deck 15, 9 deck above the Boardwalk. It was a little scary, but we both had a blast.

Next up was the FlowRider. I had never actually tried the FlowRider up until this trip. We actually joined a group lesson, which gave us the opportunity to ride a bunch of times within an hour. Brianne thought it looked so cool, she wanted to try. But she didn't meet the heigh requirement, so she had to settle with watching us. The water comes out of the FlowRider at 30,000 gallons a minute, so if she tried to get on, it probably would have shot her right off the ship.


Of course, Mr. Athelete Marty got up on his first try. By the end of the hour, he could have taught private lessons! I tried it too, and almost got a concussion. I didn't do too bad, and look forward to trying it again!

Later that day, we went to the family carnival, which was held on the Boardwalk. Here is Brianne and Mimi getting ready to watch the circus, which was actually performed by kids in the Adventure Ocean program. Very cool!


They had all kinds of carnival games, balloon animals, face painting, guys on stilts... it was awesome!

High Fun on the High Seas - Day 3 and 4

We started our day with breakfast in the dining room. We ate in the dining room quite frequently, and the service and quality of the food was excellent everytime we went.

Whenever she ate, Brianne had to have two of each item, one for each hand. This time, she stole Marty's muffin. Marty was sad. Side note: Every dining venue on the ship had these high chairs that came with snap on trays. This made dining so easy for us. Loved it!


Marty, Brianne and I only got off the ship in Labadee, Royal Caribbean's private destination. They just finished building a pier, so you could walk right off. Here we are with the Allure in the background. Pretty awesome!


After a fun day at the beach, we got back on the ship and saw the How to Train Your Dragon Ice Skating Show. Here we are in Studio B (the ice skating rink), waiting for the show to start.


After that, we thought it would be a good time to go swimming. There was only one pool on the entire ship that babies in diapers can go in (for health related reasons). The pool was about 10 feet square, but it was all Brianne needed for hours of entertainment. And they heat the water which was very nice (they dont heat any of the other pools). Brianne was the cruise director of the baby pool, meeting and greeting all the other little babies who came to play.


Next to the baby pool, they have miniature pool chairs. Too cute!

Kiar Family Christmas Cruise! Day 1 and 2

It has always been a dream of mine to do a big family vacation, so this year, we decided to finally do it. Who knows when we'll all vacation together again, so we did it up big, and booked a 7-Night Western Caribbean cruise on Royal Caribbean's newest ship, Allure of the Seas over Christmas - December 19 - 26. Since I work for Royal Caribbean, I have been on the Allure for work, but not for vacation. None of my family had ever even seen an Oasis-class ship, so I was excited for them to experience it first hand. I knew it would be an incredible experience, but nothing could have prepared me for the absolutely amazing time we had. I have so many pictures, I am going to have to do this blog in a few parts.... so here it goes.

I coordinated the whole thing, and even went so far as to order matching shirts and Shrek ears for everyone, which we wore on embarkation day. Don't we all look so cute? The first day, I took everyone on a tour of the ship, so they would get to see everything at least once. I loved seeing the expressions on their faces as they took it all in. Everyone was blown away.


The Allure has the DreamWorks experience onboard, which is a bunch of onboard events that include the characters from different DreamWorks movies like Shrek, Madagascar, Kung Fu Panda and How to Train Your Dragon. The first DreamWorks event we went to was a character breakfast. Here we are with King Julian from Madagascar. As each character came out, they along with all the wait staff had fun choreographed dances. Then they went table to table to visit with everyone. We had a table right in front, and had a perfect view.


Our stateroom was an interior facing balcony. The Allure has an outdoor area called the Boardwalk, which looks like Coney Island and has a carousel, several restaurants, and stores. It also has the AquaTheater, which an outdoor amphitheater that they use to perform incredible shows. Here is Brianne enjoying the view from our balcony. Every morning, she would go out on the balcony and waive at the servers at Johnny Rockets. From the second morning on, all the servers came out and waived back, which thrilled Brianne.


We checked out the Adventure Ocean area. They have a big area called "Play" which has a bunch of toys, and things to climb on. Brianne enjoyed running around in here a lot.


Later, we saw the Move it! Move it! parade on the Royal Promenade, the city street that runs down the middle of the ship. All the DreamWorks characters were there, along with singers and dancers and acrobats, but Brianne nearly fell asleep on her Uncle Scott's head. She had had a busy morning!

Ride the Movies

The weekend of December 10, we went with Marty's parents and our friends, the DiPaolos, to Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure.

The day started off a bit chilly. Here we all are huddling under the Universal ball.


We had two whole theme parks to run around in. And what did Bradley and Brianne want to do? Play in the bushes. Go figure.


The grown ups wanted to ride the Simpson's ride (not me), so we waited outside. We practiced our spelling while we waited.


We saw the Wizarding World of Harry Potter for the very first time. It was absolutely incredible! I did ride that ride, and it was the most amazing, yet the most nauseating ride I have ever been on. I am glad I tried it, but you couldn't pay me to ride Harry Potter ever again.



After that, we went over to Suess Landing. I was still feeling pretty ill from the Harry Potter ride, so Brianne rode the carousel with Grandma Mimi and Grandpa Monroe.

Next to the carousel, they have a little play area. The B's had a good time running around. They are actually starting to communicate with each other. Right now, their communication consists of shrieking at each other. It is hilarious.

One last ride before we head out.

Santa Baby

Last December, we forgot to take Brianne to see Santa, and we did not want to miss out again this year! Since Brianne was getting dressed up in a special outfit, we figured it was the perfect opportunity for all of us to dress up and take our family Christmas picture.

On our way to see Santa, we made a quick stop at our local farmer's market to see if they had any Christmas-y areas to take a photo. They had a great set up for Halloween, so we had our fingers crossed. We were not disappointed!


After we took our family picture, we went to the Pembroke Lakes Mall to see Santa. We got there around around 2:30, and of course, when did Santa go on break? 2:30. So we killed some time shopping at Macy's. You can tell Brianne is a born shopper, looking for the best deals!


After an hour, it was finally time to get in line for Santa. Pembroke Lakes Mall had a great set up for Santa, and the line we had to wait in had all these neat little kiosks with an activity. They gave us a little card customized with her name, so when you scanned it at each kiosk, it had her name on the screen.


Here is Brianne and Santa. Even though she did have a practice meeting, she still was not to keen on sitting in Santa's lap.

So I got to meet Santa too.

After a long day of picture taking, Brianne was ready to call it a day.