Life is A Journey...Come Follow Our's

Saturday, November 27, 2010

A Wonderful and Warm Thanksgiving

Each year Brad and I go scuba diving for our anniversary; however, this year, with an 8 week old, the timing just wasn't right.  Instead, we decided to postpone the trip and go over Thanksgiving and what a good choice that was!

Brad, Quinn, and I left for Dallas last Saturday.  I am always looking for a deal and decided to try my luck with http://www.cheaprooms.com/.  Here I found a hotel called Element (http://www.elementdfwnorth.com/) that was only $69 a night.  Now this price to me seemed pretty sketchy as I'm of the mindset that more expensive = nicer; however, I tried my luck anyway figuring we could always leave and go someplace else if it wasn't too nice.  Oh my gosh were we ever pleasantly surprised.  This hotel was AMAZING!  The rooms were huge and had a sitting area and a fully equipped kitchen, the workout room was beautiful, breakfat was amazing, and they sold beer there (Brad was thrilled!). Check out these pics:



How nice does that look?!?!

Anyways, we planned to have a layover in Dallas so we could visit our good friends from Arizona, Meadow and Levi, who live there.  You would think that with us living only 5 hours apart we'd see a lot more of each other, but with Meadow finishing her residency there and us always having something to do as well, we're lucky to see each other 2-3 times per year.  They came over and the 5 of us went to dinner at this really cute little brick oven pizza restaurant, drank wine, and then came back to our fabulous room and hung out.  What a great time we had!  I'm so glad we got to see them as a part of our trip!

Meadow, Quinn, and Me...what a great pic, eh?  Sadly the only one we have

Levi, Brad, and Goat, another friend from AZ

The next morning, after a great breakfast, we headed back to the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport to catch our flight to Cozumel.  As an early Christmas present, we decided to take my mom with us this year.  Quinn and I met her as she was coming to our gate and the 4 of us continued onto beautiful and sunny Cozumel.

We stayed at Fiesta Americana which is, so far, our favorite dive resort.  It is nothing fancy, but is all-inclusive, the rooms are large, the food is good, and the dive shop/dive operation there is the best.  Here are a few pictures of when we first arrived...exhausted, overworked, and lacking vitamin D:



My mom...Gigi

After a good lunch of grilled calamari, fajitas, grilled fish, fresh fruit, and I can't even remember what else, we headed over to the beach to give Quinn his first experience in the sand.  He LOVED the beach as you can see here:



UNTIL....
...He Ate Sand!!!  OOPS!

To say we had a good time would not be a fair assessment of our trip.  We had a BLAST!  Brad and I spent 3 days out on the boat scuba diving though I was only able to complete 4 of my 6 dives due to sinus issues and not being able to equalize the pressure during my descents, while Mom and Quinn took long walks and relaxed.  Though I was only able to complete 4 dives, they were beautiful.  We saw 6 lobster (not the kind you find at the grocery store but HUGE lobster) hanging out in a fallen/sunken tree, a shark, sea turtles, barracudas, lots of beautiful corral, and an abundance of fish.  One of the coolest things was being able to hear, yes hear, the school of hundreds of sardines as they swam by!!!  


After our mornings of diving, we'd return to the dock and Mom/Gigi and Quinn would be waiting for us.  On the rare occasion they weren't, Quinn was enough of a celebrity at the resort that someone else would inform us of what he had been up to that morning ("We were just tickling Quinn's feet and he fell asleep, but that was about 40 minutes ago, so he should be waking up soon.").  Everyone at the resort LOVED Quinn not only because he was the only baby there but also because he was just such a good traveler and was so darn happy!  He was amazing!

We always took our afternoons slowly spending the rest of the day just relaxing either poolside, in our rooms, or by the bar, then eating dinner and going to bed by 9pm.  It was so relaxing, so rejuvenating, so wonderful!  We were so lucky to get to have my mom join us.  Quinn loved his Gigi time and all the attention he got. 

The verdict is, Thanksgiving abroad is the way to go.  Why bother going North where it's cold and icky when you can be warm and in the sunshine of Cozumel or somewher else?!?!?

Some pictures from our trip...there's kind of a lot of them...sorry, but enjoy!

Quinn and His Daddy at the Pool

Quinn's First Time in the Pool

Gigi, Quinn, and me

Quinn and Me Before a Morning of Diving

Our Family Pic

Gigi, Quinn, and Me Leaving Cozumel
 
Gigi and Quinn Leaving Cozumel

Brad, Quinn, and Me Leaving Cozumel

We Knew We Were In Good Hands!

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Homemade Baby Food

Brad's Grandmother bought me the Beaba Baby Food Maker from Williams Sonoma for a gift for Quinn and we have finally been able to break it out.  Quinn is so interested in everyone else's food that we knew it was time to start giving him his own.  He's been sitting at the dinner table with us since he was just weeks old (usually just reclining on his Boppy pillow), but as of lately, he's not so into the reclining.  He is actually pulling himself up and lurching toward out plates to try to steal food.  This kid is like Aladdin...you'd think he's starving or something the way he wants what everyone else has.  Nonetheless, he is now getting his own food!

Yesterday I made my first batch of babyfood...sweet potatoes...and they were quite the hit!  First of all, let me tell you about this machine.  If you're in the market for a baby food maker, I highly recommend this one.  The machine steams and purees everything for you and you have your baby food in less than 15 minutes!  The cleanup is so easy and the machine is just so cool!  Here's a picture :


Like I said, I decided to start Quinn on sweet potatoes yesterday and let me tell you did he ever eat!  Quinn ate 4 ounces of the puree after nursing for 20 minutes just before.  That same day he also ate half a banana and a quarter cup of rice cereal and a quarter cup of oatmeal.  This boy sure can eat (and stay skinny as can be)!  I've already warned Brad that at this rate, our food budget is going to have to double by the time he's 10!

With such success yesterday (and no allergic reactions), I decided to see how he likes peas tonight.  Oh did he love them.  So much in fact that I got yelled at repeatedly for not feeding them to him fast enough (mind you this was after nursing for 30 minutes!)!!!

Here are a few pictures for your viewing pleasure.  Oh yes...and he's officially cutting his first tooth and hasn't slept through the night in 2 weeks.  Please pray for a good night's sleep for us...I'm exhausted!

Wearing his Peas!

All done!!!

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Mama's Tired Of Looking Frumpy!

I have not gone shopping for myself in over a year.  Shoot...all I needed were a few key maternity pieces and I was done.  I never got so big that I couldn't fit into (maybe squeeze into would be the better phrase) my regular workout/stretchy clothes during my pregnancy with Quinn, but that has left me with stretched out and frumpy dumpy looking clothes.  Shoot...I have a 5 and a half month old and I look GREAT if I must say so myself.  After tears about how frumpy I can look I decided enough was enough...it was time to spend some money and get shopping.  Unfortunately for the Pope's we have all been hit with a bit of a stomach bug around here.  I took a half day on Monday to make sure I wasn't still sick after a somewhat sleepless night and later hit the mall.  I stopped in my favorite inexpensive and trendy store, Francesca's and humbly told the sales girl how clueless I was and asked her to dress me.  Well...here's what we came up with:






Super cute and interchangeable.  I am super excited to have some cute new clothes to wear.  I then headed to Nine  West to look for some killer boots to complete my looks, but only walked away with these super impractical, but oh so sexy pumps...I just had to have them (and they were on sale)
I keep saying I'll pair them with jeans, but in the meantime...I just love looking at them.

Today, I was home with a sick Quinn.  Poor boy was up every 90 minutes last night and consequently...so was I.  It was a perfect day to shop online!  I found my black booys and one other pair of shoes on Piperlime.com.  I think they're perfect!  What do you think?



I'm sold!  I'm also hoping there aren't too many more sick days in our future...this could get expensive!

Oh yes and because I know no one comes on here to read about me, Quinn is seemingly much better.  We are just praying for a better night's sleep tonight.

Monday, November 1, 2010

Halloween at the Pope House

Quinn celebrated his first Halloween in a big way this year...his aunts and uncles were here visiting!  Michelle, Fred, and Brian all made the trek down from Wisconsin to spend the weekend here in Northwest Arkansas with us and we all had a BLAST!  We spent Friday trying to (unsuccessfully I might note) push the boat dock out into the middle of the lake.  They are dredging our lake this winter and we had two options 1) remove our boat dock or 2) float it out into the middle of the lake so it wouldn't be resting on the bottom of the lake when the water levels went down.  Always willing to try anything once, Brad decided it would be fun to try to float it out.  Friday afternoon, equipped with come alongs, homemade anchors, a paddleboat, and some beer, the guys worked at this great engineering feat.  I even got involved paddling the paddle boat in attempts to push the dock into the middle of the lake.  It was arguably one of the hardest workouts I've ever had.  5 hours and a valiant effort later though, the boat dock is back where it began...not in the middle of the lake.  We condoled ourselves with dinner and margaritas at our favorite local Mexican restaurant Las Fajitas and we were all quick to forget the pain of the day =)

Saturday, the boys woke up to don Halloween costumes and go on a mountain bike tour.  Now if you were one of 4 grown men, what would you want to be for Halloween?  If you said a Care Bear you would have fit right in
Brad, Fred, Brian, and Donald (aka...Care Bears)

They even went so far as to give the Care Bear Stare to help their fallen commrades. I'd argue they gave the real Care Bears a run for their money. While Quinn, Michelle, and I opted out of the ride, we were there to welcome them back in and since it was Halloween Weekend, Quinn had to sport his new "I LOVE MUMMY" shirt.



For the actual Halloween day, Quinn started off as a ghost, but quickly donned his pumpkin costume and I must say was the cutest lil' pumpkin ever!  See for yourself!



With his Daddy - his best bud

Our perfect little family!
 
Hope your Halloween was half as SPOOKTACULAR as ours!