Hilton Head Island 2010

We just returned from a week long trip to Hilton Head Island (HHI). It was a long 12 hours there. We drove straight thru the night on the way there and by the 9th hour I was so so uncomfortable and had to jump in the back seat to lay down next to Stella. Stella did great on the way down! Because we left in the middle of the night Stella slept most of the way down there. When she finally did wake up she watched a few movies on her portable dvd player.

Of course we stayed in the Palmetto Dunes plantation and we stayed at Windsor Place II. Our condo was incredible! It was a 3 bedroom, 3 full bath, ocean front condo and had just undergone over 100k in renovations as you will see from the pictures. According to the real estate magazines that we picked up around the island condos in this exact same complex were selling between 1.4-1.8 MILLION DOLLARS. I would sure like to own one of these condos one day!

This is the family room- we watched a lot of Fox News and some soccer in here everyday.

Here is the gourmet kitchen...we made breakfast and lunch in here everyday.

This was the Langley Family bedroom and private bath.

Here is Teta & Gido's bedroom and bath.
Here is where the McGowan Family stayed (sorry no pics of their bathroom).
Once we arrived in HHI all Stella wanted to do is be in the pool and go to the ocean. Our condo had 2 pools (see below). The kiddie pool is the one with the mushroom and the big pool was the heated pool. Of course there was a hot tub too but since I am pregnant I was not permitted to even go in! :-(

We went to the pool and beach everyday. It was just a 1 minute walk from the pool over the dunes. Todd and Stella boggie boarded a few times but Stella got tuckered out easily from riding all of the waves out and then going back in. She loved jumping the waves and floating in the ocean. We had a lot of fun looking for shells and digging in the sand and on this day we even caught quite a stash of sand dollars. Stella had fun feeling them on the bottom of the ocean and pointing them out to Todd and I so that we could dive down to get them of course. Thankfully there was a bottle of bleach at the condo so we could bleach them. Stella and Sophie enjoyed the pool so much! It was like pulling teeth to get them out of the pool everyday. Stella and Sophie's swimming skills improved dramatically the week we were in HHI. Stella can now do a handstand, front and back flips. They both enjoyed the pool so much and will have a blast this summer at our neighborhood pool. Of course, my favorite part of most evenings was going to Frozen Moo's. It was an ice cream store in Coligony Plaza that had 92 flavors of ice cream. Stella's favorite flavors were superman and red, white and blue. Both flavors were actually vanilla but colored with food coloring to make the kids think that they were getting something cool. As you can see, Stella enjoyed her ice cream very much!

Some of my favorite childhood memories are from HHI. I can only hope that each summer Stella can make her own childhood memories from HHI. I hope that each summer we can make it a new Langley family vacation tradition.

Summer 2010 and feeling round

I know I haven't blogged in quite sometime but I have been so very busy and tired. I noticed today while on Facebook that I am beginning to look more and more like our family picture...nice and round. No seriously, I can't help but chuckle as to how round I look and how the picture below portrays my image perfectly!

On Tuesday, Todd and I went to see Dave Matthews Band at Riverbend. We figured since they weren't touring in 2011 we better take in a show! It was such a great show.... baby boy was loving it. He was jamming and dancing around all silly in my belly. I think it was the first time that Todd could actually feel the baby move. In 2003, we went to see Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds acoustic show at Miami University when Stella was also in utero and she loved it as well. Lets hope that this little boy loves Dave Matthews just as much as Todd, Stella and I do. :-)

We are driving to Hilton Head Island tomorrow night with my sister Sarah, brother in law Mikey and niece Sophie. My parentals are flying and will meet us there. Sarah and I have so many wonderful childhood memories from HHI, as it was where we went every summer growing up. Hopefully we can continue the tradition with our kids Stella and Sophie and they too can begin to form their own childhood summer vacation memories about HHI.

Memorial Day 2010

Its been several weeks since I last blogged and a lot has happened...

This week Stella lost one of her top teeth. That stubborn little fella was "wiggly" for quite a while and it was nice to see it finally come out. I was absolutely grossed out every time Stella would say "look what I can do mommy" and she would push her tongue against the back of the tooth and the tooth would be poking out of her mouth at a 90 degree angle...YUCK. The tooth fairy left her $2 for her tooth! Geez when I was a kid it was a $1 for your first tooth and .50 cents there after. Apparently the tooth fairy is recession proof. LOL :) On Friday (May 28th) we took Stella to Kings Island. Teta and Gido bought the girls (their grand babies Stella and Sophie) and their parents of course Kings Island Gold Passes. We live less than 20 miles from Kings Island and it's a great place for the kids to have fun and for the parents to wear the kids out. Stella loved Planet Snoopy and rode most of the rides. Here is a picture of Stella on the carousel and of course of all of the horses she could pick she picked the zebra (Racing Stripes- on of her favorite movies).

We met up with some of our good friends, Vine & Giga and their kids and had a wonderful evening visiting with friends. The best part about Kings Island: Stella slept for 12 hours after a day at KI.

I've felt baby boy moving quite a bit lately. I am beginning to see figure out some of his patterns and routines. I certainly haven't experienced any really hard kicks or jabs but I can certainly tell when I am being kicked and when I am being punched. His little head is on my right and his feet are on my left side. And although sometimes I feel like sometimes he is doing a jig on my bladder, I wouldn't give up any of these kicks or punches for anything.

I had to buy a maternity bathing suit this week. I didn't have to buy one with Stella because she was born on June 4th so after she was born I just wore a fat girl suit. Needless to say, there is nothing more embarrassing looking like a beached whale at the pool but I certainly didn't have much of a choice. Baby boy will not be here until September and there is no way that I will be able to survive the summer heat without cooling off in the pool. Beached whale or not, I'm going to need to cool off and take a dip so I was left with no choice but to buy a maternity suit!

I hope that everyone is having a happy and safe Memorial Day!

We're half way there!

Tomorrow officially marks the 1/2 way point in our pregnancy! Yup we will be 20 weeks tomorrow. Today we had our 20 week ultrasound and we took Stella with us. This was the first ultrasound we ever took her too because many of the others were internal and this one was external. We didn't want to scare the Ba-Jesus out of her so we opted to wait until the 20 week ultrasound to take her with us. At first Stella was mesmerized asking what everything was on the screen. Then about 5 minutes into it she was bored and kept asking when we were gonna leave. Typical 6 year old...

As you can see from the picture, baby boy is sucking his thumb and doing a little wave all at the same time. Once again (because he did this when we were pregnant with Stella) Todd asked the ultrasound tech to confirm the baby's sex and what do you know.........it' still a boy. The little "turtle" (or the wee-nis, like my sister likes to call it) was clear as day on the monitor! I guess we can officially begin to paint and decorate his room blue.

September cannot get here fast enough! I cant wait to get my hands on this little baby boy!

Happy Mothers Day!

I had one of the most amazing Mothers Day, ever! It all began this morning when Stella jumped in bed with Todd and I holding a card addressed to me and signed from her and "baby"-freakin adorable. Todd's card was hilarious, but I think he forgot that Stella can read now so any inappropriate cards we now have to tell Stella they mean something else! LOL Then we went to church as a family and when I arrived home after a short errand there was a nice bouquet of flowers on the kitchen counter waiting for me. Stella said "mommy I picked out your favorite flowers"-again freakin adorable.

Then later this evening, my sissy (aka sister Sarah) came over to the house with the most amazing handmade cards. One made by her and one made by my niece Sophie (aka the Sopha-monster). Both cards were amazing and a forever keepsake!

My parents are still in Turkey on their trip and get home late tonight. As my sister said "Mothers Day without mom is lame" and I couldn't agree with her more! So glad that they will be coming home soon! We love you mom, where ever you may be and we will celebrate with you when you get back!

If there is one thing that I have learned over the years its that being a mommy is the most priceless job! No matter how "sick and tired" we sometimes say we are, I wouldn't trade it for the world!

Happy Mothers Day everyone!

Baby Clothes Galore....

Well, its official, this little boy that has not yet arrived yet has more clothes than me Todd and Stella combined. I had 2 great friends from work that gave us oodles of hand-me-downs and many of the items were only worn once or still had the tags on them! Stella and I had a great time last night sorting all of the clothes by size and season. Now if I could only find a place to put them in the nursery.......

Todd and I are in the process of making a list of all of the items that we will need. Unfortunately, we got rid of much of our baby stuff years ago when we thought that Stella was going to be an only child. So far our list looks like this: Avent bottles, car seats, stroller, pack-n-play, bouncer, swing, crib bedding, diaper bag, bibs, hooded towels, diapers, wipes, bath tub...oy vey and the list only gets bigger as the days go by.

We remodeled Stella's bedroom this weekend and moved all of her furniture to the nursery. She is so excited to have a "big girl room." Stay tuned for pics.

New Car & New Glasses

Lots has changed around the Langley house in less than a week! On Saturday we picked up our new car (2009 black Chevy Tahoe)

...and today my Stella got glasses.

We recently received a note from Stella's first grade teacher that she wasn't seeing the white board very well. In my day it was called the chalk board, I guess now schools use white boards (dry erase boards) now; oy I'm old! I made a doctors appointment with the eye doctor to have her eyes checked and what do you know, she needed glasses. I was in the 4th or 5th grade when I began wearing glasses and Todd was in high school when he got his glasses.