Aruba

Joe and I just got back from our five year anniversary vacation to Aruba. Our anniversary isn't until August but we decided to go now since it is not yet hot here and it will be in August. We had an amazing time. Aruba is a perfect vacation spot and the weather and water were beautiful. We relaxed, swam and ate. It was a perfect week.

Aruba is a Dutch owned island, so of course I had to take a picture of this windmill. It was definitely a different experience than our trip to Amsterdam though.


We stayed at the Marriott which was beautiful. Aruba is great because it is safe to leave your resort so we were able to try a couple different restaurants around the island.


Aruba is a desert island so it hardly ever rains. There were perfect sunsets every night.

Brendan and Cathie were there with us for a couple of days which was a lot of fun.

The four of us took a jeep tour of the island. It was very interesting to see all of the sites and also where the locals live. It is only about 75 square miles so we pretty much saw the entire island in four hours. It was a lot of off road driving...very dusty and hardly ever on more than two wheels.

Ninety percent of the people living on the island are Catholic. This is the oldest Catholic church on the island.

Most of the island is just sand and rocks. We seriously drove up and over rocks like this on the tour.

We stopped to snorkel in a natural pool at the end of the trip. The water was so clear you could see forever.

Joe and I took a sunset sailboat ride on our last night there which was the perfect way to end the trip.

Children's Museum

We took Ethan and his friend Grace to the children's museum downtown. I have never been there before or really ever heard of it. It turned out to be a really fun day. They have a lot for the little ones to do there. One area is set up like a farm. They have a barn and a silo that the kids can play in. Everything there is hands on...here is Ethan picking apples from a tree on the wall.



Another room is all about space. Ethan loves "NASA" and space thanks to Uncle Kevin who launches him up in the air like a space shuttle. He was all about the space suit and throwing the spacerocks into the air. He now warns you when he is going to throw things by either yelling "air" or saying "ready, set, go!" So if you hear either of those, watch out.





The museum also has sections that are made to look like a house, doctor's office, and grocery store. Basically it is a big playhouse with different rooms. Ethan is in the nursery in this picture giving the babies a bath.

Kate's Baptism

Laura and Tom also had Kate's baptism on Mother's Day. It was the perfect day for it and Kate did a wonderful job....she is such a sweet baby. Joe and Laura's sister, Stacie, were her Godparents. The only thing missing was that Susan's flight got canceled and she wasn't able to make it in for the weekend.

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to all Moms and Moms to Be (there seems to be so many at the moment)! It was a beautiful day and we had a wonderful brunch at Canterbury like we do every year with my parents and grandparents. The food was amazing and Ethan loved the idea of a buffet. He was able to eat everything and anything he could find. He actually started climbing out of his chair to steal my strawberry from me. He was truly in attack mode for fruit.

Mommy and Ethan...he would not sit still for one single picture. He had an entire golf course he wanted to explore. Good thing Grandpa wasn't outside to see what he was getting into.



Sophia bought me a cute Aunt frame for Mother's Day so we had to take a picture for it...how cute is she?

My mom and her babies

Grandpa and Sophia...how sweet

Shannon's first Mother's Day

Choo Choo Train

Ethan and I met my mom, Kevin and Sophia for lunch at the Winking Lizard in Peninsula. Ethan is all about trains and one pulled up just as we were getting there. He was so excited to see it.

Here is a picture of Sophia in Ethan's Browns hat. This is what happens when Shannon is not around.

This is a caboose that they have permanently sitting in the park. Ethan could have spent the night in it he was so excited.

Indian's Game

We took Ethan to his first Indian's game. My parents had tickets but were out of town so we were able to use them. It was nice because I don't think I would have bought tickets to take him this young. It was a night game so he only lasted a couple of innings. It didn't help that we went early to eat dinner at the Terrace Club and went in the wrong entrance. We weren't allowed to go through the stadium to get to the restaurant and we weren't allowed back out of the stadium to go to the correct entrance. So Ethan was hungry and confined to a small area for about an hour and a half until they opened the remaining part of the stadium.

He did get a batting practice ball and a foam finger that he loved though. It was worth it just to be able to put him in his Indian's jersey for the night...