Philippines

Ok, Ok, Christmas in the Philippines... it's been a month right? Let's DO this! It WOULD have been a good trip had sickness not come our way, but the beginning was good anyway. We got in late Thursday night on Dec 23rd and went straight to bed. Got up the next morning and headed out to explore the resort.

Found an awesome Breakfast buffet and did some serious damage. Teddy ate his weight in bacon and Mangos each and every morning!

The kids of course wanted to head straight to the water after b-fast so we headed to the largest of the freshwater pools. It had all these cool little grottos and caves and bubbling areas. Really cool! We went there almost every morning.

It was shallow enough and the kids are such good swimmers that Jeff and I were even able to hang out in some beach chairs and relax!

That night was Christmas eve. We headed out early for some Christmas carols in the lobby. It was weird to see Christmas decorations and have it be so warm out!

Then we headed to one of the beaches for a big Christmas eve dinner/show. The tropical decorations were beautiful and very Christmassy!

This was my favorite tree, all full of stars!

The dinner was great, the show was fun, and then Philippine Santa showed up! Sasha was NOT fooled, but she knew the guy had connections even though he was clearly not the real thing. She made sure that she gave him our deets so he could let the REAL Santa know where we were.

And Santa came through!

We had a really nice morning opening stockings and looking through everything.

Sasha wanted a picture with each and every thing that came out of her stocking!

When we checked in they had upgraded us to a 2 bedroom for our entire stay since the place was full. The kids had this huge room, then we had a living area equally as large, and then Jeff and I had our own room. Kids in a separate room = vacation heaven!!

Christmas afternoon Jeff went on his first SCUBA dive and Sasha and I went to get mani/pedi's.  Ted came and hung out with us for moral support. Having your toes scrubbed tickles!!

 

Later that day we went to a kid's Christmas party on one of the beaches. Santa hats and coconuts.... weird combo!

The next day we discovered one of the true hidden Gems of the resort: our Personal Assistant Irish! She was so nice and amazing and you could call her the night before and say, "can you come from 1-4?" and she would be there. Once we figured this out we didn't have to tag team SCUBA dive anymore.... we could go together! On our first dive Sasha, Ted, and Irish were playing on the beach when we finished our dive.

This is the little foot washing station that was at the bottom of our stairs. It was refilled each night by magic fairies. Ted never did get the hang of standing on the bottom step to wash off his feet. I tried to tell him that washing off sand ON the sand was counter-productive....

Sunset across one of the freshwater lagoons:

On Tuesday we headed out on a big catamaran for a 1/2 day snorkeling/picnic excursion.

Ted was HYSTERICAL!! He said he did NOT want to snorkel and that he was NOT wearing a mask and that he was NOT coming with us. We were like "yeah, yeah, just put this on, um hmm, and put on this life jacket, yup and oh look over there and nope that's not a mask we're putting on you..." and then I just stuck his head in the water as he was mid sentence. There was a big pause and then we heard "WOOOOWWW!" all muffled and from under the water. He grabbed his snorkel, stuffed it in his mouth, and didn't pull his head out of the water for the next hour!

Sasha was a snorkeling expert and we saw Nemo, Dory, and the drop-off! She always gets cold fast though so she had to warm up.

That afternoon Jeff and I went to the Spa. It was AMAZING! Here is one of the hot pools:

The spa is like a Japanese village and there are all these little winding paths to different areas.

When the wind blows it moves all these bamboo pieces in the railing and it sounds amazing! I want to build a railing like this in my house some day....

This pool is where we started. We had a pool massage while sitting in the hot water. Then some kind of scrub down, then a full body massage. Heaven!

When we got back the kids were riding the trolleys around with Irish. They thought that was awesome because of course their mean parents make them walk everywhere....

That night we went to a Philippine beach party cook out. There was dead pig and everything. We had a good show and great food.

Teddy fell asleep and kept almost falling out of his chair so we used his napkin and tied his head to the chair. It worked really well!

The next day, Sasha was Sick. We didn't realize how bad it was yet so we took turns taking Teddy to the pools. You gotta hand it to Ted, the kid always comes out on top. He really had an awesome vacation!

Here he is rocking one of the big slides:

That was the end of the fun for Jeff, Sasha and I though. The last 3 days of the trip for us was a nightmare of doctors, figuring out what to do, and trading off with a very sick kiddo. She had pneumonia and got through her IV antibiotics and got cleared to fly just hours before our flight home. It was incredibly stressful and soo hard having a sick kid in a country where the medical system is less than what we are so used to at home. Makes you really realize how lucky we all are that we have access to such great medical care. Also makes you grateful that you have healthy kids 99.99% of the time. So Sasha got better, we went home exhausted and stressed out, but all's well that ends well, and I got a cool henna tattoo:

I have a billion pics from the trip and I tried to put some on here that are different from the ones I put on FB. For more pics, go HERE:
More Philippine Photos

Princess Marathon Update!

When I last updated you on the Disney Princess Half Marathon we were only 4 weeks into our 16 week training schedule. Now we have only 3 weeks of serious running left and we leave in 24 days! Clearly it's time for an update...

Jeff went on a business trip in November and brought me back some cold-weather running skirts. They are super comfortable and WARM! They also look fabulous and have these great pockets on either side for ipods, snacks, ect. I do have to say though that with all this cold weather I am really looking forward to wearing my summer running skirt and doing some runs where it doesn't feel like my ears are about to snap off.

 Zoe took on the task of getting our t-shirts made. She is our official fashionista and came up with our entire outfit. She wanted to do our t-shirts in black and I was a bit skeptical until I saw the actual t-shirts. They are AMAZING!! Plus I think tons of people will be wearing pink on the day so our black t-shirts will really stand out. Can't wait to see the rest of our outfit!

 Zoe also worked with a trainer while she was back in Australia and he thought that our 13.1 mile run was a bit too close to the actual event so we moved it up 2 weeks. We did it on a Saturday so we could all run together and then we decided to open it up to anyone in the community that wanted to run with us:

 So on Saturday I donned my new shirt (which never actually saw the light of day during the run because it was so darn cold out...) and got my tiara hair thingys out and went to meet the girls. I knew I could do it but I had butterflies in my stomach anyway as we drove toward the river trail!

 Mr Baker, Mr O, and our friend Jen joined us for at least part of the run. Having other people join made it really feel like a special run. Here we all are starting from the Old Downtown footbridge.

 L to R: Me, Mr. O, Mr. Baker, Kellee, Zoe (with her hands up) Karen, and Ivana. It was FREEZING!!

 Once we got off the bridge and around the bend in the river it was much warmer and the wind calmed down. We all got settled in to a nice group pace.

 A few of our guests left us after the first loop, but we had one more loop to run! Mr Baker did the whole thing with us and he was able to take these shots of the 5 of us:

 Here we are finishing our last bamboo forest area loop and heading toward the big foot bridge:

 Crossing the bridge. 1.5 miles left to go!

 And heading up the stairs for the final bridge back to the starting point! Everyone is still smiling after 13 miles!

Of course the first thing I did when I got home was to put my sticker on my sticker chart. I put round ones on if it's the first time I've completed that distance. WooHoo!!!

Now as promised, I did video interviews with my 4 teammates so you can really meet them. Check out the video HERE!!
So that's it. The next update will be a trip report!

Mom and Dad on a Kid-Free trip!

I swear, I WILL finish blogging about summer 2010 before summer 2011 happens! So while Jeff was in RI Mema and Papa watched the kids for us and we took off to Block Island for 3 blissful kid-free nights. Now don't get me wrong.... our kids are awesome and fun and fabulous, but they do tend to tag team us in wonderful and creative ways. Like if you go to help the one that's puking on the airplane the other one will dump your glass of coke into your open carry-on. So it's nice to get away without them once in a while. I think my face says it all in this picture:

Doesn't Jeff look relaxed?

We decided to ignore the crescent beach on the main side of the island and headed to the south bluffs. Found this amazing beach with NO ONE on it and a nice pocket of sand just offshore for easy swimming. Heaven!

Our digs: We stayed at the Spring House which is the oldest victorian hotel still standing on BI. It's gorgeous and sooo mellow.

We had dinner on the deck our second night there.

Lobster with a view. Can't beat it!

Later that night we hiked to the tip of the island. This is where the Atlantic and Long Island Sound come together. Love how the waves come in from both sides and then zip toward the shore.

Those are some relaxed, chilled out parents!

On our way back out Jeff snapped this picture just as the North Light came on. It's been out of order for YEARS and I've never seen it lit up. It came on for 15 seconds and and we got a picture of it!

As if the evening wasn't awesome enough we then went to the Manissee Hotel and had Flaming Coffee's. In-Credible!

Yumm!

So that's it. We returned to the mainland (or "America" as the Islanders call it) ready to embrace our progeny with renewed patience and vision. Thanks Mema and Papa!!