Puerto Vallarta - McFuego Villa - Day One

Back in February we had come across the opportunity to join two friend couples on their vacation to Puerta Vallarta in April, so we booked it and the time was finally here! We met my parents last Saturday for dinner and then they took the girls home with them since our flight left at 7:30 Sunday morning. We got into PV, caught our ride to the house and got there about 3! It was awesome! Cari and Kylie were in the pool when we got there and we quickly made ourselves comfortable in our swimsuits with margaritas!

The view from our bedroom! I'll have a photo dump of more pictures of this amazing home in another post!

 About 7 pm we decided we needed to eat. The chef (yes, the chef) has Sunday's off and the other 4 were not interested in leaving so Steve and I grabbed the house keys, called a taxi and headed out for some grub! The driver took us to this cool little area and we found a restaurant, El Dorado (with an English menu available!)

Our view of the sunset during dinner.

Once we finished eating we headed down the beach to check things out.

It was very nice! We caught a taxi home and realized that we didn't have an address for where we were going.....and no internet access to find out. The driver was a trooper and drove us toward where we needed to go and asked other drivers if they knew McFuego Villa, no luck. Thank God Steve was able to access his emails and find a good phone # for the driver to call the owner of the home who gave him directions....needless to say we paid him more than he asked for! The other 4 were in bed by the time we got home at 9:45! We found out the next morning that they had drank a little much with minimal food (hence why we went to dinner!) and they didn't even see the sunset b/c they were all passed out in bed before then! HAHA!

Dance

It was bring-a-friend night at dance for our neighbor Becca so Piper was able to join her! Since I dropped the ball on gymnastics for the summer maybe she'll be able to do this instead. She was very excited!

I think she had a good time! She was always smiling when she spotted me peeking at her and she told me that she listened to the teachers! :) They are just so cute!

Kids

I feel like my kids are falling behind.
Not falling behind in learning or schooling but with activities.
Everyone has their kids enrolled in SO many sports and different programs.
Piper is 3 and hasn't done anything yet....
seems like everyone I know has had their 3 year old in activities since they could walk.
Why do we do that to our kids?
They have YEARS of being involved in the years ahead of them.

My kids like to play (or fight with each other)!
Outside.
With their friends.
I can't imagine having practices and games multiples nights and multiple times on weekends.
Kids shouldn't be that scheduled. Should they?

They don't play softball, basketball, soccer. Will they be 'behind' if we don't sign them up and get them involved NOW? At 7 years old Presley would be new to these sports, where most of the kids playing have been doing it for years! I feel like at 3 years old I need to get Piper included so that she won't be left behind.

Presley has gymnastics one night a week for one hour. She wants to do cheer too, which would still only be for one hour.
Piper is might start dance which is less than an hour and she wants to do gymnastics too. This would only be 4 hours a week total for two kids and that seems like too much! HA!

Maybe we are just selfish with our time and maybe we as parents aren't as willing to give our time (or our kids time) to these things?

Spring has sprung!

Finally a weekend of nice weather without TOO much wind! Steve has been antsy to get his shed all done and it does look amazing. He stained the concrete and put the TV back in the shed Friday afternoon.

Friday night we invited over our friends Lisa and Jared and their boys Colton and Jett over for dinner and to catch up! The kids played good and we hung out by the shed in the awesome weather. Presley and Colton got along pretty well, Presley plays good when she can find kids who will do what she tells asks them to! But Piper was NOT herself most of the night and ended up throwing up and laying in her bed watching Annie for most of the night.

By the time we got the girls in bed it was almost 10 and then Steve had invited over some neighbors to hang out. I went to sleep and he stayed up and entertained the neighborhood until 2 am. :)

 

Saturday morning I was the first one up at 8. Then we had an issue with a bird that got stuck in our dryer vent, so that was fun. Eventually we all got up and ready and headed out of the house to enjoy the perfect weather and a Saturday with no plans! We got in the Jeep and went to the Saylorville dam to walk around.

 

Typical Piper.

Then we headed over to Cottonwood to play on some of the playsets there! They ran around and had fun in the sun!

After that we headed over to 1908 for lunch on the patio! The kids did a good job despite the fact that Piper ate nothing. She seemed to be feeling fine but once we got home from lunch the attitude came out! She was not a happy child for most of that afternoon. We did some more hanging out by the shed, I read my book, Presley played with the neighbors and then Sam, Scott and Boston came over for a while. We ordred pizza and hung out by the shed. Many neighbors stopped by to chat and all the kids played so good. A great weekend to break in the shed and summer! :)

 

Sunday I had to go into work. I took Presley with me since we were going downtown to see Annie at the Civic Center that afternoon. We got to work about 9 and she did good keeping herself busy with coloring and my phone. We headed out about 11 to meet Sarah and Collins for lunch at Legends. We were able to sit on the patio on another awesome weather day and then we went to see Annie!

The girls did ok.....they got bored. I knew Annie was going to be the 'original' Annie and there are alot of political sceness in that movie....and there was in the musical too. So the kids just don't understand all that and find that boring. They both struggled to get thru it but we did and then we went to get ice cream before going home! :)

 

Piper was again not feeling good. More stomach issues and when we got home at 4:45 she was sleeping. She never naps on the weekends! Then we had that battle of, do we let her sleep? do we wake her up? We let her sleep and about 7 pm she woke up. Yikes. She finally at something, took a bath, hung out and is now in bed again, so hopefully she'll be 100% back to normal tomorrow!

 

Overall a great, laid back, perfect weather weekend and hopefully we have many more of these to come!

Music concert

Tonight we had Presley's 1st grade music concert! I was nervous for her!

She was all business when they came out on stage, no smiles,  no wandering eyes, no chatting with friends....just focused and straight-faced!

 She was SO nervous when it was her turn to pay the bass xylophone. She never looked up and played perfectly! It's awesome that they make let every kid either play an instrument, sing a part of a song or give them a line to say. We were SO proud of our hesitant, self-conscious Presley! :)

 

 The 1st graders sang and then the 2nd graders....then they all got on stage to sing one more song. They crammed all those kids on the risers and they were all SO cute!

Fri/Sat

Friday night we had Brittney watch the girls for us so we could do dinner and go out for Steve's birthday. We headed out to Bonefish Grill with neighbors Sarah and Kyle and our friend Brock. Dinner was so good and we were SO full! After dinner we headed over to Tonic for a couple drinks, his brother Matt and his friend Stephanie met us there. It was a fun time! We don't normally venture out to WDSM very often so it was nice to do something a little different.

 

Saturday we did our normal hanging out, playing, grocery shopping and then decided we needed to get out of the house. We headed out to Bass Pro Shop to go bowling and look around.

 Piper was a little scared the first couple rounds we did but then finally got up the nerve to bowl for herself. She covered her ears almost every time she did it. We had fun and the 30 minutes of bowling was perfect for them to not get bored and for Presley to NOT freak out b/c she wasn't winning.

 Then we walked around and looked at the boats,

 the fish,

 and the toys.

It was a good two hours! Then we headed home and just hung out the rest of the night, I got a chance to work out then we did dinner, baths and watched most of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory before heading to bed.

Random

So Piper likes to write her name, only her ONE name on a piece of paper. Then she brings home all these papers.

Randomly she started bringing home papers with 'X's on the back of all these papers. Out of nowhere my mom told me that she was trying to get Piper to not waste paper and told her to use the back......and it clicked with me that this was why she was now writing 'X's on the backs of these papers! Smart ass kid.

Presley had to do a recycle project for school. Now, I'm not creative and I do not like projects so I put Steve on this parental responsibility. He went to Pinterest and found this cool flower project. They got some water bottles, cut and painted them to look like flowers and then made a 'vase' with another bottle. Nice job daddy and Presley!

This was the sunset the other night! Of course, the picture does not do it justice but the pinks and purples were awesome!

Random

- I recently found out that if your order swimsuits online from Victoria's Secret and they don't work, you can return them to the store!
If for any reason you do not love your items (including Sale and Clearance), they can be returned at any time! You may exchange or return merchandise purchased online or through our catalogue at a Victoria's Secret Store or by mail.

- Have you seen the Dash Button's they offer on Amazon? http://www.amazon.com/b/?ie=UTF8&node=10667898011. You get one, for example Tide, put it on or near your washing machine and when you run out of detergent, you push the button and it automatically orders it for you! They even have one for Doritos, so if you are THAT addicted to Doritos this could be an great item to add to your pantry! :) Amazing!


- Have you seen the new portable humidifiers? My manager has one at her desk and I love this concept. However we have two big humidifiers for the girls' room that we rarely use, so I'm not sure I need to buy another one.

-  I love Jimmy Johns beach club sandwich! I think I might have an addiction to avocado, if you put avocado or guacamole on something, I'm sold.

Student of the Week

Now that Piper is a 'Junior' at Generation Next she gets her turn to particpate in being the student of the week for her class. It was so funny to listen to her answer questions on the survey, where Presley would've said 'I don't know!'.....Piper just answers, with random 3 year old answers!

The best ones:
What do you want to be when you grow up?......a waterfall, which we later changed.
What is your favorite toy? pigs
What is your favorite animal? Nice giraffees (and she was VERY specific on the 'nice' part!)