Hailey's going to be a butterfly! She wouldn't really sit still for a good pic. Hopefully tomorrow!
Today Hailey had "ketchup milk" for dinner and read a story about "ketchup's house." You guessed it...she's obsessed with ketchup. We had KFC for dinner; chicken, mashed potatoes and mac & cheese but she insisted she had ketchup. Sometimes we give Hailey pink milk (milk with a couple drops of strawberry syrup) because she will gulp it down and tonight was one of those nights. BUT tonight it was ketchup milk. We read a story about Santa and reindeer (when mommy read it) and when Hailey read the same story to her baby it ended up being about visiting ketchup's house. Oh the imagination! :)
This weekend was busy but we had so much fun! Friday night we decided to put Hailey into her big girl bed. Well, it was her same bed but we changed it into the toddler bed part. Since then we have seen a completely different side of her! She is so independent and a "big girl!" Here's a cute pic of her showing off her new bed.
She has done so well with it! We haven't heard any pitter patter of her little feet running around...yet. We practiced with her that she could play in her bed while the lights were on, but she needed to lay down when the lights turned off. Hopefully it continues! Since sleeping in her toddler bed she has become so much more independent in everything! She's way more open to going potty on the potty and wore big girl underwear for most of the day yesterday! She picks out which ones she wants to wear (each time because she's still peeing in them) and grabs them out of her drawer by herself. I think it's going to be easier training her from panties then pull ups because she knows the minute she's wet. She looks at us and says, "I'm peeing Mommy" and we whisk her away to the potty! We're definitely getting there!
Saturday we spent the morning playing and potty training and after nap headed over to the Paulk's. Hailey was so excited to see Riley! She kept asking if we were really going to Riley house, we'd say yes, and she'd yell yea! We're so blessed to have such great friends (us and Hailey!) and we're not too far away. We let the girls play for awhile, then Shelby and I snuck out to Meijer to pick up food for dinner. Nich and Ty did pretty well handling the three kids! Way more work than just Hailey! The girls played some more....and more...and more.
I didn't get a cute picture of the girls, but Hailey sure loved Lincoln! After Riley went to bed Hailey got to play with him and hold him. She'll be such a good big sister some day!
After dinner and bed times the fun began! Nich and Ty watched the new Hulk movie and Shelby and I got to scrapbook! It's so much fun with someone else! :) She's making a book of Riley's family and I was still working on Hailey's book. I got 4 pages done! Amazing how much you can accomplish if you put your mind too it!
Sunday we surprise Nana and Papa and headed up to Flint after church. Of course, Hailey didn't nap the entire drive and passed out after only playing for 1/2 hour at their house. She slept until 5:30! Nana and Papa have my old toy box filled with toys for Hailey and she knows right where to go! She found the dress up dress and became a whole new person! Here's some cute pics and video of her. My little star!
I was helping her jump off the fireplace hearth onto Ceaser's bed. She wouldn't jump by herself, but got such a kick out of it!
Papa was checking to see if the light would come out the other side...So I have to wear my glasses for a week. NOT excited about it. I have GPC, an eyelid disease that makes my eyelid rough so a contact doesn't fit right. Proteins build up and make bumps on my eyelid. (Dr Schaff would be proud!) Glasses for a week with steroid drops, then for the next six weeks I can't sleep with my contacts in and have to clean them with hydrogen peroxide.
Hailey hadn't seen me in my glasses for awhile and wanted to wear her glasses too! She's such a sweet heart!
Ok, now for some pics that I have been really wanting to post, but I figured I should probably post all the cruise ones in a row. Now I'm caught up and can post random adorable pictures of Hailey!
The day after we got back Grandma and Grandpa took us to Applewood at Mott's Farm in Flint. The three of us rode on a golf cart down the hill and got this family picture!
She and another little girl made friends and ran up and down the hill! Brittney showed me a new downloadable program called Picassa (highly recommend it by the way!) and I did some special effects to this picture!
We stopped at Meme's house on our way home and Hailey remembered there were blocks under her couch. She just had to bend into a pretzel to reach them!
The only ear of corn from our garden this year! It was about an inch long but Hailey peeled it and carried around her "baby corn" all around the house that day!
Britt also snapped this precious picture of Hailey reading the Bible. She was reading it by herself for about 10 minutes. It's just such a perfect picture. One of Meme's friends was going to use it for her Bible study.
Britt and Shelby also posted pretty cute pictures on their blogs of her. Click on their names to see the posts I'm talking about! Brittney has a video of Hailey dancing and singing in her flower girl dress and Shelby has pictures of the two girls playing at their house last weekend.
Day 4: Key West
The last day as we were heading to Key West I got up early enough to see the sunrise and it was beautiful! There were three people (myself included) that were up that morning snapping pictures. And we got some great ones! Every other morning it was cloudy or rainy around sunrise time. I didn't set my alarm, I just have to pee every day at 6:30am. On the cruise I got up, checked the sunrise then went back to sleep for a couple more hours!
We also saw dolphins - there were probably 6 of them that kept jumping keeping up with the back of our boat! I was the only one to actually catch the dolphin jumping in mid-air! Pretty cool . It was worth getting up early the days before!
Pic of our ship! Ours is the one farthest right. There are also 2 Carnival ships that pretty much followed us to each port.
Key West was mostly full of little shops, Ernest Hemingway's House, Key Lime pie shops, and lots of touristy attractions. We caught up with a couple friends we had made and walked around the island making up our own sightseeing tour! This is Heather and Trae, Nich and I at the southernmost point of the USA. (as you can probably read from the bouy!) While we were waiting to get our pic taken, a tour guide was telling people that they used to just have a wooden sign saying "Southernmost point of the USA" but each year college kids would come down and steal the sign and hid it somewhere else on the island so the mayor decided to build this huge buoy so they couldn't move it. Useless neat facts...free courtesy of someone else's tour guide!!
While walking around the shops we kept seeing "Protected by NASA" in all the shop windows. I thought it was hilarious that NASA had anything to do with Key West's safety, but as we looked closer it ended up just being an alarm company. It would've been a lot cooler if it was THE Nasa!
Another pic of the 4 of us. We hung out quite a bit with them. They stayed at the Airport Regency hotel with us and shared our carpool shuttle to the port. Even though there are thousands of people on the ship, there are some people that you just see over and over again. We kept running into each other and ended up becoming pretty good friends! We had a great time walking around, talking and taking goofy pictures with them!
Goofy picture of Nich and Trae!
Day 3: Coca Cay
Coco Cay is Royal Caribbean private island and we were there all day! The ship docked in the middle of the ocean and then we took a ferry to the island. They brought food to us and we ate a barbecue lunch on the water. I just love how clear and blue the water is!
The gorgeous view to lay out to! They had probably 1,000 lawn chair set up across the beach. It was just the perfect peaceful setting!
Nich and I splurged a bit and did the snorkeling excursion. It was $30 but we rent the equipment all day. Here's a picture of us styling in our gear! Snorkeling was AMAZING!! The water was really clear and we saw fish that I had only seen in salt water fish tanks swimming all around us! We swam out to the reefs and saw the coral and crabs and then out toward the middle of the swimming area and saw all kinds of fish! They also had a couple sunken airplanes and anchors that you could dive down to explore. We didn't (I don't think I'd be coordinated enough to not get water in my mouth!) but the water was shallow enough that we could get a pretty good view. 
We ended up going out twice for a total of 2 hours! That doesn't seem like a lot but we were so sore from swimming and kicking our flippers! We didn't realize how much sun we'd get being in the water and on our backs for so long and got really burnt. We swam out to the airplane and there were probably a hundred fish just swimming all around us. It looked like we were in an aquarium. They were so close and so many that I didn't want to move with fear of touching them! I know fish are harmless... Our camera was in the locker so we asked to borrow the masks and life vests as we were heading back to the ship for a photo op!
After our snorkeling work out and lunch we relaxed and shared a hammock. Almost fell asleep it was so nice! Nich thought it was funny that they were tied to pine trees in the Bahamas! :) We came back to the ship for another delightful dinner, enjoyed a show and hung out with some friends to end the night!
One more post to go! Key West!!
Nassau!
Tuesday morning we woke up bright and early in Nassau, Bahamas! I was thrilled to be in the Bahamas which to me is the ideal vacation. Relaxing on a warm beautiful beach with palm trees all around! Nich - not so thrilled about the warm beach part, but he did well! We had paid for an excursion to Atlantis / Paradise Island to spend the day at the resort. Here are some pictures of Atlantis.
The bridge between the two hotels is a suite that costs $25,000 per NIGHT with a minimum of 4 nights ($1oo,000!!). It's called the Michael Jackson suite because he was the first to stay there. My camera has such a great zoom that I could be like paparazzi!
Too bad no one was on the balcony! I could have sold this picture!
I absolutely love fish and marine life. At the resort there were a ton of little ponds with different types marine life...sting rays, sharks, baby sharks, etc. This pond was all sting rays.
I think this picture is hilarious! The fish at the bottom are grouper (or so I'm told...) and they really are alive! The resort did a great job of remaking Mayan Ruins. They had aquariums all over tunnels under the resorts and under the outside grill. I was in heaven!!I know you all have been waiting patiently for a new post so here we go!! Last week Nich and were so blessed to go on a cruise to the Bahamas! AND Great Grandma and Great Grandpa Johnson watched Hailey for us! At first we were so excited to get away, but we really started missing her! The next couple posts will be packed with pictures and stories of each day!!
Miami:
Grandpa took us to the airport in Flint around noon on Sunday and we had a quick layover in Atlanta before getting into Miami at 5pm. We waited as the hotel shuttles went past us over and over and then finally we saw it -- Airport Regency! We were a little nervous about what the hotel would look like since it was only $66 night, but they had free shuttles to/from the airport! That was the selling point! We got there and I loved it!
A picture of the lobby as soon as you walk in...marble everywhere!
Here's a picture of the room. It really wasn't very special except it had a balcony overlooking the airport! We got in around dinner time and decided to walk around town to find dinner. Bad idea...we weren't in the touristy part of Miami. We walked for about 4 blocks and only found a Checkers. So we went there and it took so long for the service but food was good. The next morning we got up early and walked to IHOP (we saw it as we were leaving Checkers) and it took about 45 minutes to get our food. We ended up having to get it to go so we could walk back to check out and catch the shuttle to the port. We got there in the nick of time (Haha - Nich hates using his name in a catch phrase!) and ended up eating our breakfast at 11:30 at the port just before we got on the ship! It was such a smooth, quick process and we were on the ship before we knew it! We got settled in and then Nich and I headed up to the top deck to get front row seats as we set sail...we got coveted seats right in the middle . Below is a shot of sailing away!
The water is so blue and so clear! Out to open water!
Posing with a cool Miami City background! We were getting soooo excited!
