All about Brooklyn!

I have noticed that I don't have much about this cute little girl in our lives and I thought I'd share some great things with you.

-She has one of the best smiles in the world! She can light up the room. And she is one of the happiest babies you will ever meet. It's so fun to have someone that is happy and smiling around you.

-She loves to be in the middle of things.

-She loves to jump on the trampoline

-She loves her brother and sister. She watches and laughs at Jack all day long, and then when Savannah gets off the bus she reaches for her and gives her a big hug.

-She will let you know when she wants something! She will either give you a high pitch scream to let you know, or she chomps her gums when she wants your food or drink.

-She sits in her bumbo sometimes while I am cooking, not sure if she really likes it but tolerates it, and she has the most amazing reach in it. She can even scoot it across the counter, I definitly have to keept a better eye on her now! She gets into tons of stuff in that if I leave it too close and then will give me a sneaky look:) This is her getting into a jar of Nutella.

-She loves the water, whether it's her bath, the pool, the ocean. Whenever she hears the bath water running she crawls there as fast as she can and tries to climb in.

-She is such a sweet cuddler and she sleeps great as well.

-She has picked up the art of sword fighting and loves to sword fight or wrestle when everyone else is.

-She also loves Jack's batman toys, I guess that's what she gets when Savannah is gone all day:)

-At her 9 month check up she was 17lbs 6 oz. 25% and 26 3/4 in. 55%. But she still has some cute baby rolls!

Our summer vacation.

This summer we decided to spend some time at a beach front resort and we had a blast. Here are some pictures of us relaxing and having a great time.

This was our first night there and we thought we'd go walk on the beach. We should have put the kids in swimsuits, how can they resist the waves!

Trying to get the sand before another wave hits.

Fighting the waves.

Brooklyn enjoying the beach as well.

The fam in front of our hotel.

Our huge bed the next morning was taken over!

We went to the beach the first morning and got to play in the fog as well. It was pretty cool.

My kids love the beach!

They also had a miniature golf coarse there and we had a blast playing. The kids are actually pretty good!

This was the kitchen/dining room area of our suite. It was so nice to have because the kids don't eat out well for every meal every day. We also had three bedrooms and three bathrooms so the kids loved playing hide and seek in it as well. Our kids almost had as much fun playing in the room as they did outside of it:)

The living room.

If you look close enough you can see Dan and Savannah right under the waterfall. This is the view from our room. It had a great pool area, with three pools, a lazy river, water slides and a few hot tubs! Tons of fun!

A Florida storm coming. If you know FL well enough you know that around 3 or 4 in the afternoon you get a good rain for a little bit and then it's bright blue skies again.

Dan and Savannah are down there running to the indoor pool.

They even provide horse back rides:)

More fun at the beach.

Bye beautiful ocean and hotel

And the nice thing is that it's only 35 minutes from our house!

First day of First Grade!

Savannah was off yesterday to her very first day of first grade. She was so excited to go back to school and see everyone.

Dan's Business Trip to Europe

So I just got back from a business trip around Europe. I went to Italy, Belgium and ended in Ireland. It was a whirlwind tour, but the business part was successful and the time that I had to see some of the sights was also a lot of fun. Even better, the food was great.

Our first stop was Milan, Italy. The area where Ferraris are manufactured is fairly near so they functioned as quite the tourist attraction. This was set out in front of the Ferrari Store for rent to drive around the large block for $150.

This is the center "duomo" or cathedral in Milan. It was pretty magnificent inside and just enormous. The most interesting thing was the preserved cardinals that are set out for all to see. Let's just say they weren't preserved perfectly.

Another shot in front of the Duomo

This is Lake Como - Bellagio is at the further end, where George Clooney has a house. It is a beautiful area. Definitely worth visiting instead of Milan in my opinion.
We had some time afterone of our audits and decided to drive through the countryside. Very small towns surrounded by rice fields. The interesting thing going through these small towns was that each had a very old and huge church in the middle. This is our rental car - Lancia Muso - don't ever rent it. Piece of junk.

In Beerse, Belgium Johnson & Johnson has a huge R&D campus. We went their to audit one of our own companies. While there we noticed that due to the size of the campus their are bicycles parked outside all the buildings that you can just pick up and ride to your next meeting if you want. We decided to pick them up and ride around the campus it being a beautiful day and all.

In Belgium we rented an awesome ride (after the disaster of the Lancia), Audi A1. Apparently they are not in the States, but man it was sure fun to drive.

We decided to stop right across the border to France for dinner. You see before you a pot of Muscles that I had with curry sauce. Not too bad actually.

Here is a salad with some sort of beef. It was good, but the meat was a little rare for me. You can see how decorated the dish was. King Godfrey of Buillon. This statue is in the center of Brussels. He was the Lord of the castle that we visited below.

You can see some of the tunnel ways inside the castle.
The view of the top of the castle and the surrounding area.

One of the halls deep inside the castle

This is a view from the front of the castle looking out on the valley

A view from the front.

You can see how steep the hill would have been for invaders. Though you can't them, there are slits throughout the front of the castle where archers could view the valley below and have clear shots on incoming invaders. Also highlighted were the areas where hot oil was dumped on those trying to scale the castle walls.