Winding down with the Whiteds: Thanksgiving

I have so many blog post "drafts" that I need to actually post on the blog before it's so late that I don't end up posting them. I do that a lot. I will start a post, take forever to add the actual pictures, and then finally it's been so long that I don't even post it because it seems crazy to post about something 6 months ago. Well, because I view this blog as a family diary of sorts, I cannot NOT post about our Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays of 2013. Here's how we celebrated Thanksgiving...

We spent a really special week at the beach in Cabo, Mexico. We found quite a few reasons to celebrate---5 years married in September 2013, Madison's first birthday, and baby #2 coming soon.

I made a traditional Thanksgiving feast the week before we left. Here we are raising our glasses of sparkling cider (and bottle).

It was the first time since our honeymoon that neither of us had cell phones or our work computers with us to do work while on vacation. Almost the entire time since we've been married, Bryce has been in school and I work from home, so our work computers go with us almost always, even on vacation. It was SUCH a treat. It almost felt wrong to have nothing to do. No emails to catch up on, no text messages to reply to, no facebook or pinterest or instagram to check, no phones to answer or return calls. I forgot what it feels like to be fully disconnected. Although I did go to the hotel lobby computer a couple times to check email and contact Verizon since my phone fell out of the stroller at gate check.

We went to bed early, woke up early, typical vacation-with-a-baby style. I think we were the first ones in our bathings suits on the beach almost every day. It was so much fun. I think it was one of the most fun vacations we've had in a really long time. She slept in the roll away crib tucked into the closet with the sound machine. In the evenings, we could either go to bed super early or watch TV on mute. It was pretty funny. Most nights, Bryce would go to bed at 7:30 or 8:00 pm and I would stay up "late" until 9:00pm watching TV. But we would be the first ones out on the beach most mornings around 7:30 am.

With a baby, it was really nice staying at a larger family-friendly resort. We stayed at the Sheraton Hacienda del Mar. There were 5 pools to choose from including one that was specifically for kids with fountains and a slide. We rented a car just the first day and went to the grocery store to buy styrofoam coolers, breakfast food, lunch food, snacks, fruit, and plenty of milk for bottles. For dinner in the evenings, many nights we ate around 5pm and took advantage of happy hour prices at the outdoor casual restaurant. A couple nights, we ate at different restaurants at the resort, which was another convenience with baby because we could just walk right back to our room for bath and bedtime after dinner instead of worrying about driving or taking a taxi somewhere while hauling a carseat along.

Can.not.stop.walking.

Madison spent most of the week walking around and exploring the area. She would much rather walk around for hours than sit and play in the sand or even play at the pool. So we took turns walking with her while the other relaxed in a lounge chair. At the beach, she was pretty unsure of the sand. She loved watching the birds and other kids play.

Evidence of a good nap.

We had a couple overcast days and then mostly sunny days. It was between 70 and 85 degrees every day, which was perfect! Not too hot for a little baby to play in the sand.

Early morning walk.

She was curious about the ocean, but not crazy about it after she was knocked down two different times (once with mom and another time with dad). After those two mishaps, she was happy keeping her distance.