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This is my favorite picture post of ALL TIME!

While at Disney we booked a reservation at a Garden Tea Room at Grand Floridian resort, the fanciest resort at Disney World.

It was our one chance to do something special and princess like with Alexis that wasn’t too extensive since she was only 7.5 months.

Like I described in the recap post, we didn’t want to put her into an uncomfortable and hot princess outfit until she was old enough to want it, but did want something special for her to wear. The dress she wore c/o of Baby Beau & Belle was utter perfection! It’s kind of funny but it turns out a friend of mine had bought their dress for her little girl’s christening  a few years ago. What a small world! Really their dressesare meant for events like weddings, birthdays, christenings, but I can’t think of a more fitting place at Disney to wear such a fancy silk dress than the Garden Tea Room at Grand Floridian. Feel free to check out their website and Facebook and Twitter for frequent contests and giveaways.

When little Lexi is old enough, we will do Garden Tea Party at the same place with Princesses and Disney characters and tiaras and many special girly things, but for now we had our own PARTY.  If anyone is planning on visiting Disney, I would say it is almost a must that you visit the tea room. If you have older (loud) kids, then probably the tea party is best, but if your babies/kids can stay quiet or you’re coming on a adult only trip, there is no better place to relax and feel all “pretentious” and pampered than in a fancy room overlooking (you guessed it!) a garden, sipping the tastiest teas you’ll ever drink in the smallest cups with your pinky out, while savoring mini deserts and mini-sandwiches which are a part of 4(?) courses. Actually, I loved their tea so much, I asked if we could buy it and sure enough, at $12 per box Princess Tea was ours!

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GASP!

That was my reaction when I saw this photo:

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A quick post about how our Halloween went. We have a love hate relationship with the holiday based on whether we are able to come up with an interesting costume idea or not :)
Those years that we hadn’t or had been too busy, we acted like it wasn’t even Halloween. On other years, we had more fun than one should be allowed to have. You can see our previous years’ costumes in this post.

This year we were invited to a friend’s Halloween party. After some searching I found the perfect family outfit :) I had to search the net for a green mushroom hat and a onesie with the mushroom graphic on it, but our two costumes were super easy.

Mario, Princess Peach and Lexi as our little Power Up Mushroom

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The other day we woke up early and decided to do a photoshoot.

A Holiday themed photoshoot, that is.

It took literally both of us + 2 cats + 2 books + a drum, a lens cap and 3 cups to get the job done, i.e keep Alexis from speed crawling away from our make-shift “Christmas tree”.

At the end my husband and I were both sweaty, tired, but happy to have gotten THE SHOT. Or more like A TON OF SHOTS that we love love love!

Baby photographers- I BOW to you because you have the hardest job!

We picked out the best shot to be featured in the Mud Pie contest.
Click here to see which photo we picked and vote for Lexi ( you vote by liking the photo on Mud Pie’s FB page)

And after you vote, you can come back here to see which photos didn’t make the cut, but are still so so precious.

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I’ve been meaning to catch myself up on photo posts for a while now and I think I am pretty close. My goal being, to be able to post current happenings in photos right after they take place rather than wait till I get through the backlog of photos. This is sort of a photodump. As much as I try not to do it, it is sometimes necessary. Next up: my first solo fun outing with girlfriends (which really happened in August, oops) and of course THE REST OF THE DISNEY POSTS (I promise they are coming)

1. Birthday Beaching

These photos got lost in the mess that my TAOMAB folder is at this point. But Lexi is so cute in some of them I couldn’t leave them off the blog. This was the morning after AJ’s birthday. It was stormy and overcast, so we had only a short swim but the beach was gorgeous in its frowny state.

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Animal Kingdom!

My favorite park. At least, it used to be. Now with Lexi, Magic Kingdom trumps them all. Yet I was pretty excited to take Alexis to see all kinds of animals.

We arrived really early to take advantage of the Extra Magic Hours that day and raced through the whole park to Kilimanjaro Safari ( my favorite ride) to beat the crowds. We were late. While the timer was showing a 15 minute wait, we could tell by the lines that it was more like 30 minutes and they just hadn’t updated the screen yet. 30 minute was just too long to wait in the heat.  Click Continue reading below…

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So we picked a nice overcast day ( those are the best for pictures, clouds act like one giant lightbox), found a random church-run pumpkin patch (mind you, I’d never been to a pumpkin patch before so I didn’t really know what they were supposed to be like), dressed Lexi into a cute coordinating dress and were off to take some pictures.

By the time we got there, it was getting dark from the thunderclouds and I had a feeling we had but five minutes before it started raining. I was right. So 200 pictures of my little girl, 2 pumpkins and soaking wet family later, we loaded ourselves into the car and left.

Did I get some cute first pumpkin patch pictures? Yes!

The best shot, being this: {click CONTINUE READING below}

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{some of the photos below were taken by Teagan, the rest- as usual some by Andrew, most by me}

The best part about having friends ALL OVER the US is that while you miss them so much on most days, the times when they are able to visit become incredibly special. Our house is ALWAYS open to our friends, everyone knows it. And most of our friends out of state have taken advantage of the open door policy ( in a good way) as frequently as they can. We love that! There’s something special about having people you love spend a week or two living in your house, having fun, waking up and going to sleep with you, watching movies, taking trips to the beach. It’s like a big adult and sometimes co-ed slumber party. Actually, now that I think of it, I need to buy like 10 sets of Victoria’s Secret pjs of all sizes just for guests, so that we would match too :)

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***

I wanted to share this collage I made out of the photos I took of me and Lexi. These are so far my favorite photos together, and it was the most spontaneous photoshoot ever,  with a remote and my camera propped up on a trashcan snatched away from the office, contents dumped on the floor, because it was the only thing I could grab fast and with one hand.
But the photos turned out to be the most authentic and cool that I have ever taken of the two of us.

We just had fun.

Laughed, blew raspberries together, kissed, tickled toes, read books, goofed around.
I am slowly getting back to taking self-portraits with Alexis and I know I will cherish them forever.
{ To see the photo, click CONTINUE READING below}

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As I mentioned in the post about our birthdays, the morning after my birthday fun, we woke up and hurried off to the beach before the sun got too high and too hot.

This was officially Lexi’s first dip in the ocean and I was super excited to see how she’d react. She absolutely loved the water. There were smiles and giggles and lots of splashing.

There’ s really not much more to say, it’s all captured in the photos below.