Jamaica, mon!

So we took the kids to Jamaica last week.  Before kids, we would never have gone to an "all-inclusive" Hilton in Jamaica.  Just not our kind of vacation.  But Daddy-J had a conference at this hotel, so we booked a few extra days to stay after and decided to take the kids for a beach vacation in January.

Daddy-J had to fly there by himself from Phoenix (another conference).  So I had the kids all by myself.  Turns out, the only way to get there from here is to take a red-eye from here to Atlanta.

Here are the kids in Atlanta, waiting for our flight to Jamaica. We got into Atlanta at 6:00 a.m. or so, and left at about 9:50 a.m., so we had some waiting to do!

It was all worth it when we got to the hotel in Jamaica and saw that this was our beach!  Wowza!

Of course the kids wanted nothing more than to hit the water park as soon as it opened after breakfast and stay until it closed at 5:00 p.m.  So that's what we did!

The water park had a really fun tube slide that we all enjoyed over and over and over...

Miss D's friend, Miss C, and her family were also there.  The girls spent many, many hours playing together.

We all enjoyed the swim-up bar.  Seriously.  The girls ordered dozens of strawberry daiquiris and mango daiquiris. I may or may not have had a few margaritas.  Daddy-J may have enjoyed a few of the "drinks of the day."

With the all-you-can-eat buffet open just about all hours of the day and night, the pool-side food service, swim-up bar and a couple of nice restaurants thrown in for good measure (oh, and don't forget the Kidz Klub that the girls enjoyed a few times while Mama went to the adults-only beach with her book!), we would definitely do this vacation again!

Clorox - Power a Bright Future Grant

My girls' school, the Weilenmann School of Discovery, is nominated to receive a $50,000 grant from Clorox.  We were nominated on the strength of our proposal to create an amazing outdoor education program, building a yurt on our beautiful property, equipping it with computers, and hiring a trainer to teach our staff how to design and run a great outdoor education science and PE program.

If you happen to see this blog, could you please vote for Weilenmann?

You can vote TWICE each day between now and December 19th.

Text 2307pbf to 95248.

AND

Vote online at https://powerabrightfuture.clorox.com/nominees/detail/?nid=2307

Anyone who is 13 years old with a valid email address can vote every single day.  Weilenmann needs your help.

Twin Moms' Retreat

So, I joined a special sorority when I became pregnant with my twins over 7 years ago.  With the birth of Miss-D in 2004, I became involved with a group of women online who all had kids around her same age.  But when I found out we were having twins the second go 'round, I knew there was an online community of women with twins and I glommed on to them like they were a life raft.  Turns out, they really were my life raft!

Lucky for me, they had experience with twins, and knew the tips and tricks that saved me from having to figure everything out all by myself.

Little did I know, but they started a tradition of getting together every year in October for a long weekend of, well, female bonding.  When the kids were little, we used to just enjoy sitting around the house we had rented doing absolutely nothing.  Now we get a little more adventurous and plan some outings, but there's still a lot of sitting around chit-chatting.

Anyway, my twin-mom friends are some of the most important people in my life. If anyone ever tells you that people you meet online aren't real friends, you can tell them from me that they don't know what the heck they're talking about.  I have great friends in real life, but I also have a whole community of women who've all had twins, many of whom I've never met in real life, who are every bit as important to me as anyone I know face-to-face.

Here's a picture of our latest gathering, in Phoenix, in October of this year...

Aren't we beautiful!?!