San Francisco Visit

Our travels to San Francisco were wonderful. Tony and I both enjoyed the city. We stayed on the go the entire time. From the time we landed we had an agenda. It was off to the hotel to check in our room, drop our bags and off we went to the Pier to make our Alcatraz tour. Once we checked in for our tour we had time to grab a quick lunch. Then we were off to Alcatraz. We both enjoyed the tour of Alcatraz, and we took advantage of the audio tour. That is a must do if you ever go. Other than the weather, it was extremely cold going across the bay on the ferry, our trip to Alcatraz was perfect.

Our journey continued after Alcatraz, it was time to head back to the hotel for Tony's check-in for his conference and cocktail hour. Then after this we headed out to dinner. Wow, it had been a long day.

The next three days we spent travelling around the city. We purchased a 3 day pass that we could ride the cable cars, F-line, BART, MUNI, best money ever spent. We made our journeys to all the great spots: Lombard street, Nob Hill, China town, Castro, Haight Street & Asbury.

Bottom of Lombard Street

On Monday evening we took a ferry over to Sausalito where his conference had arranged for us to have dinner and we spent time walking the shops before dinner. After dinner we were brought back by tour buses over the Golden Gate Bridge. I had been really nervous about this and thought my fear of bridges might prevent me from doing this excursion. I have to say I never felt like I was going across a bridge so all was fine.

Why it was hard to be away from our girls and we missed them dearly it was also a refreshing get away for Tony and I. We had a great time and enjoyed the city.

Thunder Over Louisville at the Galt House

It was a gloomy day and we had decided we would skip Thunder this year for a couple of reasons, Chloe was going to be too much to watch and the weather was not the best. About 20 minutes after we had made our final decision, the phone rings, it's Bob & Sue and they have extra tickets for their room at the Galt House. Our plans quickly changed. We studied the TARC bus schedule, we had gone this route before and found it to be an easy way to travel to Thunder. A great time was had by all and Chloe continued with her tradition of falling asleep during the fireworks. Explain that.

Check Up time Eighteen months

Yesterday we took Chloe in for her 18 month check up and once again we received a great report. She is on target or ahead for her milestones. She's doing a wonderful job growing. She is about the same as last time on her growth chart, 90th percentile for height at 33 in., 50th percentile for weight at 24 lbs, 8ozs.



An update on some of the things she is doing and enjoying these days.

Her latest new task is pulling her chair over to the sink or to the cabinet drawers, climbing up into her seat, by herself, and either playing in the water at the sink (turns water on herself) or taking all the silverware (including knives) out of the drawer and playing (I call it making a mess!) She is quite the handful and keeps me busy.



Chloe's vocabulary has really taken off in the last two months. I had told myself I would write down every new word she said but of course I have not done that. So hopefully I can catch up here and have it all documented.

Her words include, Doh-doh (yogurt), shuice (juice), bach (black), baby, toes, happy, Da*dE (Daddy), dog, mama, keese (Cleis), ball, up (up & open), hat, cat, mop, ant, ice I know she has more but of course I'm forgetting them.

She knows her body parts, eyes, nose, ears, mouth, hair, belly, toes.

She surprises me on her animal sounds, the first one learned was wolf and it was hilarious. I wish we had gotten it on video but we were lazy and missed it. The next one was monkey and I think we did get this on video. She does sheep, dog, and snake for now.

She is using her signs, she does bath which she has always used since she was little. She now does, more, all finished, yes, and bird. We are working on thank you, & eat.

We've been working on ABC's and I have to share because she just amazed the heck out of me. It's day one and we are on about our third go around, Chloe says Ant, she had learned the A card already. On day two, we come to the letter G, before I could get to the H card, Chloe burst out hat. The H card has a hat on it and she knew it came after G. Amazed. Next we come to M, it's mop and she says mop and then bop. Amazed, she made a rhyme.

It has been a worry of mine that I wouldn't be able to give the second one as much time and she would be behind but when I write this it lets me know I'm doing just fine and so is Chloe.

Bye Bye Bop

I knew the time would come, I just didn't know who would call it quit first. Turns out it will be me. I'm joining Tony on a business trip to San Francisco and in order for me to do that I need to wean Chloe first. We are into day four of ending our nursing journey or as Chloe calls it 'Bop'. The overall weaning process has been a breeze. On occasion Chloe does ask for Bop but I tell her it has gone bye-bye and she waves bye. For me it's been more of an emotional healing. I hated to give that time up and knowing me I probably would have carried on. So it is probably a good thing I have this opportunity to join Tony, it helps end the break.

Part II Island Hosting

I'm not sure where I should start on this issue. In the house that we rented it included an Island host. My interpretation of an island host is someone that will be there to meet you and greet you upon your arrival, help you with your things, show you around, tell you about the place your visiting. Possibly make some recommendations of things to do, places you should go check out or explore, etc. A person that would be there for you should you need something. Well, we didn't get any of that. I'm not quite sure where it all went wrong, I can only assume it started off wrong when we arrived.
On our arrival day we did have some confusion but nothing that should be held against us to treat us like step-children. Of course it had to be pouring down rain the day we arrived and we were early. Creating mistake number 1 - our island host wasn't ready for us. When we arrived at the docks and the island ferry needed to unload our stuff - there was total chaos. My personal opinion when we told the island ferry who our island host was he wasn't surprised this was happening. But just so happens there was another island host there that was waiting for his wife, who happened to be on the same ferry with us. He and his wife volunteered to help us out and help us get our things out of the pouring rain. In the meantime someone was able to locate our island host and he came over, my personal opinion again in a full tizzy. Instead of being calm, and dealing with the situation that was he was very upset, I felt he took it out on us. He let us know he wasn't happy and basically how horrible this was for him. He let us know of all the things he still had to do to get the house ready and how the ladies were going to be rushed. But here's the kicker - he wanted to make sure he was taken care of and that we took care of the ladies upstairs. So my first feeling of the island was hungry, money grubbing host. Personally I don't think he needed to tell us how to handle our tipping or who to tip. I also think he was to be our host for the week, he would have received our tip at the end.
Mistake #2 - our scheduled charter fishing excursion. I'll actually save this for another post. It's a story all in itself.
Mistake #3 - On the day of our fishing charter we actually talked to him about our hot tub. For starters it was entirely too hot and it needed chlorine. So we made mention of this on our fishing charter. To which he said, I'll come look at it. Well a day went by and nothing. So on the second day my aunt calls him to let him know we need some chlorine. He tells her he will be over with it. About middle of the day a man comes walking up to us from the Safety Harbor Club and gives us a few tablets of chlorine. Bad host!
Mistake #4 - Which this one does me in and I wasn't even there for it. It was departure day and our wonderful host was to help with departure and help get our things back over to the docks for the ferry pick-up. Well he calls my aunt or maybe my aunt called him. Not sure on the story there. Anyway the story was he wasn't going to be able to help because his boat wasn't starting. Um, wait a second here, he has two boats and they were both broke. I'm not buying that story.

Again this is my opinion and how I saw things but I do have to say this was a HUGE negative for me and if I ever went back to Upper Captiva the first thing I would want to know is who will my island host be, because if it's this sorry excuse we had for an island host - I won't be returning.