Baby Em: paradise island, bahamas

the whole bolton (and rowe and barnett, lol) clan celebrated grandmother's 60th birthday at altantis a couple of weeks ago. this was our first big vacation since our honeymoon in hawaii almost 8 years ago (okay, we did go to disney world last fall, and that was a vacation for me, but it was a work trip for d). gosh, it's nice to be able to go on vacation and not worry (too much) about work!

getting ready to drop tanner off at ong and ba's. she already misses him. honestly, she is the most sensitive little girl ever. each night when she says her prayers, she includes something like, "dear god, please let tanner stay with us forever. i don't want him to go to heaven first. i will miss him." (she told me in a prior conversation that she knows that pets go to heaven before people. and so do grandparents. it never fails, each time she thinks of that, tears fill her eyes. it is the sweetest thing (and not at all in a morbid way)).

at the airport, waiting for her cousins to get through security.

she insisted on pulling her suitcase all by herself.

so sweet. the girls had a slumber party twice. em made her cousins read books to her.

the forecast was not looking good for our weekend, so we were pleasantly surprised that it only rained one morning. of course, it just had to be the morning that we had our dolphin adventure scheduled. so the girl who hates the outdoors (me) stood in the cold rain to meet katrina, or hitcherina as em would say, since they don't do rain checks. i am so glad i did, though, because how cute is this?

em: "i did not touch my lips to hers because i didn't want to get dolphin lips."

can you see her tongue? she always sticks it out when she's concentrating on something. here, em is feeding hitcherina.

my hat looks so stupid, but at least i didn't have rain dripping down my face. because that? would have pissed me off.

later that day, the sun came out and we took a walk to see the other hotels at the resort. we stayed at the cove, and it was by far the nicest hotel on the island (imo...but isn't everything on this blog?). the reef looked nice, too, but it is not as close to the activities.

the view from our balcony

since baby girl is still too little to enjoy the majority of the water activities, we hung out by the pool while everyone else went down crazy water slides- not my thing. also, i sort of loved having em to myself.

this was at our hotel's private beach. it was my favorite place to be, since again, community pools (or community anything for that matter) are not my fave. emily spent hours collecting sea shells. she was fearless with the waves, too!

pausing quickly before heading back out to find more sea shells.

this was on the way to nobu. i had to bribe emily all day to get her to wear a pretty dress and a bow in her hair. she has hated bows for the last few months, and i am basically devasted. i think it took 5 pieces of candy and the promise of dessert after dinner to get her to wear this. she even gave me a "big smile!" to document this night. dinner, btw, was delicious. we had the chef's tasting menu and a couple of other dishes that were so, so good. if you have never tried a lychee martini made with sake, you must :).

i haven't transferred any of the other pics from our camera (these were on my phone) so this is all i've got. i'll try to post some more when i am not being too lazy!

until then, here's a picture of our group- donnie's brother and his family, grandmother and mr. kyle (sorry, it was that or papa buddha, as the other kids like to call him, but you should know me better than that), and us. thanks for a wonderful trip, everyone!