Jackson's 39 Week Pictures!

Jackson is now 39 weeks! He is walking all over the place now and even bent down to pick something up off the floor last night and then stood right back up without falling!! He's getting so big, I can hardly believe it. 

My mom's been trying to get him to put his hands up in the air, when we say "So Big"! So just yesterday, he started doing it. Its the cutest thing ever. Here is a little video. Don't mind my annoying voice or the t.v. blaring in the background. LOL.

Jackson is still eating 6 ounce bottles every 4 hours, but I might check with his doctor on Saturday to see if we can bump that up a little bit so that he may sleep a little longer at night before waking up to eat. He goes for his 9 month check up Sat., so I'll have his stats for you next week. :-) 

He eats a large jar of baby food 3 times a day and has some cereal at breakfast time along with his baby food. He eats little snacks like the Puffs and Yogurt Bites. Hes starting to get little bits of regular food, but we're just introducing that slowly. He really loves food and will eat just about anything.

His sleep schedule is still pretty much the same. He sleeps from around 8 or 9 until around 8 in the morning, waking up once or twice for a bottle in between. He usually takes 2 naps during the day, sometimes they can be anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 to 3 hours. It just depends, and it seems to be changing often.

Now that he can walk, he doesn't really want to be held, which is fun during church! This past Sunday, during praise and worship, he really did not want to be held, but we managed to make it through without any meltdowns. ☺

He still has 3 teeth, but one on top is VERY close to coming all the way through, and the other 3 top/middle teeth are right there and I expect them to come through soon.

So thats where we are right now. We are having a lot of fun with him. He's learning something new everyday it seems like and is on the go constantly. Its tiring, but so much fun!

Day Four of our 5 Year Anniversary Trip

If you've missed days 1-3, you can see them here, here and here. ☺

On Day 4, we woke up and had breakfast again at The Inn at Stonecliffe, where we were staying. After breakfast, we checked out of Stonecliffe and had our bags sent to The Mission Pointe Resort, where we would be staying the next 2 nights. We then hopped on a shuttle that took us to The Grand Hotel, where Jake was golfing that day. I rode along to take in the beautiful scenery and to get some practice time in with my DSLR camera. There were so many beautiful landscapes and flowers! Here are some pictures of the golf course, Jake golfing and some practice pictures. ;-)

This is the very well kept street that runs up in between the Grand Hotel Golf Course (also know as the Jewel or the first 9 holes) and the Grand Hotel itself. You can see Lake Huron in the background.

I've mentioned hotel shuttles the last couple of days, well this is the Grand Hotel shuttle. Very fancy!

The beautiful, immaculately kept hotel grounds.

Jake putting while we waited to get started.

Some beautiful flowers at the Grand Hotel.

The beautiful golf course!

A mama duck and her ducklings. ♥

The back 9 holes are actually played at the Grand Hotel's "Woods" location. You take a carriage ride up to the back 9 (called The Woods), which was actually right by The Inn at Stonecliffe.

They built the front 9, or the Jewel, in 1901 and later thought they needed to make this an 18 hole golf course and added the Woods 9 in 1994.

A beautiful home that sits on the golf course.

After golfing, we took a taxi to the Mission Pointe Resort where we were staying for the next 2 nights.

I actually took this picture later in our trip, when we went para-sailing.

I took this picture of the resort from their observation tower, which you can see on the left had side of the picture above.

These next three pictures are of their main lobby.

For whatever reason, I don't have any pictures of our room. :-( But here are some I found online. We had a king size, jacuzzi suite, however, we didn't realize it but this hotel had no air conditioning. We had a fan, that really did keep us cool and the weather was so great that it didn't really ever get hot, but we did miss the air conditioning and probably wouldn't have stayed there had we realized this. But the history of this hotel was really cool and its a great place for families.

This was the hot tub on our patio. The best part of the whole room.

The suite had a little foyer and directly to the left was the bathroom. There were two other doors in the foyer, one leading to the bedroom and the other leading to the living room. The patio was right off the living room. 

After checking in and getting settled, we had dinner at one of the Resorts restaurants... Chianti. Its an Italian Restaurant. We actually sat outside, overlooking Lake Huron. I didn't bring my camera to dinner, so I don't have any pictures of this either, but here is what their dining room looks like.

After dinner we changed and went and played miniature golf on the Resorts putting green.

After playing miniature golf, we went over and sat on their beautiful lawn, looking out at the lake! We watched the sunset and then went back to our room. It was a great day and evening!

The Paper Mama Photo Challenge

I stumbled upon this photo challenge today and thought I'd go ahead and enter. Chelsey @ The Paper Mama, does a weekly photo challenge on her blog with a new topic every week. The stipulation is that your picture should be based around your child (or fur-child). The challenge this week is, "Story". So I thought I'd enter this photo because it tells a story of Jackson's strength and determination. He started walking 2 weeks ago at only 8 months old!

Sleeping Through The Night

I'm taking a break from our vacation posts today, mainly because I forgot my memory stick, to talk about getting your baby to sleep through the night.

Jackson has always been a pretty good sleeper and we've never had problems with him being awake all night or anything, but he does still wake up at least once, but mostly twice a night for a bottle. He always takes the bottle and goes right back to sleep, but I would really like to eliminate the nighttime feedings all together and get him sleeping through the night.

I know this will take some time and patience, but I also know its something we really need to work on. He's 9 months old now and I know he really needs to be sleeping through the night.

So I'm just looking for some advice on how some of you mom's have gotten your babies to sleep through the night. I just read about the Moms on Call method. Have any of you used this method or some other method that worked well for you? Any comments or suggestions would be helpful. ☺ 

Day Three of our 5 Year Anniversary Trip

If you've missed days 1 and/or 2 of our trip, you can find my posts on them here and here.

On day 3 of our trip to Mackinac Island, we got up and had breakfast at our hotel. The Inn at Stonecliffe, where we stayed the first 2 nights of our trip, offered a complimentary buffet style breakfast. We ate both days outside on their patio overlooking the lake.

The patio is on the left where the green umbrellas are.

And this was the view from the patio.

We then took a shuttle down to Main Street. The Inn and Stonecliffe is up in the woods, about 2 miles from Main Street. Since there are no vehicles allowed on the island, you have to take a horse and carriage taxi/shuttle to get where you want to go. 

Our agenda for this day was to take a carriage tour around the island so we could learn where everything was and learn some history about the island, then that evening we had reservations for a sunset cruise. ☺

So once we were down on Main Street, we found the Carriage Tour company and got our tickets.

Our carriage.

Once on the carriage, the tour started off by going down Market Street, which is just one street up from Main Street. Market Street has a few shops and its where many of the historical homes and sites are located. It is also where the hospital, police station, courthouse and post office is.

 If you took the time to read this sign above, you may remember the name John Jacob Astor from the movie Titanic!

The Post Office on the Island.

The Courthouse and Police Station.

The Hospital. They do have emergency vehicles here in case they are needed. 

After going down Market Street, we headed up a big hill, passed the Little Stone Church and The Grand Hotel.

We learned on the tour that this church has around 40 weddings a year and holds Sunday services.

The front of the beautiful Grand Hotel.

Once up the hill, we went passed the stable where they keep the horse and carriages.

This was the old "fire truck" that they used to use.

And these were the latters used for fires.

And this is the horse drawn hearse that they use on the island for funerals, still to this day.

After that, the carriage driver dropped us off so we could view the carriage museum and butterfly house.

Inside the butterfly garden.

A cute sign as you're leaving the butterfly house.

After the Butterfly House, you board a different carriage (one guided by 3 horses instead of 2) that takes you through more of the island. 

We first, went by the 3 graveyards on the island. One of the 3 graveyards is a Catholic graveyard.

Another of the three is a Military Graveyard.

Next we went by Skull Cave.

 And then we went passed the bottom of the hill that Fort Holmes is on. Fort Holmes is the highest point on the island. Later in our trip we rode bikes all the way up to Fort Holmes, so I'll have more pictures on that later.

When we were looking up at Fort Holmes, right across the street, you could see Fort Mackinac below. 

After that, they dropped us off at Arch Rock for about 15 minutes so we could see it. It was absolutely breathtaking. They have built an overlook there that you can go out on and see Lake Huron from.

Jake and I up on the overlook at Arch Rock!

After Arch Rock, they took us down a little ways to Fort Mackinac, where we were able to get out and explore it.

Soldiers Barracks 1859.

Jake standing next to a canon.

Jake and I at the Fort.

And this was the view from Fort Mackinac.

After exploring Fort Mackinac, we took the shuttle back to our hotel to get changed for our Sunset Cruise. After changing, we headed back down to Main Street where we had dinner at Millie's on Main. The food was very good here. I had spaghetti and Jake had a really good turkey dinner. They had really good corn bread muffins too!

Then, at 8:30, we boarded a Starline Ferry for their Sunset Cruise. It was a really cool cruise, worth the money for sure! This particular ferry had a covered bottom seating area and then 2 upper/non covered seating areas. The crew members asked if anyone was celebrating a birthday/anniversary and they took mine and Jake's name down and gave us a pretty flower at the end of the cruise. It was a beautiful evening and a perfect ending to our day!

The McKee Sons Freighter, going under the bridge.

The upper deck of the ferry we were on for the sunset cruise.

A cool angle.

Going right under the bridge.

The beautiful sunset behind the bridge that night.

Jake and I on the sunset cruise with the bridge in the background.

Our flower from the crew members for our anniversary.

And that was the end of day 3. I really hope I'm not boring you, but I want to blog about it so I have it all organized somewhere to remember it forever. :-)

 Stay tuned for Day 4 next Monday! :-)