Happiness in New Orleans, LA

Giving travel advice is addictive. It's so satisfying to recommend a place to stay, restaurant to enjoy or small street to walk down. I love helping people and I love sharing my experiences. This post is the first in a series of travel recommendations. Sometimes you need a family getaway and sometimes you need a girls getaway. This one is more of the girls getaway type of trip...

Where to Stay:
Hotel Le Marais

http://www.hotellemarais.com
Flowers draping down the wraught iron balconies welcome you as you enter into the lobby to hear the sound of a live band playing and tourists gulping down the famed Hurricane drinks. Located just off Bourbon Street, you are in the heart of the action here. It's an easy walk home from the local nightspots at 6am, when the last bars are closing. Not that I've done that...

Tips for Traveling with Baby

With another trip right around the corner, I thought this was a great time to share my tips for traveling with a baby with you all. These generally apply to babies from 4 months to 24 months of age. We have taken three multi-state (i.e. over 6 hours) road trips and three flights with baby. I even did the solo flight with baby-  it was totally fine!

I know these won't work for everyone, but here's what has worked for us...

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Getting to the Airport: 
I pack one suitcase for baby and me. I use Rick Steves Packing Cubes to keep our clothes organized. I also pack a giant pack of diapers and wipes. I put our secondary convertible carseat in a JJ Childress Ultimate Carseat Travel Bag.

On travel day, we drive our car with our primary carseat (Peg Perego) to the airport and put the secondary carseat, a Britax Roundabout Convertible Carseat, in the trunk so its ready to go. The suitcase and carseat immediately gets checked (at the curb) when I get to the airport.

Spring Vacation!

We had to escape this terrible Virginia winter so we flew south, to Florida! We had a wonderful time visiting with family and friends, here's a few photos:

26 Weeks

We took a little trip to Baltimore this Friday - we went to a concert and visited the aquarium. It was very  nice to get out of town and stay away from for a night since we've been working so hard to get everything ready before the baby shower!

19 Weeks

The Baby is the Size of a Mango

We are on probably our last trip (at least flight) until after the baby comes. A little visit with my dad, Ashley & Leo's wedding, and a visit with my mom.

Here I am in Jupiter for my 19 week pictures:

Vacation Recap

We had been planning our vacation since around Christmastime when Mike found out that he was going to California this July. Hawaii, every Caribbean island, cruises, LA, Oregon were all places that we considered. It was a definite possibility that I would be pregnant by the time we went on vacation so cruises were out, and we figured if we were having a baby soon we probably shouldn't spend too much money (Hawaii was out), or go somewhere with too much stress (LA was out).

Mike loves Hyatt  hotels so we tried to plan around a few nights at a Hyatt resort. We looked at (it feels like) every single Hyatt in the world. We had looked at the Hyatt Coconut Point a few years back when we were considering taking a mini-moon. A quick TripAdvisor review and enough points to get us 4 free nights and we were sold... a Florida vacation it is!

Well 4 nights isn't enough so I looked and looked for another place to stay while we were in the area (SW Florida) and found La Playa. I checked all their rates and kept an eye out for a deal and found the cheapest (hahaha) price I could get for 2 nights there. So our vacation was set- six nights in Florida, all relaxing, barely any driving, lots of beach and pool time!

Our first stop was at La Playa, where we had a beautiful room-  

With an oceanfront view (totally worth it)-

and colorful sunsets-

The rest of the trip was spent at the Hyatt Coconut Point, a much bigger "resort" type hotel. 

We tried out two different rooms and decided to upgrade to the water view room (again, totally worth it!)

The hotel wasn't on the beach, but on an estuary with a boat that takes you to a private island-

This pregnant woman enjoyed every second of it- It was the perfect Pre-baby vacation!