Florida

My mom and sisters and I were trying to get a trip to Peru planned but it didn't work. So Julie and I took off to Florida for a week to visit Bruce, lily and the kids. We flew stand-by which was quite an experience. We had a layover in New York so we went into the Jet Blue lounge and slept for awhile. There was a funny flight attendant who was flirting with us like crazy (He looked just like a young Denzel Washington), Julie got up and went to the bathroom and he came and copped a squat in her seat. I was nice but I did not flirt back (in case you were wondering). :) He later brought us free little bottles of wine (I sent mine home with Julie). On the way out of the plane he gave me a high five and slapped his number into hand. :) 

 

Alexandra picked us up from the airport and wanted to take us to a nice lunch, but I am a party pooper and asked if we could go to Whole Foods. But, I did get a yummy lunch there. We went back to her place and visited for a while, it was fun seeing how my brothers live. They have been there for so many years and this was my first time seeing them in their element. :)

Julie and I spent one day shopping and going to the beach, it was really fun cause all the shops were celebrating Art Basel being in town so they were giving away free stuff everywhere. We got a free makeover with photo shoot, free purses etc, and I got some Christmas shopping done. Of course I lost all the pictures from this day. :( I only looked cute twice on this trip; after the makeover and at Art Basel and both of those pictures now no longer exist so I can't prove it. 

It was Juliette's birthday while we were there, we went to a yummy dinner at a Cuban restaurant owned by Gloria Estefan and then came home and open presents.

Birthday girl with her birthday rose.

I had so much fun with this sweet little Liam, he is such a smart, nice, good, loving boy. It was so much fun to get to know him better. I absolutely fell in love with him.

I got Juliette A real cute Simply Vera purse with several sets of earrings inside it (I had it on good authority that she was going to get her ears pierced for her birthday). 

It was fun being woken up by the kids every morning. Juliette loved to come into the guest house and get into our make-up  Liam didn't like being left out of that but decided that he could wear my blue EOS lip gloss cause, "Blue is for boys."

It was so funny cause, I wanted to give Liam a little something also so I gave him these two little monkey key chains and then found out that Lily's brother had sent Juliette a present earlier that week also didn't want to leave Liam out so he sent him these two dog key chains. :) Weird coincidence.

Bruce showing off his yoga skills. 

Stephano's soccer game. Juan is one of the coach's for his team, so it was fun to watch them both in action.

Swimming

Art Basel-Something like 75,000 people from outside of the U.S. come to Art Basel every year. It is basically a huge art festival with some big name artists and entertainers. My brothers store (Jalan Jalan) is in the design district where much of the festival is held, so we got tickets to the event. It was cool. We bounced around from spot to spot for a little while and then went back to one of Bruce's friends house for a bit. Bruce was his decorator so it was fun to see what he had done in his house. I got to see Bruce's store as well, which is AMAZING. So cool that he has found something that he loves to do and is wildly successful at it. He took us to a fun dinner at Michael's Genuine before hand, the chef (Michael Swartz), is one of the top chef's in the nation. He came out and met our table. This is a bad picture but I lost all my pictures from that night. :( 

Juliette's Luau

This was a MAJOR party! Tons of kids and parents, a huge Hawaiian buffet, dancers, activities and they even hired lifeguards. :) It was a long day, getting it all set up and taking it down. I was in charge of making the alcoholic beverage (what)? I was told it tasted good, but like a girl's drink. :) Oh well, I tried and after all I am a girl and I am not a consumer of alcohol so what could have possibly been expected? :)

Giant shell loaded with leis.

Mika came to help with the party, it was so fun to see her, she has gotten so big and beautiful.

Mika doing tattoo's

Juliette is such a cute little dancer. It was so fun seeing her doing all the dances like a little pro.

Bruce got this awesome orange chair right before the party, he was so excited about it. I love how he is so into space and color and making everything beautiful. His house is really comfortable and full of his personality.

The Dancer's

I couldn't choose which picture I liked the most, I just loved her little concentration face. :)

The boys turn to try their hand at performing.

The Mom's turn...

Winding down after the party with a night swim. Julie felt a little sick so Bruce and Lily and I went to dinner on our own and had a great meal at a nice Italian restaurant. We came home and ended up talking into the wee hours of the morning, Bruce told us of some amazing experiences that he had, had recently with this tumor they found. Tears were shed, it was a great visit with my brother who I do not see often enough.

At Juliette's school, taking cupcakes to her class. 

We had such a great trip. Dallin sent us a picture showing the temperature of the Unites States, EVERY single state was in blue and showing freezing temperatures except Florida it was orange and in the 80's all week. It was hard to come home to the cold.

I should have taken a picture of the before and after, but Julie and I got a bee in our bonnets before we left and decided to reorganize Bruce's office shelves. It's a whole huge wall of books and Knick Knacks (some really cool stuff) that was all just kinda thrown up willy nilly. It looked pretty good after we were done. We also did the shelves in the guest house. :)