12 Years Ago, "It's a Girl!" was Announced

Twelve years ago, my very first grandchild was born. She was the prettiest little baby girl and she still is, but of course you all know I am biased.

I decided to skip a Sightseeing Sat. post today so I can focus on AJ. You probably know how we always take a lot of pictures of our first child, first grandchild is not any different. I have a lot of pictures taken and I have a lot uploaded here even after weeding out so many. I created a lot of mosaics so that my blog will not be too long.

I am linking with Laurie for a Few of my Favorite Things Saturday at http://bargainhuntingwithlaurie.blogspot.com/

and Beverly for Pink Saturday at http://howsweetthesound.typepad.com/my_weblog/



Here is AJ, she was so excited on her first day in Kindergarten. She has been very active in school, being in Chorus, Student Council, Teacher's assistant and so on and so forth. She won First Place on her Science project about crystals in 5th grade and her entry was invited to be entered to compete with the HS projects.

When I lived in Florida, I took her to school everyday because her parents went to work early. They would bring her to the house and she will sleep with me for a while until it was time to go to school.


I packed her lunch and would always insert a little note and a little gift in it. She said her classmates would gather and were always excited to find out what the surprise of the day would be because she always shared it with them.


We first took her with us on our trip to Hawaii when she was 5 and since then, we have taken her with us on almost every trip and we try to schedule them when she is off from school. Occasionally, she is allowed to go with us even when she has school because the trips are often educational.

She has been to a lot of countries, both in the Caribbean and Europe. Below you will see pictures of her taken in Hawaii, Belize, Rome, Pompeii, Cozumel, inside a cruise ship, Puerto Rico, Portugal, Paris and body boarding on the Oasis of the Seas while docked in the Bahamas. You know I would do anything for her. She even talked me into going with her parasailing. She could not go by herself because she wasn't heavy enough and John could not accompany her because they would be too heavy together, so I was it. Can you tell how scared and tense I was? I love you very much, AJ, but please don't ask me to do that again, LOL!




She is really a very funny girl. She comes up with these one liners which keep John and me in stitches. When we were in Hawaii, we stayed at Sheraton right on Waikiki Beach and we were on one of the top floors. She was eating popcorn when one pigeon landed on the balcony. She threw some popcorn to it. Then so many more came and she got so excited and said, "OMG, this is like a pigeon buffet!"
One evening at almost midnight, she got this idea of making money by buying something from Hawaii to sell back home. She asked me to take her shopping but I was in bed in my nightgown. John agreed to take her. Yep, there are still a lot of stores that are open at that time along Waikiki Beach. They came back with a bunch of souvenir key chains.


The next day while waiting for a tour bus, the 2 of them started peddling these key chains and I was surprised to see that people were actually buying them and handing AJ money. Then later on, I found out that John was secretly giving them the money to buy from her, lol.



She loves Ariel and any mermaid. That is one reason I decorated our guest room for grandkids here with a mermaid theme. It's been changed since because she is a lot older now. She asked me how can mermaids have their babies when they have no butts. LOL!


She loves bunnies too. When I lived in Florida, John kept buying these bunnies until I ended up with 4 big cages in my back porch. At first he bought 2 and put them in one cage but the female kept having babies so we had to separate them. AJ's mom is allergic to bunnies so I had to keep them in our house.

The 2 bunnies below are babies of her older bunnies. There was a time that there were 8 babies. Everytime AJ looked in the cage, there was one more and she got so excited, jumping up and down all over the porch saying, "OMG, OMG! I do not know what to do, there are so many of them! Lala, what am I going to do?", lol!

After we moved, they had to give them away because her mom is allergic to them as I have mentioned earlier.


Here she is in our home in Florida which is being rented out now. I miss being there because of her. We even used to paint together.

We bought her a scooter one Christmas and she could not wait to open to find out what it was cause the package was huge! It was sitting by the wall because it would not fit under the tree and it was a real challenge wrapping it.


AJ posing with her mom (my daughter) after her first commiunion.



We used to take her to summer camp at Busch Gardens in Tampa and she loved it. She loves animals especially the babies.


She has been to New York at least 3x with us.

Some of her birthday parties:

6th birthday at Celebration Station in Clearwater

7th Birthday party with a hired mad scientist to perform experiments with the kids at home.

On her 8th birthday, her mom had a whole petting farm brought to my sideyard, complete with a pony for the kids to ride on.

Her 9th birthday was celebrated in Chicago, a party given to her by her dad's parents. She is also their first grandchild.


AJ loves to dance! Here she is in on one of her ballet costumes after a recital.




And she is in love with Wicked and Elphaba.

She loves watching Broadway shows. We go to NY sometimes just because she wants to see a show there. We have seen Wicked at least 3 times (twice in Tampa and once in NY) and we also saw Beauty and the Beast, Tarzan, Lion King, the Little Mermaid in NY and Hairspray during a cruise on the Oasis of the Seas.

And just like any other kid, she loves Disney. Her dad takes her there almost every year during her birthday month.




She is also very daring, not afraid of anything.

Here you see her rock climbing and ziplining on the Oasis of the Seas and ziplining again in Destin over water.


She loves to swim that is why we try to bring her here every summer. Do you see all those frogs on her arm. She loves them and she says she is saving them from drowning and from being sucked by the pool polaris.



My grandbaby is growing so fast and it is making me very sad. I am afraid that pretty soon she would not want to hang out with us anymore.

Happy birthday, Tweetie Pie. I love you very much!



I have uploaded 3 video clips below. I hope you will watch them. They are very short but fun to watch. The first one is when she swam with a dolphin.





During a dance recital






This was taken at home doing a hula dance with Tabitha, a neighbor.







Thank you so much for coming by. I hope my pictures did not bore you. I just want AJ to remember everything because she follows my blog.


Thanks, Laurie and Susan for hosting.





Happy birthday again, AJ! Sorry I missed being with you on this special day but I will see you very soon. I love you!