News del Mercado

Coin Jar

2012-02-13T10:07:00.000-08:00

Toward the end of my pregnancy with Erik the kids were fighting a ton with each other. Since I was tired, I probably didn't react the best in all the situations. When the new year came, I decided to pull out some incentives to help us all restore some peace into our home.

We had a bunch of left-over coins from Victoria's pirate party. I told the kids if we could fill up a mason jar with coins to the first line, we could all go out to eat. The next line we would do a fun activity together, like bowling. When it gets filled to the top they get to choose to go wherever they want, as long as it's within reason.

Each time any one of them fights with another (excessive teasing is included) they get an eye on the white board. The next fight gets another eye, and the third fight gets a frown. If there is no frown at the end of the day, even if there are eyes, then they earn a coin. Last weekend they earned it up to the first line, so we went to Golden Corral for dinner. They really enjoyed getting to choose the foods they wanted and Victoria did great trying different foods. Karissa and Austin stuck with the pizza, rolls, and fruit. Of course dessert was a big hit! Austin finally got the hang of it and ran off to get in line again as we were leaving. I grabbed him a corn muffin to appease him.

The coin jar is working and they hardly ever get even an eye. That's not to say that nothing little starts brewing, but they are quickly dissolved when I ask if they want an "eye". Hopefully we can still keep the peace around here when the coin jar is finished!

Here's my cutie Erik.

He was trying to suck on the zipper of his hoodie.

Little Duckling

2012-02-06T11:19:00.001-08:00

About a month ago, Jason pointed out something odd about Erik's toes. It was very hard to take a clear picture of it, as he kept moving his feet and curling up his toes. Oh well! If you look at the second and third toes, they are connected about half way up. They are like that on both sides and on both feet, though not quite as bad on the left foot.

I asked the doctor about it last week at his 2 month appointment and she said it's not uncommon. She'll just keep an eye on it, but he's most likely going to always have a couple of webbed toes. At first I was disturbed, but since it won't affect his running and walking, I've come to terms with it. He might just be a really good swimmer! He also won't have my distinctive E.T.-looking toes; spindly and wide-spread.

Speaking of his 2 month check-up; I shouldn't say "little duckling", I should say "big duckling"! This boy is 14 pounds and 25.4 in. long! That puts him in the 90th and 95th percentiles! He's a pound and an inch bigger than Austin was at this time. It brings me to two conclusions: he will either be a giant like the Lund side of my family, or gradually go down in percentiles, like the rest of them did, until he's in the 25th or lower. It will be interesting to find out!

Did You Know?

2012-01-30T09:39:00.000-08:00

Did you know that we had the outside of our house painted in August? That was almost 6 months ago and we never posted pictures! The main reason for that is we needed a new garage door. Ours was cracked in the middle and instead of painting over the old one that made horrible noises when we opened it, we decided to get it fixed, or replaced. Our painter said he thought he knew someone who could fix it, but that didn't work out. Then he said he knew someone who could replace it for a good deal. So we went with that. Supposedly, that particular garage door repairman was too busy, so he referred us to another. Well, I guess garage door repairmen are busy around here because about 1 1/2 months later, or more (I can't even remember now!), our garage door was replaced. We were supposed to get it painted the same color as the shutters (navy blue), which our painter said he would do at no extra cost. We called him about 2 1/2 months later when we decided we still wanted to go that route instead of leaving it white, but it never happened.

Here's our new house color, 3 months after being painted, right before I had Erik. I love the colors we chose and even like the white garage door, now that the leaves are gone and we can really see the blue and navy blue shutters. When the leaves come come back, though, we'll mostly see our big, white garage, so we might have to get on that painter again. Here's the back. They also painted the deck, no extra charge.

Here it was before. See how much the tree covers? I'm afraid we'll just have a big white garage showing and no beautiful navy blue. We'll see...

Here's the back before. The summer flowers look nice!

Ice, Ice Baby!

2012-01-23T10:53:00.000-08:00

Every year Plymouth, MI. has an ice festival. We went a couple of years ago and enjoyed it, so we decided to go again. We had actually gotten about 3 inches of snow the night before, about 2 1/2 inches more than we've gotten all winter, to make the experience. (Now, two days later, it's all totally melted because of the rain we received last night! We're on the national "no snow" trend here too.) The kids enjoyed the ice sculptures they could be a part of.

Eskimo Austin

Dinosaur ride.

If you notice, Karissa did not have the best of times. She wanted some of the over-priced carnival-type food, which we would not buy since we had just eaten lunch. She was also coming down with a cold.
A bench.
Polar Bear chair.

She started having more fun at the end.
Check out the giddiness! He got lots of smiles over the pink shades too. I guess we'll get him his own, since he's the only kid who actually keeps sunglasses on for more than 10 minutes.
Erik slept the whole time all cozy warm, but here he is today, on his two-month birthday! He is finally awake more, now that he's gotten over two colds, but he's caught cold number 3. Poor boy! He still slept well last night and has been pretty perky today. Overall, he's more responsive: cooing, smiling, moving his limbs more, now that he's actually awake between daytime feedings.

His favorite thing is to be playfully blotted on the mouth with his burp cloth. That what I just did here and got this huge grin!

Pony Party

2012-01-16T10:48:00.000-08:00

Karissa has wanted a pony party since Victoria's pirate party. Knowing that I would have a new baby around for the prep and the party itself, I wanted to make it simple. The kids helped color in these My Little Pony pictures that we attached to a streamer and hung on the stairs. I made this pony cake, which was very easy. It's just two 9-in cake pans and I used a pattern to cut it.

For games, Victoria drew a pony on a poster for "pin the tail on the pony" (not pictured) and the tails to go with it. We also played a horse shoe toss game using headbands to throw over a 7-up bottle. It actually worked very well and the kids did better than I did when I experimented with it! You can kind of see the 7-up bottle here.
We played musical chairs and freeze dance, but the most favorite of all was just dancing to songs that told them what moves to do -like stretch up high, twirl around, etc.

Another hit at the party was our "craft". I couldn't find an actual pony craft, so I just got some play-dough from the dollar store and they made their own ponies and then we put the play-dough in their goodie bags.
I love Austin's face here, he looks so happy to see the candles lit. And Victoria's face, well, that's a normal expression for her.

Austin is trying to help Karissa blow out the candles from across the table.

The party pals.

It was one of the most calm and easy parties I've ever done! Four out of the five invited guests were able to attend, but it was perfect with my three kids there as well. Of course Victoria was the craziest one there, though Austin held his own for craziness. We had one 7-year-old (Victoria), two 5-year-olds, two 4-year-olds, one 3-year-old, and a 2-year-old (Austin). An hour after the party everything was pretty much cleaned up and back to normal and the kids spent the next three hours playing with Karissa's presents. Not bad!

Blessing Day

2012-01-09T18:56:00.001-08:00

Erik was blessed in church on Sunday. He was so calm and fell right to sleep as Jason and the other men started to slowly bounce him.

The main thing that stood out to me in his blessing was that he would be a peace-maker (maybe I'll finally get one of those in my family!) Jason also mentioned how he is named after a spirit too special to remain on earth, my deceased brother.

It was a lovely blessing and I felt the spirit. I still need to listen back to the recording and write it down.

One of the men in the circle said about Erik, "He is a perfect-looking baby." We agree!

Karissa is 5!

2012-01-02T13:45:00.001-08:00

The look on Karissa's face here about sums up her excitement for her 5th birthday. Even having it 5 days after Christmas, which I would think would take some of the excitement out of it, she still counted down the days and was well aware of what comes up right after the biggest holiday of the year. Luckily for Karissa, Daddy will always have off work on her birthday and the kids will never have school, so we always get to spend the day together. This year, she wanted to play Glo Golf at the Zap Zone. She had a great time, even though she doesn't quite have the right hold on her golf club. Austin enjoyed it too, though he mostly moved the ball with his hand. They all liked the decor, which all glowed in the dark, though you can't tell in the picture.

Other than talking to family and opening presents and cards from them, all of which she enjoyed, the next big highlight of the day was watching Tangled as a family, which we got from Netflix just in time for her special day.

Karissa got this necklace from us that holds little "gems" in it. Each color represents a different virtue: patience, love, kindness, truth, and charity. She also got a zebra pillow pet from us. Zebras are her favorite animal. She also likes ponies and unicorns. She loves to pretend. In fact, it sometimes gets in the way with reality, but I'm glad she's got such a good imagination. Lately, her favorite thing to "play" is "The Lost Girl". She wanders in and pretends she was lost, then found in a river or some other dramatic location.

She still loves to sing and dance and play with little toys. A new found love has been a computer preschool website with games she enjoys playing. She has always enjoyed drawing, but lately she wants to make books and enjoys having me spell words for her pages, or writing them myself, then putting it together. I think she'll be ready for Kindergarten in the fall.

Happy Birthday Karissa! Stay tuned for her pony party in two weeks!

Oh, and Happy New Year!

Keeping It Simple

2011-12-26T17:37:00.000-08:00

For Erik's first Christmas, we decided to keep it simple. He was my favorite stocking stuffer.

On Christmas Eve, Jason made the traditional Puerto Rican dinner of arroz con gandules, pasteles, pork, and even pina coladas. He prepped the pasteles (similar to tamales, but with plantains as a base instead of corn) the weekend before. So he didn't have to spend hours on Christmas Eve cooking. We relaxed and played, the girls and Jason sang carols at a nursing home with friends of ours, and we did the Nativity via skype with Grandma Pat and Grandpa Jim, who are serving their mission in Switzerland. (We were so consumed with talking to Grandma and Grandpa that we forgot to take pictures, but Erik made a good baby Jesus.)
After reading a few stories by the fire with the kids' new pjs on, it was off to bed.
Almost everything had already been wrapped, so there wasn't much rushing around after the kids were in bed.

Victoria's and Karissa's favorite gifts were their American Girl dolls. They haven't parted with them since opening them, even for church yesterday.
Austin got Lightning McQueen from Santa, though he was a little grumpy and getting over a cold, so nothing about Christmas really thrilled him.
He did let me take his picture with his baby brother in their Sunday best, though. My boys!
With previously made and frozen cinnamon rolls for breakfast and previously made dinner rolls, a ham, mashed potatoes, and veggies, it was a fairly simple dinner. I was tired from being woken up early, but I still got pictures of Erik in all his Christmas outfits.
Merry Christmas!

Holiday Happenings

2011-12-18T17:34:00.001-08:00

On Saturday our ward had a "Back to Bethlehem" party for the Christmas celebration. The kids looked cute in their biblical attire and enjoyed the more spiritual celebration of Christmas.

I attempted to take stocking pictures of Erik, but the stocking was too big to see to whole thing in a close-up picture, but this shot sure is cute anyway!

Here is Victoria at her first piano recital. She did very well!

http://youtu.be/Llcjs-xulvk

To the Rescue!

2011-12-11T08:20:00.000-08:00

Two days after Gramms left, just as we were starting to make progress sleeping for longer periods of time through the night, Erik came down with a small cold. It was nothing big, but for a newborn, any bit of stuffiness is scary and it definitely put us back on our sleeping progress at night. He couldn't breathe very well and so had to wake many times. Luckily, Grandma MaryLou had decided about a week earlier to brave the Michigan December weather and come out to help. By the time she got here, I really needed it again, being sleep deprived. The kids are enjoying having her here and so am I! Erik is doing better now and it finally showed last night. It's a good thing he's gaining weight well, I think it helped him fight that cold! Here is before his first real bath.

And look at these cuties!

11 Days

2011-12-04T13:57:00.000-08:00

Erik has reached many milestones the past 11 days; okay, not really. But he did sleep better last night! Victoria helped Gramms make turkey noodle soup. Gramms was very helpful. We miss her!

Daddy got to hold Erik at home, finally. The kids hold him more than he does because they're home more!
Austin says he doesn't want to share his trains with Erik, that's probably true.

Erik is looking at Karissa's cheesy grin, which I didn't catch on camera.
Some more cheese...
Erik is in the middle of a sneeze here.
What an angel!

Erik Andrew

2011-11-27T06:20:00.001-08:00

Erik came into this world on his own time. He didn't think the 22nd was a good day, like I did. I went in at 9 am, as scheduled, and was hooked up to pitocin (as well as penicillin since I was positive for Group B Strep) around 10. The good thing about this labor, even though I was in the hospital way too long before actually giving birth, was that the pitocin didn't really cause any painful contractions for the 12 plus hours I was on it. For some reason, it just didn't work its wonders this time. I had some consistent contractions toward the end that started to be uncomfortable, but nothing too bad. The doctor couldn't break my water, which is what I usually need to get things moving, because Erik's head was not engaged in the birth canal. I decided by 10 pm, that when they checked me the next time (which was close to 11) if they couldn't break my water, then I would just go home. Well, lucky us, his head was finally engaged and they could break it. I was at a 3.

The worst part about this labor was that I wasn't able to eat more than broth and jello all day, so by 11 when things started going, I was weak and exhausted. As usual for my labors, I got nauseous soon after the contractions started getting harder. During Austin's birth the Zofran helped and I could concentrate on getting through the contractions, but not this time! The Zofran didn't work very well, so I got to deal with all the vomiting as well. After a couple hours I started shaking like crazy, which I don't usually do until after the baby is born. It made for another interesting detail in the whole L&D. Looking back, the actual active labor part was only about 5 hours, which technically would be my shortest labor, but it was definitely the hardest! Things felt like they were moving slow in this process and I almost couldn't do it without the epidural, but I knew I was getting somewhere and that if I got the epidural, it would only make it longer. Eventually, I got to push, which was also the hardest ever. I had a "lip" at a 9, so the doctors had to push that aside for a couple of pushes. At this time I was on oxygen because the baby's heart rate was going down. I only had to push 5 or 6 times, which is more than I usually do, but still not very much, though it felt like the hardest thing in the world! I was so tired and I wasn't sitting up enough. Then they freaked me out by saying I had to push him out now or they would have to get the vacuum because he wasn't coming fast enough. That must have done it for me. I used every last bit of strength I had to push that 8 pound 4 oz. baby out who was 22 inches long! No wonder he was so hard to get out! I honestly don't know where he went in my belly. He didn't seem much bigger than Austin and he moved around so much like he had all the space in the world! We are so grateful to have him here and part of our family. It made for a very special Thanksgiving.

He doesn't look like Austin at all. He looks the most like Victoria when she was a baby.

I love this turkey bum!

Victoria wants to hold him every second she can. Who can blame her?
Karissa wanted to share her bears with him.
We were so lucky to have Gramms and Abuelo here to help with the kids. Abuelo had to go back already, but we're glad he was here and are grateful for all the work he did. Gramms gets to stay another week, which will save me. She has done a ton so far. Thanks Gramms!

The Date is Set!

2011-11-21T10:34:00.000-08:00

Again, I got to call to schedule an induction for baby number 4. I go in November 22 at 9 am to get things going so we can finally meet this little guy. Thanks to Thanksgiving, he will only be 6 days late!

Everything is ready: bag is packed, bassinet is set up, the leaves are almost all picked up from the yard (thanks to Jason's parents for their help), the Christmas tree is up, and all but one Christmas present have been purchased. Yes, I have done some major nesting the past few weeks. I even cleaned that carpets last week! I hear four kids will keep me really busy, so I wanted to do as much as I could before I got there. My neighbor said I was going to put myself into labor with all that work, but I knew better! Here's to a smooth labor and delivery!

The Last Days

2011-11-13T14:28:00.001-08:00

I did not expect a baby shower with this guy, since I already have at least one of each gender, but my good friends Rachel and Teresa threw me one anyhow. It was fun to relax with my friends and play some games. I asked for no gifts, only diapers, but I did get some cute things and a gift card. Here is the diaper cake that my kids think is the coolest thing ever, and it is! Here is an awesome hand-made quilt that matches the room, which Cathy did not know that the room is jungle-themed with those same colors!

An adorable frame that has Erik's name written on the top, plus the cute moose pillow pet to my right, also a favorite of my kids.
Unfortunately, my batteries ran out, so we missed the cute outfit and didn't get to take a picture of the group. Thanks to Cindy, Cathy, Cathy, Dianna, Leah, and of course Rachel and Teresa for the good time! Others who didn't make it, but contributed, thank you too!

On another note, I've been thinking about what color eyes this babe is going to have. We currently have one of each:

blue green
brown

Two grandparents have blue eyes, one green, and one has brown. Jason has brown and I have blue. What do you think will be the baby's eye color?

Helping Hands

2011-11-06T12:04:00.000-08:00

Our ward had our "Day of Service" yesterday, encouraged by the leaders of our church. We coordinated it with United Way and Salvation Army to clean up yards in the area for people who need it. We even got to wear the "Helping Hands" vests provided by the church for us to borrow. Our family worked with another family to clean up the leaves of two homes. We all enjoyed providing the service for the widowed (I believe) older ladies. The kids did great and Victoria, being at an age where she can understand the value of service, really loved seeing the smiles on the ladies' faces when they came out to greet us. She said in her prayer last night, "...thank you for letting us help the old grandmas who couldn't do the work themselves...". It was very sweet. One of the men who was working with us said I must be the most pregnant woman to bag leaves, well, I think I could be next week when we start on our yard!

Halloween Happenings

2011-10-31T16:10:00.000-07:00

For some reason, my mind wasn't on Halloween much this year- gee I wonder why? Here was my Halloween costume.

This is me at 37 1/2 weeks along.
Even though I was thinking ahead to the baby and the holidays immediately following his birth, Halloween still happened here. I let Jason carve the pumpkin with the kids this year.

Austin was very excited to wear his costume the day Karissa had her preschool party, though he didn't want me to put whiskers on him.

Karissa really wanted to be a unicorn this year, luckily I found a costume for her at the thrift store.
She enjoyed her Halloween fiesta and learned how to say, "Dulces, por favor!"

Victoria wanted to be a skeleton. I found this shirt at the thrift store, the pants as well, but I had to paint on the rest of the bones from the pelvic down. It turned out pretty good. This was at the church party.
For the trunk-or-treat at the church party, Austin was in awe at all the kids in their costumes and getting handed candy at every car.
Here's at Victoria's school parade.
right before trick-or-treating with Bethany- Austin finally let me put whiskers and a nose on him!
He was a trooper. He walked the whole way, even though Jason said he was acting tired. He wanted to earn his candy! He couldn't even look at me long enough to take his picture when he got back. He just had to have that sucker. Happy Halloween!

Autumn Time

2011-10-23T18:05:00.001-07:00

Fall is a favorite season of many here in Michigan. Not only do we have the lovely weather, but we have beautiful leaves and apple orchards and cider mills that are hot spots to visit this time of year. Karissa's preschool went on a field trip to an apple orchard and she got to pick an apple.
Here is Karissa with her favorite friend and classmate, Sophie, waiting to learn about the orchard.
The wagon ride through the orchard was Austin's favorite.
They also got to pick a pumpkin.

"Driving" a tractor was another highlight for Austin.
On another day, we went to a cider mill so Jason and Victoria could go. You can't go to these places without getting a doughnut and cider. Austin likes the cider better than the doughnuts.

Yo Ho, Yo Ho!

2011-10-16T17:52:00.001-07:00

Victoria has been talking about having a pirate-themed party for her birthday for almost a year now. It was somewhat inspired by this cake pattern that she saw of a pirate ship. Here's our cake. I think it was also inspired by the fact that her two best friends from last year, both boys from her class at school and church, didn't come to her party because she had a Girl's Rock party. Well, they have both since moved (boo!) so they couldn't come, but luckily we have a new good friend, who is also a neighbor, that could be invited to this gender-neutral party. She did invite another boy from class, but he couldn't come. So it was just Jaden and the girls, and Austin of course!
We played pin the patch on the pirate.

We walked the "plank".Played hot potato with pirate music, decorated our treasure hunt bags, and had a treasure hunt, which was the highlight of the party, I think. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of the hunt as I was so involved in reading the clues to them and chasing after them all over the house and yard as they frantically searched for the clues. The treasure was hidden in a hole in the ground under some ground cover in the backyard. I had a giant spray-painted X over the area. Here's the treasure box after we had emptied most of it. That was all there was, though, just chocolate coins, necklaces, and some gems. The kids loved the chocolate coins! They also got them as prizes for the games.
Here's all of our pirates!
One of Victoria's favorite gifts was this Build-a-Bear cat that we sewed and stuffed today. She enjoyed her pirate party and the nice gifts she got from her friends.

Seven

2011-10-11T17:58:00.000-07:00

Today is Victoria's 7th birthday and for some reason it seems really old to me. Maybe it's because she is acting so much older and is changing in so many ways. She has lost both her front teeth now, goes to school all day, is learning how to ride her bike without training wheels, and is much more helpful around the house. I can give her responsibilities now and she can do them. They are simple, like taking the garbage cans in from the street, but she can do them. She was never one for wanting to help much, she was just in her own world and couldn't care less if Mom was putting laundry in, like Austin. But she is more interested in what I do now and wants to help more.

She has taken to going to school all day very well and just loves school. To my surprise, the last two weeks she has not requested to watch a show after school and has only had her "video time" on Saturdays and Sundays, which is major for her! She used to always need that down time, but she has realized that there's not enough time in the day to play and watch a show, along with her homework and piano practice. (She started piano this year and has really enjoyed it, even though she didn't want to do it at first.) So now, instead of watching a show, she will come home and play with Tiny Town, run her own classroom with her animals and dolls and Karissa, or write and illustrate her own stories. She has always been into writing and drawing and still is. I can't count how many stories she's written and books she has made! She enjoys illustrating them as well. She's reading fairly well, though I would say she likes to write more than read for now.

Of course she is still the energetic and "full of life" person she's always been. She enjoyed the many phone calls she got on her birthday and talked every one's ear off.

This is her when she first came downstairs this morning. This look is just a look of excitement because it's her birthday, not for anything in particular. She even held it for me so I could take a picture, since the wide mouth reminds me of her mouth the second she was born, wide open! Here's her new leggings I let her open before school. She also brought her new sandwich holder to school.

After school we got to practice riding her bike without training wheels.
Here's the pillow pet that she's been wanting for a while.
She's very excited for her new leotard for dance. She also enjoyed every other card and book that she got and looked at each one with excitement and squeals of delight.

Austin had to help blow out the candles.

Happy Birthday my lively Victoria! We can't wait for your pirate party on Saturday!

Tiny Town

2011-10-02T12:41:00.001-07:00

Victoria has loved going to school all day, but she is very worried about having time to play with her toys. She and Karissa have created a place called "Tiny Town" in the basement. It's always set up differently, but it usually involves using all of the toy buildings and character people, set up in some organized way. This week it was in a circle. As soon as she wakes up in the morning she wants to play with it before school and when she comes home she wants to play with it as many times as she can in between homework, piano practice, and whatever else is going on that afternoon. Karissa and Austin play with it when she's gone, but not as much. The kids like playing with Tiny Town so much that they actually played with it during General Conference this weekend, whereas usually they bring up all their toys to the living room. They did still listen to much of it, but instead of getting restless and whiny when they had enough, they just went and played in the basement. They told me today that they really like all of their toys. That's good, because we have a lot!

"It Feels Like Summertime"

2011-09-25T17:52:00.000-07:00

This is Karissa's song that she made up this summer. Every time she, Victoria, and Bethany would do a "concert" Karissa would sing this the exact same way, while the other two would just sing random parts of songs. She's perfected the art and even stomps her foot to the beat at the beginning, if you didn't notice. It's become a real hit around here and even Victoria and Austin will sing it, but it's just not the same as when Karissa sings it! (If you listen closely, you'll hear Austin say "Austin turn!" at the very end.)

Belated Visit

2011-09-20T17:15:00.000-07:00

After having to cancel their visit to see us in June, due to my dad's spill down the stairs, my dad and step-mom were able to come see us this last week. Though my dad is still recovering from his shoulder replacement surgery and had to be constantly doing his therapeutic exercises, we were glad they were finally able to come out.

It turned out to be a crazier visit than it should have been. They came on Tuesday evening, which ended up being only the second day of school for Victoria after her week of no school, so we were still getting used to the new schedule. The kids definitely showed how kids have a hard time changing routines by the way the were acting up. It didn't help that the kids and I suddenly got a 12-hour stomach bug later in the week, resulting in Karissa missing her second day of preschool and getting Grandma MaryLou sick. That alone took two days out of our visit!

We still made some good memories out of the visit. One of them being that we were able to take Victoria and Karissa to see their Primary chorister from church and her husband and kids in the local theater production of The Music Man. It was a great performance.

Here's some other fun moments:

Grandpa doing his exercises, though it looks like he's cleaning my counter. More exercises...

Here he is cleaning my cabinet; no, sorry, more exercises!
The day I was sick with Victoria and Karissa, Austin got to wear his Thomas pjs all day and went to a garage sale with Grandma and Grandpa and scored this train that he loves!
One of the kids' favorite pastimes, hanging on a sleeping grandpa.

Watching football...
Baking cookies with Grandma MaryLou...

Thanks for coming Grandma and Grandpa!

Back With a Bang

2011-09-13T10:56:00.000-07:00

Victoria finally got to go to first grade this year. I walked her up to her class since she would be gone all day for the first time and since she was a little like "the new kid" in class, having missed the first 3 1/2 days. Here's just outside her classroom at Miller Elementary. As you can see, she walked right in and put her stuff in her box with a big smile on her face and didn't even look back. I was in the doorway next to Mrs. Johnson, her teacher.

When I picked her up, the first thing she said was, "School is great!" Then she said, "My teacher is easier than preschool!"

After her first full day of school, we had just enough time to get home, get a snack, and change into leotards for the first day of dance. It was a busy day for her!

Today, Karissa started her first day of preschool at PCN (Plymouth Children's Nursery). It's the co-op that Victoria went to 3 years ago, except Karissa is attending the new bilingual class. Her teacher is Senora Ruth. We are already working some of our Spanish words for the week into our conversations, which is going very well!

Here she is outside her school.

She was also very excited to attend and didn't give me a backwards glance either! Austin said he wanted to go to preschool too, and then I realized that he can start at-home preschool next year!

My Cute Boy

2011-09-10T19:01:00.001-07:00

Austin has been growing so much in so many ways. Being the third child and the younger brother of two sisters has an impact on his development, especially in the things he says. Here are some examples:

-When I yawn he perceives that I'm tired, so he always asks, "You tired, Mommy?"
-When he sees any sort of crawling creature he says, "Pider, I cared!" (spider, I'm scared)
-If he sees his sisters have something he wants he says, "Mommy, I want some."
-or when he's eating something yummy he says, "Mmm, good Mommy!"
-he always wants to talk on the phone when I'm talking, particularly to Jason and he will actually just babble into the phone and you can hear him say, "and so, um..." interspersed with more babble and then some other mutterings of things he's doing, then he gives the phone back to me and says, "Mommy talk!"
-he does say, "I tuted!" when he passes gas (something he also learned from his sisters...)
-he'll say, "Guess what?", but he hasn't caught on to what to say after that
-he tries to tell knock-knock jokes, but only gets as far as, "Knock, knock- Who's there?", then he laughs

Along with repeating everything else he hears, we have another little talker.

He really enjoys lining up all his trains and cars, but he also loves to rock one of Victoria's baby dolls. He loves to use Daddy's toothbrush to brush with while I'm getting ready, but he also wants to put bronzer and lip gloss on (I won't even let him think about any other make-up choices!) Most of all, he just wants to be independent. What else do two-year-olds want?

Triathlon Weekend

2011-09-06T12:26:00.000-07:00

After graduating, Jason decided to train for a sprint triathlon. The big race was this last weekend in Muncie, IN. He trained very well and had a good race for his first triathlon. It was a 400 yd. swim, about a 12 mile bike, and a 5K run. He finished in 1:29, which is pretty good, even though he said he didn't so well on the swim. The swim was in a lake, so it was quite different than swimming in the pool! The nice part about the race was that it was small, only 95 racers, which made it easy to find him before and after the race and at each of his events.

Here's the kids checking out the lake the night before. Here's Jason to the left of the guy in the wetsuit coming in from his swim.

While he started on his ride, the kids played at the playground and enjoyed the ropes,
and Victoria got to try "rock" climbing.
Here's Jason at the end of the ride. It was a beautiful ride, I'm sure.

This is the start of the run. Lookin' good! The kids really wanted to give him high-fives.

This is close to the finish line. I think the run was his best during the race, at 26:35 min.
All done- way to go Jason!
While in Indiana, we went to the zoo.

The highlight for Austin was the train ride, of course. He was giddy with excitement!

They also enjoyed playing on this little train outside the train ride.

The sea lions were also a big hit, since they were being fed and put on a show during that time, but it was raining at the moment and I was standing under my umbrella, watching from a distance. The kids and Jason had a good spot, in front of the big crowd.

After some late nights and long days, Austin fell asleep in the car right away on the way home. Also, Victoria had a fever Monday night, resulting in her missing her first day of school today- bummer! She hasn't had a fever all day, so hopefully she can go for her first day tomorrow.

"I Love to See the Temple"

2011-08-28T11:53:00.001-07:00

We attended a very special Primary activity, for church, yesterday at the church building across the parking lot from the Detroit Temple. The focus was on the temple, obviously. The kids got to make little temples out of marshmallows and frosting, do trivia games on temples, and watch parts of a video about the building of the Salt Lake Temple. After a picnic lunch outside, we walked around the temple grounds and a member of the temple presidency talked to us about temples in general and the Detroit Temple specifically. Victoria and Karissa really enjoyed being there on the beautiful grounds and doing the special activities, especially after talking about temples in Primary at church the past two months. Austin was on the grumpy side and not the best sport, but he survived.

Here's Jason helping Victoria with her marshmallow temple. What a sweet look on her face!

Here's my sweet, growing-up Karissa with her temple (and new haircut).
Victoria was the photographer here.

Thanks to my friend Anna for some of her fabulous pictures!

Pickin' Berries

2011-08-21T13:00:00.001-07:00

It had been awhile since I had picked berries and I missed the fun experience, so I took the kids to a raspberry farm this week. We all had a great time and the weather was perfect, but there were too many mosquitoes! Austin was most affected by them. He enjoyed the experience at the beginning and ate many raspberries (more than he put in his bucket by far!), but told me he wanted to go home after about 20 mosquito bites. I think in this picture there were some buzzing around Karissa's face.

Victoria said, "This is the life!" She had so much fun picking that she didn't notice the mosquito bites she got.

Yummm!

The best part is eating them off your finger!

Mermaid Camp

2011-08-14T13:07:00.000-07:00

Karissa attended her special activity for the summer- mermaid camp! It was every morning at a private school where Victoria attended princess camp a few years ago. She really enjoyed doing her own activity. Since I wasn't able to watch, all I know is that they played games, made art projects, made blue pudding with gummy fish, and danced to The Little Mermaid music. Here she is with her teacher and assistant in her giant, soaking-wet shirt from the water table. Here is the star fish, sea urchin, and coral (made out of colored rice) she made.

She also made this mermaid mobile, fish, and jelly fish.
Victoria enjoyed hanging out with Austin and I without Karissa for a change. In fact, she told Jason after the first day, "I got to go to the park with Mommy all by myself!" forgetting that Austin was even there. She happily hung up Karissa's work from the light fixture in their room.

Even though Karissa said she was nervous the first day, when she walked into the room, all that was forgotten! So far my kids have no problems in new situations!

Soccer Camp

2011-08-07T17:45:00.000-07:00

Victoria decided about a year ago that she really wanted to try soccer. I thought a little soccer camp over the summer, to give her an idea of what it is like, would be a good place to start. Since I never played a day of soccer in my life, if you don't count P.E. here and there in school, I was surprised that she wanted to do it, but glad she wanted to try something new. She loved it and learned some good things over the five days. I learned some things too, like shin guards go under the socks, not over! (I actually knew that, but had forgotten that the first day when I helped her get ready, but we learned the proper way after we arrived!)

Here are some shots of her playing some the soccer skills' games.

with her supportive siblings who happily played at the playground behind the field for most of the days...

In the end, she said she liked soccer, but wanted to stick with dance for now and play soccer once-in-a-while. I thought that's what she would decide, but glad we got to explore something other than dance for a while.

While Victoria was busy with that, Karissa learned to pump by herself on the swing (hooray for me!)

and gained more confidence riding her "big" Dora bike, well, bigger than her tricycle anyway! She does go much faster now that she's on a bike.

12 years

2011-07-31T12:36:00.000-07:00

Jason and I have been married 12 years- wow! It's amazing how different it is now, compared to the five years when we didn't have kids. Though there was less going on in our lives, it has definitely been more fulfilling and we have grown closer since we have had children. I always felt like a newly-wed for those first five years, and I have learned so much more about marriage and families since then. I am grateful for the power of prayer and inspiration and that we took the big step to be married when we did, it has been worth every minute of it!

We celebrated yesterday by going out to a small Italian restaurant. Then we did what we haven't done in years- we went to the movie theater! Since we just barely saw Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I from Netflix, we had to finish it off by seeing Part II in the theater, rather than waiting another year. It was worth it! The movie ended earlier than we thought and wanted to give the babysitter time to finish putting the kids to bed, so we enjoyed some yummy Kilwan's ice cream.

Here's looking forward to another 12 wonderful years!

(24 weeks pg)

Our Personal Sauna

2011-07-24T12:07:00.001-07:00

It was so hot and humid here this week that I felt like I was entering a sauna every time I went outside! The high on the hottest day was 101 degrees with a heat index of 115 degrees! To give you a perspective, the average this time of year is 84. It's like getting snow in LA, people just aren't used to it and we're not prepared for that kind of heat; like Jason's tennis court where he practiced in TX. had an ice machine. They just cancelled everything around here, such as Victoria's outdoor supervised playground program she and Bethany go to M/W/F for three hours to do activities with other kids and are supervised by college students. (It's the best spent $20 for the summer-ever!) Luckily, on Friday they had a field trip planned to the roller skating rink, so they got to be there for a few hours.

Here the kids are running through the sprinklers at 7 pm to cool down before going to bed. I didn't want to take them out earlier, for their benefit as well as mine!

Austin just loves Bethany, who he calls "Bet-ny", she's like another sister to him.

Summer Days

2011-07-17T13:03:00.001-07:00

This week we helped Daddy clean the bike chains. Found a preying mantis on the window (we made sure to put it back in the grass later on).

We went to Music in the Park to hear the Saline Fiddlers, which was fabulous, but I have no pictures from it. The kids enjoyed our picnic and dancing to the music.

We started swimming lessons. Here's Victoria in her class with the kick board.

Here's Karissa with her "barbell" in her class.

And we played with our neighbor Bethany, who we see every day when she comes over while her parents work.
We have very unusually hot week coming up, so we'll see if we can survive the next week of summer!

Snoozin' at the Zoo

2011-07-10T12:28:00.001-07:00

On Friday night Victoria and I got to go to the Toledo Zoo with her girl scout troop for the Zoo Snooze. It was a great experience and we both learned a lot! We learned a lot about the polar bears and seals since we got to meet the keeper of those animals. Even though he told the girls that someone got eaten by some polar bears there a while ago (he also mentioned the guy was high and jumped into the water with them), they still enjoyed learning about them and no one woke up with nightmares! Victoria's favorite part was touching some animals in the learning center. She got to touch a hissing cockroach (eww!) Here she is after touching the Leopard Gecko.

A Chinese Alligator,

she touched a tree frog, and a Frilled Lizard and they got to see a tarantula up close in it's cage (yuck!) Though I didn't enjoy some of them, she enjoyed every single one.

After eating some pizza we learned about how to train zoo animals from a zoo keeper and then made some enrichment foods for the animals to be fed the next day. When we were done making the enrichment at 11:30 pm, we got to look at some animals at night; the cheetahs, tigers, and elephant who was mad and blowing dirt at us.

By the time midnight came and we were led to the museum to sleep, everyone was so tired from all the activities that we didn't have a bunch of giggling all night long, much to my relief!

At 7 am the next day they woke us up and we had breakfast then got a private tour of the zoo. Victoria stayed in front the whole time with the guide, she didn't want to miss a thing! We got to see the keepers feed our enrichments to the three animals we made them for. Here's the otter chasing after her fish pops. She moved so fast I couldn't get a good shot of her face.

Here's one of the orangutans enjoying an oatmeal-covered wreath with four grapes stuck to it.
Here's the rhino, though we didn't see him eating the melon bomb, which was a cantaloupe with carrots poked through all around it.

We were tired when we left, but it was definitely worth-while!

Bienvenidos a Puerto Rico!

2011-07-03T12:30:00.001-07:00

Warning: this may be a long blog and I'm still cutting out about 3/4 of the pictures!

We just came back from spending 10 days in Puerto Rico, where Jason has some cousins, some of whom he's never met, and where his aunt and closest cousin still live. It was great for the kids to be able to meet them and get in touch with their Puerto Rican side.

After a long day of travel (all three kids actually fell asleep in the car before we got to Mayita's house; Karissa and Austin stayed asleep for the transfer to bed- shock!), we took it easy the first day. We also has to get used to the weather. Though our temperatures here right now aren't much different from there, it is a little more humid there and there is no air conditioner in the homes, just fans. Luckily, I have been there before, and happened to be pregnant then also, and learned what kind of clothes to pack from the limited selection I have to cover all my qualifications, so this time I felt better in the heat and slept mucho mejor! Here's my chicas with Mayita, Jason's cousin. They took to her really well. Austin did well, but he took about half the trip to just get used to being somewhere different, so most of the time he was on my lap, which did make it warmer for me!
After going to a local park, the kids played in this little splash pad that Mayita got for them. This was the first time I'd ever seen Karissa get her head wet without being in the bath!
The next day we went to Mayita's church party and had lunch and the kids got to play on these fancy bouncers. Here's Karissa climbing up the "rock" bouncer.

Here's Victoria going down the water slide.
Later, in their church building they had a puppet show. It was quite the experience! Victoria still claims it was her favorite activity there, but I'm not so sure. We went into a room about the size of a primary room at our church. We sat front and center, since we were one of the first to enter. These clowns came out from behind the puppet show set with a keyboard, electric guitar, drum set, and the lead clown on the mic. They started playing full blast, as if they were 20 feet away in a huge auditorium, we were not even 5 feet away! It was so loud, I worried about the baby's ears in my womb! The kids were in such shock that even Victoria wouldn't give them a high-five! So, imagine having this crazy loud music played by clowns with the speaker on the mic yelling into it in Spanish, which the kids don't even know. After 15 minutes of that, they started the puppet show, which was still loud, but not with the music. The kids relaxed a little by then and seemed to enjoy it, but I completely forgot to take any pics because I was so caught off guard!

The next day we went to the LDS ward in the area. We sang some songs Victoria recognized in sacrament meeting. She also enjoyed listening to the English translation on the headset. We went to the first part of Jr. Primary and the kids got to participate with the four other kids in the lesson, even though it was in Spanish. We sang "I Love to See the Temple", Victoria's favorite and the new song all the Primary children around the world are learning. Karissa got to say a prayer. Even though it was hot in the Primary room, we all enjoyed the experience and I'm so glad the kids got to experience it!

Later, Stephanie, Mayita's daughter, painted nails with the chicas and we did a fashion show, complete with entertainment from the kids.

Here's Austin's pose.
Then we got to go visit Mayin in the home she is in. She just loved seeing the kids!
Victoria read to her from her diary.
Afterwards we went to Parque Colon and climbed up this huge tree house. The tree was over 200 years old!

The next day we went to Jobos beach where all the families with young kids go because of the shelf that made a shallow pool for the kids to play in. The really enjoyed the water and sand and I enjoyed less worry over waves since there were none where we were! You can see Victoria and Jason walking out to the shelf where they walked around for about an hour! Later, Jason took both girls to some rocks on the side to look for seashells, which they found a lot of, including a live hermit crab.

On the way home we got Pinchos, which is just bbq chicken on a stick, but they are to die for! So good! Only $2! Karissa, of all people, loved it! For not being a big meat-eater, we were surprised! We got empanadas another day, Victoria liked those the best.

It was off to the tropical rain forest, El Yunque, the next day. Even though we had a long drive to get there, we all enjoyed it. We heard many coquis, which are tiny tree frogs, and saw a couple of lizards.

The kids loved to hike around the first trail area!
Here's La Coca Falls. This one is just on the road, so we didn't hike to it.

We went up Yokahu Tower, Victoria went a couple times. I think she said there were 71 steps.

I couldn't even get the whole thing in the picture

We decided to hike the 30 minute one-way trip to La Mina Falls. Even though the kids were starting to get tired, it was worth it! They go a bit higher up, but it was hard to get a good shot from the very non-child-friendly bridge I was standing on with Austin.

Karissa got soaked!
Here's the bridge that Austin could have slipped right through to the rocks! Luckily he was eating a granola bar, so that distracted him. Speaking of food, on the way home, we stopped to get dinner at the first place we saw so we could clean up a little and feed our hungry hiker kids. We stopped at Burger King and the three kids ate 19 chicken tenders, plus Victoria had a cheeseburger and she and Austin had a bunch of fries! I told them before if they ate well they could have a cookie, so they had one of those too. I have never seen three little kids eat so much, nor I have spent so much money at Burger King!

We went to the beach again the next day with Stephanie. It was just as much fun the second time and all the kids went on the shelf that time.

When we weren't out and about the kids would play with Stephanie's stuffed animals and the dogs, Snoopy and Coral. Here's Victoria with Snoopy.

Here's Karissa blowing bubbles in front of the banana tree. Coral loved snapping at the bubbles!
(I just noticed that I didn't include a picture of Coral and if I do now, it will screw up my picture order. Just picture a chocolate lab!)

Here's all the kids with Mayita and Stephanie when Austin started going to them.

On our final day of adventure we went to the Arecibo Lighthouse. It included La Nina, La Pinta, and La Santa Maria as well as a pirate ship and cave, an aquarium, Taino Indian huts, a park, and mini-zoo. It was fun, but very hot and sunny that day!

Austin is giving a kiss to the statue at the hut.

Here's the lighthouse.

The day before we left we went to a local splash pad. It was nice and cool, plus it rained a little.

The kids had such a good time that our messed up flight adventure back which brought us home at 1:30 am instead of 9:30 pm, didn't linger too long in the kids' minds after we got home. Hope you're all enjoying your Independence Day!

We're Having....

2011-06-22T07:09:00.000-07:00

....a boy! We're all very excited. Everything with the baby is healthy, so that's good. I would be going through all my pink blankets and getting rid of about 10 of them, but I've got to pack for Puerto Rico instead. Be back in 10 days!

Things We Love About Daddy

2011-06-20T10:39:00.000-07:00

Here are the things the kids told me they love about their daddy:

Victoria: "He teaches me how to be nice to my little sister and brother and he puts me to bed and makes me not have nightmares."

Karissa: "I love that he helped me ice skate." (like 1 1/2 years ago, I'm surprised she even remembers!)

Austin: "Ahhh, Jay-uhn." (he was saying his name)

Happy Father's Day!
The kids wanted to do goofy poses, but did them for different pics. Here's two being goofy.

And the other one!

Chicago

2011-06-18T18:32:00.000-07:00

Last Monday the kids and I took a quick trip to Chicago. We were supposed to go with my dad and meet my sister and her family there on their way out here for a visit, but since he shattered his shoulder about a month ago, the trip was cancelled since my step-mom needed to help him instead of my sister drive out for a vacation. Luckily, we weren't left high and dry. We were also planning on meeting my aunt and her daughter who are from Dallas and were visiting the other daughter who lives in Iowa City with her 1-year-old and hubby.

After the 4 hour drive, which the kids did very well with, we drove into the city on Lake Shore Ave., about one road's width away from Lake Michigan. It was beautiful! The first thing the kids said when we came upon the skyscrapers overlooking the lake was, "Can we live here?!"

As soon as we could, we jumped out of the car and played on the beach. It wasn't a planned stop and was only 65 degrees, not my idea of swimming-in-a-lake weather, but the kids had a blast! Victoria actually got on the water a little. Karissa and Austin didn't touch the water, but were overjoyed at being out of the car looking at it with the skyscrapers behind them.

After our fun detour at the beach, we met my aunt Terry, Danielle, Celeste, and baby Ellia at the park zoo.
That evening at our lovely hotel, we took a dip in the pool and Karissa really got attached to her new BFF, Danielle.
The next day we went to the Shedd Aquarium and saw the bottom floor, which was free that day. It was crowded, but enjoyable. The kids really liked the jelly fish.

Here's one of the many pictures Victoria took of fish. This one came out without the glare.

Since we were expecting the entire aquarium to be free, not just the bottom floor, we left earlier than planned when we discovered the extremely high prices of the upper floor. We will return one day and experience that, but probably with Jason so he can enjoy it too. So, we just left and had lunch on the museum square. We left for home shortly after that to make it in time for a better-night's sleep so Victoria could have fun at her end-of-the-year party at school. We were there about 24 hours, not counting driving, but it was fun and we don't regret it!

Peaceful

2011-06-12T18:26:00.001-07:00

My good friend, who is moving soon (boo-hoo!) helped me add a nice touch to our upgraded living room. She has a vinyl cutter and we used it to cut out these quotes that just adhere to the wall. It was easy as can be and a very nice touch! Here's our nice TV on the stand, with all the extra clutter that was on the other one, nicely hidden. The old TV now sits happily in the basement.

I've finally put the kids' pictures back up after painting, now that we have the TV and stand in place.
Everything just seems more peaceful now in there!

Speaking of peaceful, Jason and I got to spend 8 hours away from the kids yesterday! My other good friend, who has had a special bond with our kids, offered to come watch them while we went out. She didn't want to just watch them for a couple hours, but she wanted to "make them lunch, and dinner, put them to bed, and play with them". I quickly agreed. She's an empty- nester, though you wouldn't know it. The kids had a blast with her and we had fun on our own!

We started going to lunch at Baja Fresh and didn't even mind the 15 min. wait since we had no kids to chase around while waiting. We then went to the temple, and enjoyed a peaceful time there. On the way to our next destination we stopped at Costco to look at a few things. Very peaceful without kids. We went out to Ann Arbor to a restaurant called The Real Seafood Company, a very fancy restaurant we've been wanting to try to a while. Over the two hours we were there, we shared a cup of New England Clam chowder, the best house salad I've ever had, a crab cake, and a plate of paella; including mussels, clams, lobster, shrimp, sausage, veggies and rice. Some yummy rolls were served as well. It was slow, like we thought it would be, but again, so peaceful! Afterwards, we walked around Ann Arbor and enjoyed watching all the people as we walked passed each other.

When we returned home, two kids were in bed, and the third ready to go as soon as we got home. I missed my little kiddos, but sure enjoyed a peaceful day with my hubby!

Choo, Choo- Look Who's Two!

2011-06-05T12:55:00.000-07:00

Austin turned 2 on Thursday. It's hard to believe that he's already two! He's been slowly easing into the "independent" stage the past month or so. One of his favorite things to say is "No, I do it!" He likes to say that when he gets in his car seat, brushes his teeth, pushes the button on the blender with me, and even when he helps me stir while cooking.

A little over a month ago he decided he was done with his crib. He just climbed out (for the first time ever) and refused to get back in for naps or bed. We already had a "big boy bed" in the room, so the transition was easy, for him at least. I've accepted it now and it's not that bad. He doesn't nap all the time now since he can get out of his bed and play, but it's fine. It also takes a few minutes longer to put him to bed because Jason or I have to lie down with him for a few minutes. He always says "Bi bo be" when he wants me to lie down with him longer.

He has also decided he likes the big swing now and not the baby swing. He prefers to hold Karissa's hand in the parking lot when walking into a store, not mine, but I'm still allowed to hold Karissa's hand on the other side.

He calls Karissa, who he adores, "Diga" and Victoria, who he thinks is the funniest person on the planet, "Adora". He loves to hug and kiss each of them when they are sad, it is so cute! He is such an affectionate little boy! He follows their lead and will hug perfect strangers who come to our door. He also likes the little baby girls in our ward. He is especially fond of a little 7-month-old girl named Genny and always says, "Baby!" when he sees her.

He loves having his daddy around now. They are pals!

On his birthday, we went to playgroup at the park in the morning, played with friends at our house while I had a meeting here, opened presents, had pizza and cake, and watched part of a movie.

He loved getting bubbles for his birthday, one of his favorite things to do.
He also loved this dump truck and another excavator truck that he got from Gramms and Abuelo.

We got him these Thomas pjs, which he picked out himself. He was so excited holding them in the store. I tried to convince him to get the shark ones because they were shorts, not pants, but he saw these and would not budge! He also got this little lawn mower that blows bubbles when pushed, besides making a loud lawn mower-type sound.
As soon as he saw his cake, he said "Choo, choo!" He knew exactly what it was! He picked out the peach rings for the wheels, rather than choosing the store-bought cookies, much to his daddy's dismay!
Happy Birthday my cute boy!

It's About Time!

2011-05-30T11:32:00.000-07:00

Our TV is very old. It's so old that last year I actually watched myself in a home video at age 3 dancing in front of the very TV I was watching myself dance in front of! How weird was that! I really don't remember if the TV is older, or I am. Either way, it's a little over 30 years old. We inherited it from my Grandma Carrie when we got married 12 years ago, grateful not to have to buy one. We thought it would probably go sometime and we'd buy a new one then. Well, it just keeps working, minus the remote, which broke years ago. We just got used to turning the volume up on the actual TV. Since we have satellite we could just use that remote to change the channel.

We decided over a year ago that it was time to replace it anyhow, but we wanted to wait and buy one for Jason's graduation gift. Then, we wanted to wait for the Memorial Day sales. So, on Saturday we went out and bought an LED HDTV.

Here is our lovely old TV that Victoria has now named Oldie. It will go down to the basement.

And here is our nice new one, we even bought a nice stand for it to put the blue-ray and videos in. We are still in the works with getting everything connected, but it sure does look a whole lot nicer! Victoria has named it Beauty.

Check out the difference between the two! We'll have to post more pictures with the final touches! Stay tuned...

"Mom" School

2011-05-26T11:20:00.001-07:00

Karissa just finished her first year of preschool, or "Mom" school as we have been calling it lately, since all the moms of the preschoolers have been taking turns teaching at their homes. She has enjoyed it, but is ready to go to Plymouth Children's Nursery, the co-op where Victoria went, in the fall. Karissa will be going to a bilingual class, which we are all excited for.

Here's her last-day-of-school picture...

...compared to the first-day-of school.
Here's a mini-Olympics activity we had at the beginning.

And a nature-scavenger-hunt turned play-at-the-park at the end of the year. It's been a fun year!

Girl Scout Camp

2011-05-22T12:44:00.001-07:00

This year Victoria has been a Daisy in girl scouts. With kindergarten being only half day, I thought she needed a little something extra that wouldn't keep her too busy or cost too much money. It has been a great experience overall for her!

Here are the patches she has earned so far on her vest: the cookie sale, food drive, police station tour, recycle, Alice in Wonderland play, and Fall Fun. She has earned almost all her petals and still has another year of Daisy's!

Yesterday she went to a camp for the whole day and had a great time. Here she is showing me a squirrel's home.
She made a little s'mores craft, after eating the real thing, of course.
And here she is with some of her buddies from her Thin Mint group at camp. They also happen to all be in her class at school.

She's excited to do girl scouts again next year!

Happy Birthday Jason!

2011-05-16T10:53:00.001-07:00

We celebrated Jason's 35th birthday yesterday. Thank goodness he graduated before so he could enjoy his day! We had Stake Conference at church, so church was one hour shorter, which made the day that much more relaxing.

I made Monte Cristo sandwiches for breakfast (a new yummy egg recipe that we tried), Jason's favorite dinner of chicken cordon bleu, and a chocolate chip bundt cake.

He got some shirts from us and gets to buy himself a wireless router. (We're moving up in the technical world!)

Since it was about 35 degrees colder on his birthday than two days earlier, and raining, we didn't get to go for a Sunday family walk.

Here's what our front yard looks like now when the sun is shinning. We finally have everything in bloom! Last year our forsythia bush was blooming over Easter, along with our tulips, but this year was so cold our forsythia bush bloomed over Easter, a whole month later! This tree, though it bloomed later as well, at least has kept it's blossoms longer. Last year the blossoms bloomed right before a stormy week which blew them all away in a few days!

Happy Birthday Jason!

Dance

2011-05-08T13:31:00.001-07:00

This week was the week of dance! Victoria missed her dress rehearsal last Sunday, but Karissa made hers on Monday, Victoria went to her run-through on Tuesday, Karissa's run-through was Wednesday, I made cookies for the bake sale at one of the recitals on Thursday, on Friday night Victoria danced in the recital, Karissa danced in the afternoon recital on Saturday, and they both danced Saturday night- phew! The reason it was so much is because, as I've said before, Dancin' Feet is a huge program with tons of girls up to age 18. It's a major production, with even one more show today. The high school auditorium is full each time for the 2 1/2 hours of some very good dancing with backgrounds and themes for different parts of the performance.

Unfortunately, you're not allowed to film or take pictures during the actual performance, so I have some pictures of my cuties before they went on-stage, and filmed their run-through dances, though the clarity isn't very good since they were way up on stage. For one of Victoria's dances, I'm including a practice from a couple of months ago, since the run-through for that dance was messed up. They put her in line in the wrong spot and she was doing great and smiling, until when it came time to dancing with her partner, she was not near her. So she looks a little distraught for a moment, then keeps on dancing. She took it very well.

Here's Victoria with her partner, Annie, for the Flowers ballet dance.
Here's her whole class.

Here's her in her tap costume that they borrowed. They danced to Baby Face. It was her favorite dance.

Karissa got to dance her tap dance to Going to the Circus. She was the star of the show Saturday night. At the end of her dance, the back curtains opened to reveal the rest of the circus set with all the clowns, balloons, and other dancers dressed in bright colors. Karissa ended the dance facing away from the audience, staring open-mouthed at everything around her. When the rest of her group had left the stage, she finally realized she was alone and ran off quickly with the audience laughing at her cuteness.

They both did a great job for both recitals and enjoyed watching the rest of the show as well.

As for, I'm beat! We all slept in for Mother's Day after staying up way too late, two nights in a row. Jason made me bagels and lox for brunch and we ate dinner at a friends' house, which meant another late night, but no clean-up here. They picked me flowers from our yard that are finally blooming, now that cold April is over. Along with all the cards the kids made for me, I guess there's a gift, but we'll open it tomorrow, when we're all awake again!

Happy Mother's Day!

Here's Karissa's and Victoria's dances at the run-through and Victoria's other dance at practice.

The Day We Were All Waiting For

2011-05-01T12:50:00.000-07:00

It has happened- Jason graduated from the University of Michigan with his MBA! His parents came out to attend the ceremonies and help celebrate this momentous occasion. The festivities began on Thursday with a reception at the business school building which was put on for the night school students and their families. Since we had decided not to take the kids to the actual graduation, knowing they would be bored out of their minds, we all went and enjoyed some hors 'devours and treats. Jason even got a nice U of M pen out of it! The next evening we left the kids with a babysitter, pizza, and popcorn, and went down to Ann Arbor for the business school graduation where Jason actually got his diploma (we were way to high up to get a good shot of that).

On Saturday we left the kids with another babysitter, very early in the morning, and went out to the Big House for the graduation of the whole class of 2011. Despite the endless sitting on football bleachers, it was actually a very good program, one of the most interesting graduations I've ever been too.

When we returned we took the kids out to Ichiban Steak House (thanks Abuelo!) where we were entertained by our hibachi chef as well as enjoyed his yummy food. Austin especially enjoyed the miso soup and fried rice, Victoria her big pile of shrimp, and Karissa flirting with the chef.
Here's the cake we made for Jason and shared with our next-door neighbors who happen to be big U of M fans too.

Congratulations Jason and GO BLUE!

Spring Break

2011-04-24T12:56:00.000-07:00

We've had a fun filled week, despite the awful weather. It snowed on Monday to start off our spring break. The kids and I still trekked out to Ann Arbor to get some things for Jason for graduation, but we had to cancel our picnic at the Botanical Gardens since we had a nice covering of snow. No matter, the kids enjoyed helping me clean and playing at home the rest of the day. We went to the free 9:00 am showing of Yogi Bear at the movies and then stopped to get some flowers to plant, even though it was cold and raining, on another day. It turned out that it was the grand opening of the nursery and they had face-painting there. Victoria and Karissa loved their beautiful butterfly faces.

We played with some friends, inside of course, due to more days of wet and cold and Victoria got to join us for some of our usual errands and trip to the library. All the kids got to come with me (it's usually only Austin) to the church for Zumba which I get to to go to every Wednesday, taught by an awesome teacher.

Finally, on Thursday, we had a slightly warmer day and the sun was shinning, a plus, so we went to the zoo. This was taken in the aviary, which we hadn't seen yet in all our times going to the zoo. Karissa found a real robin's egg in our yard when we got home. We couldn't find the nest, so we put it in some cotton in a small box inside. We don't know what will come of it, but we're playing it low, mostly so the kids won't handle it too much.

On Good Friday we got to spend a nice, cold and wet, day with Jason! He didn't have to study and he didn't have to go to work, what a relief! We shopped for TV stands for our upcoming new HDTV which we'll get as part of his graduation gift. Then we went to lunch at Los Tres Amigos, a new restaurant around the corner. Here's Austin with his chips and salsa, which he loves! Too bad Karissa doesn't like Mexican food like the rest of us. She got chicken strips and french fries.

We colored Easter eggs and Austin had some nice green-colored hands afterwards!

The kids have missed being with their dad, I have too!
On Saturday we made Bunny Buns for Easter morning. They were delicious! Kind of like homemade doughnuts, though, Karissa didn't like them.
Austin didn't quite know what to do with the Easter egg hunt, but he sure enjoyed the fruit snacks that were in them! (Yes, I made sure most of his were not jelly beans, which he loves and will eat them all in one gulp if we let him!)He found an egg with a chocolate-wrapped egg inside and gave it to me to open it, then decided he didn't want it after all, so he fed it to me!

Victoria loved Piggy that she got in her basket and all the candy and other gifts.
Karissa liked her Chicky and other gifts too. She was happy to get a couple of fruit snack eggs as well.
Here's my cute kids, except Austin gets his own picture,

he wouldn't leave the push car, but I got a cute smile out of him because he was happy I didn't move him!
Here's our best at a family picture. How do you like Austin's shiner? I better give an update about that crazy boy soon! Happy Easter!

KarissaQ

2011-04-17T12:13:00.000-07:00

As sweet as Karissa is, she is also very stubborn and insistent. Somehow when she started writing her whole name she would add a Q at the end. I kept telling her that she didn't have Q at the end of her name, but she insisted that she did. Some of you have even received letters from her signed with the Q. Luckily, she has realized that she doesn't have one and has started excluding it from her name. Here's one last piece of art with the KarissaQ. We have to document it for memories' sake.

Dance Pictures

2011-04-09T18:05:00.000-07:00

Victoria and Karissa have each been taking a ballet/tap dance class this year. As the dance season comes to an end at the beginning of May, the program had a scheduled picture day with all the dancers in their various classes. It's a big "to-do" with this program, Dancin' Feet, especially since there are about 300 dancers in the program. Everyone had specific times to show up at the studio dressed in their recital costumes, complete with hair and make-up. Of course my two had very different sitting times, which meant more driving for me, but we had fun. I took my own individuals of them. Here's Karissa in her Going to the Circus costume. She loved getting her hair done, and especially getting make-up put on her. Her little, non-existent, lips, remind me of mine.

Victoria was excited for make-up, but didn't want much to do with fancy hair. I finally convinced her to let me twist the top before pulling it back into a ponytail. She promptly took it down the second we got home from the studio. Her lips were a different story: I have never put lipstick on lips so big in my life! Especially with the bright pink lipstick, they were quite the lips!

Austin loved Karissa's gloves and wanted to wear them. He couldn't be left out either! (He wanted to put make-up on too, but I convinced him that the chap stick was enough!)

General Conference

2011-04-02T17:48:00.000-07:00

Even though conference is not over yet, I asked each of my kids today what they like best about general conference. I meant as the experience as a whole. I thought maybe they would say things like playing with legos in the living room, drawing in the living room, etc. But they surprised me with their answers. Victoria said she liked the talk with the story about the "stone turning to gold". Unfortunately, I missed that part, so I don't know who gave that talk, but I'm excited to read about it later on. She said she also like Elder Cook's talk because it was "funny". Karissa said she liked the singing. They especially loved when the choir sang the Primary song I Know that My Savior Loves Me. When I asked Austin, he said, "Yeah, yeah". I asked him if he liked the candy (we play Gospel Topic Bingo during conference with Star bursts to help us focus and listen for key words) and he said, "Candy!" So I guess that was his highlight. We look forward for tomorrow's sessions, though the kids always do better on Saturday, so we'll see what we get from tomorrow. Jason's just hoping to stay awake during the second session!

What Not to Wear

2011-03-26T11:32:00.000-07:00

For the past month-and-a-half, Victoria has been on a pj kick. The second she gets home from school, or anywhere she has to wear regular clothes to, she puts on her pajamas. It started the week she was sick. She wore pjs all the time and I guess they became her preferred article of clothing. I do make her put on her non-footies when she has friends come over so at least she doesn't look too ready for bed. The thing about it that makes me laugh is that throughout her little life she has gone through weird phases of clothing. When she was two, she only wore costumes, mostly princess dresses, until she was about 3 1/2. Then she only wore blankets tied around her, or just her panties, for another year. Now she's in the pj phase. We'll see what comes next! Here's a shot of Karissa's work on Austin. See how proud they both look?

Spring Has Sprung!

2011-03-19T18:14:00.000-07:00

One thing I noticed here in Michigan is that even though the winters are really long and cold, everyone seems to appreciate being outside during the other seasons a whole lot more. This week finally melted all of our snow (I think there are still very small piles in the shadows) with temperatures being mostly in the high 40s, some days in the 50s, and even one day in the 60s! Everyone and their dog, literally, was outside. We get to see our neighbors again, who we haven't seen in a few months. This week we went on a few walks, rode our bikes, played in the sandbox, played on our swing set, and went to the zoo. I don't think I've ever appreciated the beginnings of spring more than this year, after a particularly long winter. Even the ducks, who are seen roaming around in pairs in people's yards during spring, were already out and about.

Happy Spring!

Happy Birthday to Me!

2011-03-13T05:01:00.000-07:00

For my birthday present I wanted to paint our living room. So I did. All last week I painted the trim, put on the primer, and finally our nice new, darker color. I had painted the ceiling the week before and I will paint the front hallway soon. It's been nice to change things up a bit, especially since we've been inside so much this winter and are going CRAZY!

Here's some pictures of how it turned out with our decor.

I'm probably going to paint that shelf you see part of the top corner of, so I didn't include it in the picture.

Austin loves to help me bake. Here he his stirring my birthday cake.

Even though my present was the paint, Jason and the kids still spoiled me with nice lotion and bubble bath, new gardening gloves, flowers, and a raspberry-filled treat that no one else would eat. Jason and I got Indian food for dinner and the kids got pizza. The kids were super excited to sing and blow out the candles with me. I have the best family!

Austin-21 Months

2011-03-03T11:39:00.000-08:00

Here's a video of Austin dancing to 16 Minutes from High School Musical. He sings some of the words, though it's hard to hear over the music. Some of his dancing is behind Karissa, since she decided she was going to be the star. If you notice, Victoria is more reserved. She's been like that since she's been sick. She also has on her pajamas, her favorite thing to wear as soon as she gets home from school.

Austin's two most favorite things now are trains and music. When we go down to the basement to play with his trains, he goes right to the cd player first to have me put music on. Also, when we get him ready for bed, he insists I play the music in his room. He's becoming such a big boy!

Ridiculous!

2011-02-24T10:55:00.000-08:00

Our big plan this week, for mid-winter break, was to go to the zoo today (Thursday). I especially knew it was a good idea after Victoria's 7 day fever and the three days following of no school, due to the break. She was definitely cooped up, bored, and downright crabby! She was also confused. She prayed on Monday that she could get better so she could go to school. I told her that she was better, but that it was mid-winter break, so no one was at school.

She hasn't been herself since she's been over her fever. She's been very quiet, for the most part (a very odd thing!), sitting down a lot, and wanting to be by herself. Needless to say, I was very excited to get her out for a full day at the zoo. Well, this morning she threw up twice, so no zoo. The sicknesses of 2011 are getting ridiculous!! I remember thinking right before Christmas how great it was that none of the kids got sick during the fall, not even a cold, which they usually do. Then Christmas came and besides a week or two here and there, someone has been sick since!

To keep my sanity, and because I'm getting tired of looking at the same things in my house, I've done a few small projects.

I got this picture I took of the kids at the botanical gardens last summer made into a canvas portrait from Costco. (They had a $10 off coupon and I think it's still good for three more days if anyone wants to do one.)

I took our old wooden dollhouse that was falling apart and made a sign. I'm sure it could have been done better if I had all the nice gadgets used for such a thing, but I didn't want to buy too much. I just painted the borders of the board, stuck on some nice paper, printed off my favorite quote and stuck it on, and used some Mod Podge for a finishing touch. Since there were the nice little holes in each corner, I thought some ribbon would look cute.
Here's a straight shot, though I couldn't get the glare out.
I also just recovered some little pillows that I didn't like anymore to match the curtains on the slider door on the other side of the room.
My next project: paint the living room celing, then the walls. I'm very excited!

Stuffed Animals

2011-02-17T17:40:00.000-08:00

Since she was interested in playing with toys, Victoria has always been drawn to animals. Mostly, at first, it was the little plastic animals that come with the Little People set. The past few years it has been stuffed animals. This past year, though, it has become an obsession. They are pretty much the only thing she plays with, which is good, since we have a trillion of them. They all have names and many have jewelry or bows she adorns them with. They are all set up within families- husband, wife, and kids. For a while, each day she would arrange them, then rearrange them on her bed, according to families. Recently, she started bringing them downstairs and setting them up for meals and then on the couch or chairs. It was one thing, having to deal with them being on her bed. Making a top-bunk bed isn't the easiest, especially when it's completely covered with stuffed animals! It's another thing to have them all set up on the table or on the couch or family room chair. Last week, I cleared a shelf of books so she could set them up there. That seemed to go over well. Unfortunately, they don't all fit there, but it's a start.

Here's the new set-up. Here's more of them, set up on my family room chair.

Here's a picture she took of her big unicorn on her bed, which has stayed there, luckily, as well as the dog that is the same size.

When we got our camera back, she was so excited, she took some pictures of some of her "guys" with their loved ones.

The very next day, she came down with "the fever" sickness, as everyone around here is calling it. Tons of kids have been out of school because of it, and she just missed church, four days of school, and will miss tomorrow as well. She happens to have an ear infection with hers, but for most of the kids, it was just a fever. With temperatures up to 104.5 degrees, most of the time this week, it has been quite the sickness. The problem is, I give her some fever reducer medicine, then she feels great for 6 hours and I've 3 cooped up kids all day! She still has a fever of about 100. I don't know when it will break. Most kids went for about a week with this thing. Next week is mid-winter break, so we get to have another week off of school. I just hope Karissa and Austin don't get it so we have to stay in for another fun-filled week!

PB and J part 2

2011-02-10T09:14:00.000-08:00

This just in: my kids, all three of them, ate peanut butter and honey sandwiches! Too bad my camera is still in the shop, I couldn't take pictures to capture the moment. They had some friends over who brought their lunch, which was PB & H. I felt bad making my kids a hot lunch, like they usually have, so I asked if they wanted to have heart-shaped PB & H. They agreed and actually ate it! Victoria exclaimed, "MMMMM!" Her friend stared at her like she was crazy. I told him that she had never eaten a peanut butter sandwich, except for a quarter of one when she was 20 months. Austin even ate the parts of the sandwich that were not included in the heart. What a great milestone for them!

It's too bad we won't have the camera for tonight either, when I take Victoria and Karissa to see the play Alice in Wonderland with the girl scouts, or the other night when Austin helped his sisters make Valentine sugar cookies, which he did very well. Or even for Valentine's Day, one of my favorite holidays. Oh well. I think it's being fixed under a warranty, even though it's 6 years old, because of some recall it falls under. Have a happy Valentine's Day everyone!

Groundhog Day

2011-02-03T10:59:00.000-08:00

I'm sure the groundhog in Michigan couldn't even find it's way out of the ground with the 8 or so inches of snow we received yesterday. Too bad I couldn't take any pictures since our camera is off being repaired for some quirk it has.

Yesterday, Austin hit his 20 month mark. It's hard to believe that just a year ago he was still nursing and not even crawling yet! He seems older to me than his sisters did at this age, mostly because he likes to do whatever they do and they weren't exposed to some of the things he is now. For one thing, he loves hot chocolate. They just started drinking it a year ago, but he's not even 2 yet and he really enjoys it. He also loves all kinds of soups and can feed himself all of them, which they had a harder time with it sliding off the spoon before they could even get it to their mouths.

My favorites of all the words Austin repeats are "surprise!" (uprise) and "peek-a-boo!" (pee-boo). He will join Karissa, who he calls Deega, and hide from me and then jump out and say, "Uprise!" The way he says cookie is pretty cute too, especially when he goes over to where the cookie jar is, but I don't mind giving him a cookie when he asks (when we have some) since he eats his meals so well!

He enjoys playing Duck, Duck, Goose with us and is sad when he is left behind from all the fast runners (we play our own version where everyone runs in a circle with the chaser and the goose). He is still very helpful and always wants to help me make bread, other baked goods, do laundry, and put things away. He is very good at following directions. Yesterday, we had a friend over for our snow day and I asked all the kids whoever wanted a fruit smoothie to raise their hand. Austin was the very first one. His hand shot right up. The funny thing is, I haven't asked them to raise their hands in a while, so I was surprised he knew what I was talking about.

Some time when my camera is back, I'll have to video tape him dancing to High School Musical's 16 Minutes and Will Smith's Getting Jiggy With It. He enjoys dancing to those songs and singing with Will Smith. He also likes the song John Jacob Jingle Heimer Schmidt and calls it "John Jacob".

He's such a cutie!

What a Relief!

2011-01-26T10:59:00.000-08:00

Our visit to the neurologist today was very enlightening. I not only learned about Karissa's seizure episode, but of my own as well. After repeating the story of Karissa's recent seizure to the doctor, I gave him my background. Well, it turns out, after about 28 years, I discover that I did not have epilepsy as a child. I was misdiagnosed, as was probably more common back then, in the dark ages, when research and studies were still being conducted and they didn't know as much as they do now. The doctor today said that they now know that there are no epileptic seizures that are caused by trauma (all of mine were). What I had, and what Karissa has, is a genetic predisposition to have seizures, or convulsions, as a result of trauma in combination with either breath holding, which she probably did, or passing out. He said that she could have a few more over the next few years, but would probably grow out of it after that, as I did. Her EEG was perfectly normal and there is no real harm done by the seizures. It sounds like the greatest "harm" done was from the phenobarbital that I took as a child for my seizures. He said there is no need for any medication, but that I didn't look too affected by it (he doesn't know me that well!:)

I feel much lighter now, not having to worry about Karissa anymore, and not having to put on all my medical forms that I had epilepsy. In some of my own recent studies of it, I found it is a brain disorder, which doesn't sound good to me. So, maybe Karissa's seizure wasn't so bad after all. I was able to uncover a part of me that I didn't know! Thanks for all the inquiries about Karissa!

COLD!

2011-01-22T17:43:00.000-08:00

We're living the usual Michigan January. We've had a nice covering of snow for a while and some good, solid, cold weather. Right now, it's 16 with a wind chill of -4. We took advantage of the holiday on Monday and the sunshine (not too many of those days around here) and went sledding. It was Karissa's first real time going and Austin's as well, though he only went once while on my lap. Even though it was pretty windy and cold at the top of the hill, we all had a great time.

Karissa preferred sliding on her bum the first few rounds. Victoria enjoyed every second of it.

Here's Austin's first and last time going. He did have fun, so I'm not sure why he didn't want to go again. I think he was just frozen to my hip.

Karissa ended up letting Jason pull her down, but she also rode down with him in the yellow one, which is faster.
Austin and Karissa enjoy watching the fire, luckily we have two screens to separate them from it!

A Princess Party

2011-01-16T17:40:00.000-08:00

Karissa has been talking about her princess birthday party since Victoria had her party in October. We had a typical party for our family. We started out with dancing and games with music (musical chairs, hot potato, freeze dance). Then we made a craft. The girls got to glue and decorate these little castles. (These were also the pattern for the invitations.) This was Karissa's.They played with some dress-ups and jewelery in the basement. Karissa is the second youngest, the girl in the Belle costume is the youngest, but you can see that Karissa is taking after her mom's height pattern at this age, being shortest by a long shot.
We had some castle cake and ice cream. Unlike the last time I made a castle cake, I decided to go for the recipe that only called for one cake mix. The castle doesn't look quite as grand, but it held up better and we don't have quite as many left-overs.

Luckily, Karissa's favorite colors are red and pink, since that's what is all around with Valentine's Day coming up.
Karissa enjoyed opening her presents and having a party of her own. It was a great party!

Another Birthday "Treat"

2011-01-13T12:05:00.000-08:00

Exactly one week after Karissa's visit to the ER, because of the sickness which started on her birthday, she bumped heads with a girl at Victoria's girl scout troop and had a seizure. After looking pale for about a half hour afterwards and being really hungry, she seemed pretty good, in fact, downright grumpy and tired as it was her bedtime. She was acting normal the next day, so my only concern was the seizure, not that there was any damage caused by the bump. Since I had epilepsy as a child and most of my seizures were results of a blow to the head, I was concerned that she had developed epilepsy since her last EEG (she had that done two years ago when we were in the ER for the dehydration then). Today, we went to the neurologist and she got to have anther EEG performed on her, lucky girl! They said she was the best 4-year-old they'd ever had, sitting so still for the procedure. We don't get to consult with the doctor until the 26th, but I'm sure if there are any major problems that we need to know, they'll let us know sooner. What a great year this has turned out to be! We're not even half way through January and Karissa has already been to the ER, the doctor two times, and the neurologist! Here's hoping for a better two weeks coming up!

Happy Birthday, Finally!

2011-01-09T12:56:00.000-08:00

Karissa's birthday this year was put off for 6 days due to the fact that she woke up on her birthday throwing up. Obviously, it was the same thing Austin and Victoria had on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and of course it had to come on her birthday, five days later. She spent all of her birthday and the following day either throwing up or sleeping. Earlier in the day she knew it was her birthday, but I don't think she knew or even cared anymore later on. Luckily, the weather was bad, so we delayed leaving Colorado one more day, which enabled her to rest a little more. We took this picture before we left, hoping to have her in it with her grandparents for her birthday, but she didn't want to be in it. The two day drive back wasn't much better. She slept most of the time and, lucky for us, didn't throw up in the car at all! She actually didn't have any problems on Saturday, though she didn't eat much. Unlucky for the gas station and store owners, she did have problems at those places on Sunday.

When we got home, she laid right down on the couch, not excited like her brother and sister to see her things. When she got out of bed at 11:15 on Monday, I knew there was a problem , especially when she threw up again. I took her to the doctor and they sent us to the ER to get an IV. They were great and got us in real quick. We only had to stay about 4 1/2 hours. They let us go after she ate 3 Popsicles, but left the hep lock in just in case she had more problems.

There were no more problems, so the next day I took her back to the doctor and they out her hep lock and that day she recovered by eating the "recovery foods". Here's a picture with her hep lock before we went to get it taken out. (I never got pictures of her in the hospital two years ago, so here's a happier version of that.)

By Wednesday night, I figured she was recovered enough to have cake and open her presents, I think she was ready too. Poor thing!
Notice the Christmas decorations in the background still. It was so crazy with this sickness when we got home, I just barely got everything unpacked the other day and am still taking down decorations! Happy 4th Birthday, Karissa!

Christmas

2010-12-30T13:19:00.000-08:00

This year for Christmas we drove out to Colorado Springs to spend the holidays with Jason's family. We left at 3am the first day and the kids did really well for that 12 hour drive, since the early hour threw them off, though they didn't really sleep any more. We went to bed early that night in the hotel and left at 4am the next day. The kids did great again and we made it to our first stop, around 3 pm, to see Jason's brother and his family in Amarillo, TX. who weren't able to make it to Colorado for Christmas.

Here is Cadence (16 mo.) and Austin (18 mo.) having a good time in the pack and play.

After a good 1 1/2 days visit with Thomas, Rebel, Christer, and Cadence, we drove another 6 hours to Jason's parent's house. We also got to see Jason's sister Auburn and her husband Jason and baby Mali (11 weeks).

The main chefs on Christmas Eve when we had our traditional Puerto Rican dinner. My Jason usually does the main dish, but Auburn's Jason did it this year.

Mary, Joseph, and Baby Jesus.

Christmas morning was earlier than usual. Victoria woke up at 6 am. I would normally have put her back to bed, but as she was throwing up, with probably the same thing Austin had the day before, and Karissa and Austin were awake because of the commotion, we decided to start looking at the stockings. Luckily, Victoria was able to open her stocking and gifts without running to the bathroom, but the rest of the day, she spent either sleeping or with her head in the toilet. Austin was better, but still very clingy and not eating much.

Here he is with one of his trains, which he loved and carried around for days.

He knew which Santa gift was his too.

He enjoyed his ride-on car, but liked his train the best.

Karissa got a doll house from Santa. She spent a good amount of time with it and Mommy had as much fun with it as she did!

Victoria got a princess carriage boom box with a microphone from Santa. The kids got the High School Musical III soundtrack from Aunt Auburn and Victoria was at least able to lie on the floor and sing a couple times, even though she was sick.

This is when she was better.

While we were there, baby Mali was blessed. She wore the same dress Karissa did.

Jason and I took Victoria skiing when she was fully recovered. She took lessons so we could enjoy some skiing, which we don't have a whole lot of in Michigan. She enjoyed it and especially enjoyed going down the hill a few times with me at the end. Austin and Karissa got to go to the Aquarium with Gramms and Abuelo and Auburn and Jason. They had a good time and Austin was less grumpy with them than he was with Mom during the other parts of the trip!

It was a great visit and we'll definitely do the drive again. The worst part was having a sick kid most of the time. Happy New Year!

Christmas Parties

2010-12-18T19:34:00.001-08:00

This week for Karissa's preschool we went on a field trip to a retirement home. The kids performed the Nativity, sang Christmas songs, and passed out cards and cookies they helped make. The people there were so sweet and happy! We also got a visit from Santa who read some stories and sang songs with the kids. Then they got pizza- what a visit!

Here's Karissa as Mary in the skit.

Tonight was our ward party, complete with dinner, a small program (where Karissa got to be Mary again), and Santa. The chicas wanted to wear their Christmas attire, which looked very cute. (I just cut their hair this week).

Victoria, showing off her dress.

Victoria, talking Santa's ear off!

Austin wasn't crying this year at least, but he still didn't look thrilled!

My sweeties!

Hokey-Pokey

2010-12-13T19:07:00.000-08:00

It was pointed out to me that at the hockey game there was some hokey-pokey going on! I know my spelling isn't the best, but I did check it before I sent it and fixed my "hokey" mistakes before I did send it. The problem was, it didn't change on the email version that was sent out, just the website itself. I think it's trying to make me look bad!

The Big Chill

2010-12-12T18:47:00.000-08:00

We did some fun activities this weekend out in the cold. Friday night, I took the kids to see The Lights Before Christmas at the zoo. It's just a lot of lights at the zoo with Christmas music playing, but it really was amazing! Some animals were awake, but most were asleep, though we didn't plan on seeing any. The kids really enjoyed looking at the lights, as you can see from this first picture overlooking the main part of the zoo. Victoria skipped almost the whole time, singing to the songs. It was a winter wonderland! Here's a really big Christmas tree, as you can see, since Victoria is a pink speck below.

Austin was looking at the fountain and enjoying the fact that he had taken off his gloves and hat.

Victoria and Karissa were dancing to the music. The lights were synchronized with the music, it was very cool!

On Saturday, Jason and I went to the Big House again. This time to watch Michigan slaughter Michigan State in ice hockey (5-0). This was the first time the hockey players ever played in the Big House (the football stadium). They wanted to set the world record for most people attending a hockey game ever in the world-- and did they ever! The count was 113,411, about 500 more than were at the football game we attended two months ago! A representative from the Guinness Book of World Records came to present a plaque. People even came from Australia and China to be a part of this huge event, called The Big Chill! How they even knew about it way over there, I have no idea!

1-2-3

2010-12-04T09:41:00.000-08:00

We have had three memorable moments this week; one for each of our kids.

Two years ago I sent in a description of how Victoria played so creatively, along with a picture, to a local newsletter about early childhood. It contains a question/answer section, tips on certain stages in early childhood, ideas for games and songs, resources for games and ideas, and a section about a local child who "loves to play". I sent in her picture and description about two years ago. For a while I thought they just weren't going to use it, then I forgot about it since I wasn't getting the newsletter anymore. All of a sudden, it came in the mail with a free book for her. It was pretty exciting! Now I want to send in one of Karissa, but maybe I'll wait a little... Karissa has been attending a preschool once a week that some friends of mine and I have formed. We each teach from our homes when it is our turn. This week was my turn to teach and my lesson was on Christmas. Of course I had to do the Nativity with them since I have all the costumes (thanks to my mom) and a set I made two years ago for our church Christmas party. Karissa got to be Mary, which worked out well. She is by far the oldest in the group and I knew that would be a hard part for some of the others (all of whom just turned 3), since she has to stand still for a while. Luckily, the other girls wanted to be the angels and kings (they didn't care they were kings as long as they could wear crowns and sparkles!) The boy who is Joseph is the older brother of the girl to the far right. He's already 4 and is not in the actual preschool class, but he was here because his mom was the helper that day. We have 8 kids in the class, not including him, so we need a parent helper each week since the group is so young. We were missing a boy and a girl this day. They all performed well for their moms, it was so cute!

Austin is now 18 months old! He can go to nursery at church without Jason now! He is loving all the lights and Christmas decorations. We've been listening to the soundtrack from The Polar Express and he loves to dance to the Hot Chocolate song. He still loves to dance and play on the piano. He loves things on wheels, especially his train. Lately, he's been carrying around two small dolls, one in each hand. He call them "guys". His other new words are clock, yes, and yay. He is such a good eater! He will eat his whole meal, which is a fair amount, before I get back to the table with his sisters' food. Then, he will either jump off his seat and be off to play, or ask for more. It's so nice to have a child eat so well at this age! His eating hasn't helped him much in the weight department though. At the dr. he was 22lb. and 14 oz, putting him in the 12 percentile for weight. He is 32 in. long, putting him the 41 percentile for height. He still loves to help put things back. He puts the wipes away after I change his diaper, likes to help put his dishes in the sink, put his cup on the counter when he's done with it, and always makes sure I put the cap back on the milk! I've never had such a good helper! This morning, he pulled one of my dirty socks from the hamper to sniff (gross! and yes, he still loves to sniff things). When he was done sniffing, he put it back in the hamper and put the lid back on. Amazing! If it had been Victoria, she would have dropped the sock and thrown everything else out of the hamper, before going off to get into something else, the hamper lid would never have been considered!

Thanksgiving

2010-11-28T16:59:00.000-08:00

This Thanksgiving we were privileged to have my cousin Celeste and her husband Richard and their baby Ellia over for the weekend. They just moved to Iowa City over the summer and are now our closest relatives, 7 hours away! I really enjoyed visiting with Celeste, since it's hard to visit a lot with any one relative at our family reunions, which are only every two years. It was also nice to get to know Richard and baby Ellia, who is 8 months old. The kids also had a great time with them. Karissa decided from the start that Celeste was her favorite cuddle buddy.

Everyone loved playing with Ellia. She especially loved playing with all the toys we have around here and being with all the commotion of kids.

Besides eating our delicious dinner, which I think Jason's turkey was his best, most moist one yet, we played lots of fun games, watched some videos of Celeste and I long ago, watched holiday videos, went to the Botanical Gardens to see the Christmas trees, Richard helped Jason put up Christmas lights, we watched football, had a surprise visit from our good friend Brad, and just enjoyed relaxing and being together. It was a great start to the holiday season!

PB and J

2010-11-21T17:27:00.000-08:00

None of my three kids will even touch a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Karissa used to eat peanut butter and honey, but has recently decided that she doesn't even like that anymore. The one time I accidentally put jelly on it, she had a hissy fit because there was "red stuff" on it. Victoria ate one once, but she wasn't even two yet, so she doesn't remember it. Of course Austin wants nothing to do with them either, but he's still young, so it's fine.

Now, you may think, why do you even care? I don't care that much. It just makes me laugh that yesterday Victoria and Karissa went to a birthday party and both came back with a beautifully shaped, butterfly, PB and J and neither one had a bite out if it! When I asked them if they could just try it, Karissa said, "No way! It has red stuff on it!" Victoria took the tiniest bite and scowled, like it was poisoned. I ate one. It was like a dessert! Of course this one had crunchy peanut butter and strawberry jam and was on white bread, without the crust (a kid's dream!), so no wonder it was like a dessert! I don't think it matters that I buy organic jam and peanut butter, both of which are just as delicious, and serve it on whole wheat, my kids just don't like PB and J! It's a shame, though, since it's like the easiest and cheapest lunch out there!

Austin update:
This week he started saying "Uh-oh" and thank you, which sounds more like "Da dooo", but he says it when I tell him to say "thank you". He's so sweet!

"Big" Moments

2010-11-13T18:29:00.000-08:00

The other day as we were leaving to go somewhere, I opened the van and told Karissa and Austin to get in. When I came out, Austin was happily sitting in Victoria's booster seat. I said, "Wow! Look at you Big Boy!" and he said, "Big Boy!" Of course then I had to ruin the moment by removing him from the booster and put him into his own car seat. Needless to say, he was objecting very strongly as I strapped him into the seat.

Recently, Karissa informed me that she is now a grown-up. She also asked me when she will become a mom. I told her in a least 20 years, but she said 6 years. Scary!

On Wednesday, as Victoria was getting dressed for her birthday pictures and was frantically rummaging through her clothes, she said, "I have nothing to wear!" I never thought I would hear my 6-year-old say that, especially someone with as many clothes as she has! Check out her collection.

PantsShirts (they can't even fit in the drawer!)
Skirts and sweaters Dresses

Karissa's tights are on the right, Victoria's on the left

Obviously, she is not hurting for clothes. Of course she has more shirts in her drawer now that it's getting cooler since she likes to wear the short-sleeves over the long-sleeves. Clothes are often a battle around here since Victoria and Karissa changes their outfits at least 3 times a day and leave the clothes on the floor. And, as any teenager, I mean 6-year-old, would be, she won't wear any of the suggestions I make! Oh, the life!

17 Months

2010-11-06T18:45:00.000-07:00

Austin is now 17 months, believe it or not. Some of the things he does now that have stood out most to me are:

- he says "bye" to Victoria and her friend when they go to school and to Jason when he leaves

- he repeats most easy words or sounds he hears his sisters or me say (including screaming)

- he says "cheese" when he sees the camera and drops everything to come smile at it

- he loves to dance, especially to the song "16 Minutes" from High School Musical 3

- he loves to follow Yoda, the cat, around

- he loves trains and Victoria's zhu-zhu pet

- he always grabs his shoes to go outside and wants to go out all the time

- he loves to close the garage door and do anything else to "help" me by pushing buttons, closing doors, stirring, or cleaning

- he eats his food quickly, then gets down to play, as opposed to playing while eating, like his sisters do

- he loves being held by his dad, when he's around!

- he loves to drink water, probably more than milk

- he got into the "Dracula" laugh with all the Halloween sounds (I have it on video below. Sorry about the lines in the film, my camera has been having problems lately! Also, the lighting is bad b/c I didn't think about turning all the lights on during his good moment.)

Halloween

2010-10-30T19:11:00.000-07:00

We have had a fun-filled week of Halloween activities. First, on Monday, I took Karissa and Austin to a special Halloween story-time at the library. They got to go trick-or-treating around the library, listen to Halloween stories and songs, and make a craft and treat. Here is Austin saying "cheese!", his new favorite word.
Karissa chose to be a princess this day.
On Thursday Victoria had her Halloween party at school. She chose to be Ariel that day, which surprised me that she didn't want to wear her "funky" kitty costume.
Here she is in her parade. I was able to volunteer for her class party, which was fun.

Friday night, the kids went trick-or-treating at friend's houses in our ward. A bunch of us opened our houses Friday night so we wouldn't have to go on Sunday. Austin was loving the idea of getting candy in a bucket. It's amazing how young the third child is when they discover candy! His sisters never had candy at his age!

Saturday, Karissa went to a birthday/costume party and was a witch for that.
Saturday night, we all went to the ward Halloween party. The kids wore the costumes that they went trick-or-treating in. Austin was Boots, Karissa was Dora, Victoria was Alicia, Jason was Diego, and I got to be Isa, the iguana. (In case you're not familiar with some of these characters, Alicia is Diego's sister and they are Dora's cousins and Isa is Dora's friend).

Here is Boots watching the cotton candy being made. These are the famous boots that were mine and both Victoria's and Karissa's.
Here's my spikes. It's not my dream costume, but at least I got a good hoodie out of it! (Yes, I plan on taking the spikes out.)
Yes, Boots' ears are a little big, but I converted his costume from Dumbo to Boots and didn't take enough out for the ears. At least he's a cute monkey, even if his ears are too big!

Primary Program

2010-10-25T11:13:00.000-07:00

Since I am the primary secretary at church I got to sit up in the stands during the primary program yesterday. We practiced the previous two Sundays and it paid off- the program was beautiful! It wasn't too short, or too long, and everything went smoothly. The kids sang beautifully and the Spirit was there! We had a full house in the chapel with all the extra visitors who came, including our neighbor, Victoria's friend, Bethany.

Karissa was the first child to say her line. She said, "I am grateful for my family because they buy things for me." She had a 9-year-old helper who reminded her of the second part of her line when she froze up. She was adorable! I am told that she sang well for most of the songs.

Victoria was flawless on her line. She spoke slowly, clearly, and reverently. She said, "My favorite story of Jesus is when He raised the girl from the dead." She was sitting right in front and Jason said she was reverent the whole time, which was good. She has been known to wave a lot from the stand and I was afraid she was going to wave to Bethany the whole time!

Fall Fun

2010-10-24T18:07:00.000-07:00

Here are some of the fall season activities we did this week.

We went on a nature walk with our neighbor friends.

We went to the zoo with our "far-away" friends. Luckily, we came home with all of the kids. We had a scare when we couldn't find Karissa for about 10 min. and I found her with a security guard. On the way home, I asked her if she wanted a drink of water and she said, "No, I have my slobber I can drink." Nice!

For the Halloween festivities, they had some moon bounce/obstacle courses. Austin, and everyone else, had a blast!

And we carved pumpkins. Austin enjoyed this more than his sisters did at that age.

Sweetest Day

2010-10-17T19:01:00.000-07:00

Have you ever heard of Sweetest Day? Well, I hadn't, until a couple of days ago I saw those words a couple of times on the Internet, but I didn't think much about it. So I found out yesterday from my neighbor that yesterday was Sweetest Day. He and his wife had exchanged gifts just like it was Valentine's Day. I asked him if it was just a Michigan holiday or one celebrated throughout the US. He told me everyone in the US celebrates it and it has been a "holiday" since 1920! Later, I asked Jason about it, 'cause I really didn't think I was that out of it and he told me it was like a regional thing, around Ohio and Michigan mostly. Phew! But still, we've lived here 4 years now and I've never heard of it until now!

Luckily, we really had it all planned out. Jason had bought tickets awhile back for us to go to the Michigan -Iowa game at the "Big House" (Michigan's stadium which is the largest football stadium in the US). We got a babysitter and I was away from the kids for over 6 hours-- what a record! It was a fun game, even though we lost and Michigan really had some rough moments, but there were some hopeful moments and exciting ones as well. The best part was being alone with my hubby at a football game, just like back in the day. Another cool part was that we were two of the 112,734 people at this game, which is a record for people attending a college football game (though I know how they fit so many people at the Big House, the seats are 6 inches smaller than at other stadiums!) Also, when we got home, the house was somewhat in order and all of my kids were in bed! I did miss putting my babies to bed, but I must say it was nice to just come home and relax!

Happy Sweetest Day!

Here's what a quarter of 112,734 looks like.Let's go Blue!

Here's our wrinkly faces in the sun.

6th Birthday

2010-10-11T18:43:00.000-07:00

Victoria's real birthday was today and unlike other years, this one had more meaning to me, probably because she was born on Monday, Columbus Day, so the timing between General Conference and her birthday was the same. It also helped that my sister-in-law was overdue with her first little chica and gave birth to her just 4 days ago, bringing back the memories of waiting anxiously for my first to come at exactly the same time of year.

I chuckle at the thoughts I had when I would think about my first baby, Victoria. I always pictured her as a sweet, little, soft-spoken girl; maybe a little shy. It wasn't too far of a stretch, I had some of those qualities when I was little. Instead, she is a free-spirited, outgoing, friendly girl with a very loud voice. In fact, she came out of the birth canal with her mouth wide open wailing loudly and did not stop for more than 30 minutes (I remember being stitched up for all that time and hearing her cry, loud as can be, the whole time)!

But, even though she is not what I expected, she is better. With the qualities and talents she already has, including her intelligence, she will lead a great life.

Happy Birthday Victoria!

We got her roller skates, upon her request. During Austin's nap, she, Karissa, and I roller skated in the cul-de-sac. I had bought Karissa some roller skates at a garage sale and gave them to her when Victoria opened hers.She really wanted to go to Bob's Big Boy for dinner since we drive by it every day and she's never been.
Jammin' to the Beatles' birthday song.

Our last few pieces of cake from the party.

G-I-R-L-S Rock!

2010-10-09T19:14:00.000-07:00

Everyone who knows us, knows that Victoria is quite the performer/diva. These are just some of the pictures that she requests I take of her almost every time she is singing and dancing, which we do just about every day. But, a lot of people don't know that Karissa is a budding performer/diva. Check out these pictures!
Such heart and soul in these songs she's singing!

It came as no surprise when Victoria wanted to have a Hannah Montana birthday party this year. Since I didn't really want to do a party based around Hannah Montana, we chose a theme from Oriental Trading that we found a great deal on: G-i-r-l-s Rock! We got 8 goodie bags already stuffed with these fun little dive-like treasures,

guitar confetti, hot pink and purple streamers and balloons, plates, cups, napkins, utensils for eight, and a purple table cloth for $50! It was a pretty good deal, especially considering the quality of the goodie bag toys (goodie bags are my biggest complaint when buying for a birthday party, so this just made it easier and less expensive).

Victoria was very excited for her theme. We made cardboard guitars for her and her friends to decorate at the party. Here she is, practicing her guitar.

We had the party on Friday evening so Jason could be there, instead of needing to be off at the library studying as he would have been if it were on a Saturday, though he did have to come home from work early.

We played freeze dance and musical chairs, all to the tunes of Hannah, of course.

Even Austin was playing musical chairs.

Decorated their guitars, with feathers, buttons, the guitar confetti, beads, stickers, and glittery puffy paint. It was a big hit!
Eating pizza outside on the unusually warm October day.

Singing "Happy Birthday". (She wasn't giving everyone a dirty look here, she must have been clearing her throat.)
Of course I had to make a guitar cake!

She is leading her friends in a song from school here while we wait for everyone to finish eating cake and come watch Victoria open her presents.
Here's the birthday girl with her new shirt and decorated guitar.

Pumpkin Patch

2010-10-04T12:04:00.000-07:00

I love visiting the pumpkin patch with my kids! Here is our recent visit there over the weekend. You can tell who the first child is and that she was born in October by her ease in posing with pumpkins!

Austin didn't exactly enjoy the wagon ride here...

16 Months

2010-10-03T18:26:00.000-07:00

My baby is 16 months old! He has seemed so old the past few weeks to me. He is growing out of the baby stage and into the toddler stage and it's all gone by so quickly!

He has decided this past week that he will not sit in his booster seat at the table anymore, so I took that out. He tries to put his own shoes on, with no success. He likes drinking from a "big kid cup". He likes to brush his own teeth and at the park the other day he didn't want to play with the little girl who was exactly his age, but followed Karissa and her friend around instead who went on the tire swing, which he wanted to do! He has even had a couple of "baby tantrums". Of course they don't even compare to some of the ones Karissa has, they just make me laugh.

He recently said "Dadda" and he says "ball" and "woof-woof" when he sees a dog.

His favorite things are:
-singing with music and with the hymn book at church
-dancing with his sisters
-repeating "Ahh!" after his sisters say it, which is hilarious to hear how his voice is already an octave below theirs when he says it
-saying "Aya!" when he hears an airplane and he also points with his fingers crossed (I haven't been able to catch that on the camera yet, but he always points with his fingers crossed at airplanes and everything else!)
-being outside
-helping Mom (he likes to help put the lid on the milk, turn the faucet on, vacuum, put things away...)
-snacking
-his train
-"playing" the piano
-and the number one favorite thing is sniffing clothes! We figured out why he always bends his arm over his face, he's sniffing the fabric. Now he has discovered that he can sniff anything, from Victoria's pjs, to his own clothes he wore yesterday or will wear tomorrow, or even Grandpa's smelly running shirt! I think it's the same idea as another kids' "blankie", only he doesn't have a specific thing he likes. Anything that's a soft fabric, he will carry it around and sniff it until he's had enough.

Here are some pictures of his sniffing.

He was so cute with this popper the other day. He followed me around the entire house while I vacuumed and pushed his popper everywhere I pushed the vacuum. He is such a good helper!

Big boy cup!

"Dadda"

2010-09-27T11:44:00.000-07:00

I totally forgot to mention Austin's accomplishment until I read my friend's blog about her daughter's first word. Austin said "Dadda" before, but it seemed like it was in passing and he wouldn't repeat it, though I think he did know what he was saying since we were on our way to mine and Jason's room...

This last time, however, I know he knew what he was saying. He and I were in my room putting clothes away and we heard the front door open and Jason step inside (of course I only thought I heard it since it was about two hours before he usually comes home and I was highly doubtful that he was home early). The only reason I even went down to see if it was Jason was because Austin said, "Dadda!" and started to run for the stairs! It was so cute and unexpected, and also unexpected that Jason really was home 2 hours early! This was a couple of weeks ago and I was just about to pick up my dad from the airport, so I totally forgot to mention it here!

We were trying to capture his shiner that he got the other day, but it's hard to see unless his eye is closed, but you can see it is slightly swollen. It's totally purple on his eyelid, but I'm not about to risk waking him up when he's sleeping, so here you go!

Doughnuts and Cider

2010-09-26T18:21:00.000-07:00

If you're ever in Michigan in the fall, the tradition is to visit a cider mill and get apple cider and doughnuts. There are many in the area, we usually go to Plymouth Orchards. This time, we were able to take my dad and his wife, who just got off their mission where they served in the mission office of their local mission in Southern California. They happened to be here at the right time for this fun tradition that we do every year.

The one we go to happens to have animals to see and great picture set-ups for the season. They also have a wagon ride through the orchard, but it wasn't running when we went. No big deal, I'm sure we'll go again soon!

Austin really liked the cider!
Powder- Victoria's favorite!

Mmmm! Sugar and cinnammon!

Marathon Update

2010-09-20T17:10:00.000-07:00

So I found out that I placed 19/107 for my age group of women and 138/704 women total. I guess that's not too shabby!

26.2 Baby!

2010-09-19T19:00:00.000-07:00

After months of training I finally got to run the Air Force Marathon! It was such a thrill! I did not do as well as I had hoped, but I will blame that on the fact that I didn't really train the last four weeks, due to some injury. I tried to keep it on the down-low, so as not to worry certain people in my family. I don't know what caused it, or even exactly what it was. At first I thought I pulled a groin muscle, but after not running for two weeks, and it still hurt to run after that, I figured it couldn't have been a pulled muscle. The last two weeks I ran a couple of short runs and it still hurt, but I felt like I wanted to try the marathon to see how I would feel. I took some ibuprofen and felt fairly good most of the run. I could feel my injury the whole time, but it really didn't bother me until mile 20, then after seeing my family at mile 22, my quads were feeling like they were going to burst, so I slowed down quite a bit then. I always heard that the "wall" was more mental, but mentally I felt pretty good. I knew I could make it to the end. My legs were the things that hit the "wall".

My favorite parts were all the rock bands playing at certain points throughout the race, the crowds cheering me on (especially through the small town of Fairborn), seeing my family, and seeing the finish line, and of course crossing it! Even though I would have liked to have come in sooner then 4:12, I'm just glad I could finish it, considering my injury. Thanks to all who supported me on this craze!

Mile 22 Finished!

The Playground

2010-09-13T17:09:00.000-07:00

The big project this summer was building a new playground for our backyard. The old one was fun, but one of those metal, old-style ones, that had huge spaces between the very tall ladder up to the slide that required just a little too much parental supervision for toddlers. Not to say that I don't need to supervise with our new one, but I feel more comfortable with Austin climbing the stairs for the slide on this one by himself.

We found this one at our local grocery store back in May, $100 off the original price. After having looked for months on craigslist, etc., for the perfect playground, we found this that beat out everything else. Jason started building it in mid-July after his classes got out and the World Cup was over. Actually, he started building the border that he made for it then. He didn't actually start building the playground until late-July. Of course it took more time than we had planned (he says he knows why it was such a good price), but I think personally think it was worth it and the kids agree.

One thing that added to the length of time this project took was putting the border around and then killing the grass within it. We decided that since we have more than a quarter acre of a yard, which takes a fair amount of time to mow, and we didn't enjoy mowing around the other playground, that this would be a good solution. We have a little less grass to mow, we don't have to mow in and out of swings, a slide, and a playhouse, and we won't have parts of the yard with half grass/half dirt (ie. the parts of the grass that get run down from swings and slide).

So we laid down landscaping fabric, 3 yards of sand, and 5 yards of mulch. Now, 1 1/2 months later, we have our playground! Even better, we didn't have a chance to get rid of the old one yet, so we have our own park which all the neighborhood kids enjoy!

Here's the chicas enjoying watermelon at the picnic table right after the base was set up.
Austin has become a huge fan of the slide!!
Karissa likes both swings (it does come with two"big kid" swings, but since she can't pump yet this works for now so Austin can swing too). Austin just climbed up the ladder by himself and was very proud!

Victoria enjoys the see-saw, but especially loves the regular swing! She swings on it whenever she gets a chance, even when it's getting dark out and she's by herself! She also enjoys the monkey bars.
Here's what it looked like after we put the sand down.
Here's the playhouse, which everyone loves to "decorate" with chalk, something they couldn't do on the metal one, which can kind of be seen in the background.

All done!
We even re sized the sand box to fit inside the mulch area. Jason just finished making the cover for it tonight.

First Day of School

2010-09-09T18:21:00.000-07:00

Tuesday was Victoria's first day of kindergarten. Though she was ready in terms of supplies, I don't know if she was ready mentally. Not that all of her hard work at the charter school for Fantastic 5's didn't pay off last year, it's just that she was enjoying dinking around, especially in the morning.

The day before school, instead of talking about going to see her new teacher we had just met, or seeing the friends she already knew were in her class, or even talking about being nervous, she woke up in an imaginary world of her own.

She woke up early, which I was happy about since she's going to am kinder. I told her to get dressed and eat so she could practice for the next day. She looked at me kind of funny, then proceeded to put on an hour, or so, long production of her "wedding day" including dressing up with a veil and everything! My mom and I even hummed the Wedding March for her, which was the only acknowledgement I gave to her "special day". She even had Karissa as her flower girl. After breakfast, which I forced her to eat, she "gave birth" to Froggie, her baby. The rest of the day she was his mom. Doing all the things she said a good mother would do. She kept asking me if she was a good mother and I kept telling her "sure, but I want you to be a daughter right now and help me with this...."

She was absolutely, totally oblivious to the fact that school was starting the next day, or at least she didn't even care. She was just in this other world, not even interacting much with me or my mom, her BFF, which is very unlike her for at least part of the day.

The next morning when I told her it was time to get up and get dressed, etc., she wasn't very happy. We had an argument about what to wear and of course about moving faster. Last year she wore a uniform, which now I'm wishing she still had to wear one! Her outfit was cute, but she was shivering in the strappy shirt she chose to wear with her short shorts, until I made her put a shirt under the first one.

Here's the first day, once she got warm and could smile again. Here's the second day in front of school, as I forgot to bring the camera to school the first day.

The plus side is, she loves her teacher already and always says how fun her class is, as I'm sure it is since there are more "toys" in it than in her class last year! Also, I love being able to drive there in 5 minutes or walk in 20 minutes, slow pace.

Karissa's first day of preschool was on Wednesday. We are doing an at-home preschool swap with 7 other moms once a week. She was really excited to carry a back-pack and "go to school" even though it was at her friend's house. She got to bring the mystery bag this week and brought her bear Beary in it to share. She is the oldest by a long shot in her group, but I think it will be good for her.

Missionary Mom

2010-09-06T18:37:00.000-07:00

My mom is here visiting this week. This is her last hurrah before she and her husband go on a mission to Geneva, Switzerland for two years. She's been teaching the kids French, which has been fun for us all.

Here's some of the activities we've been doing:

Roller skating

The zoo (Austin doesn't like to part with his Mama)

They got to hold guinea pigs at the nature center at the zoo.

They also got to paint their own faces, obviously, and create a "habitat" for the animal they pretended to be.

First Hair Cut

2010-08-29T17:21:00.001-07:00

Recently we gave Austin his first haircut. I noticed during our trip to Utah that he had some"wings" hanging over his ears. I never had to think about cutting his sisters' hair this young, for obvious reasons, so he seemed young, but I didn't want him looking "scruffy". So we let him look at the clippers, while turned on, which fascinated him. He kept fairly still, for a 14-month-old, while Jason shaved just the bottom. Of course it helped that Victoria fed him fruit snacks the whole time! All in all, it wasn't bad and I'm definitely glad we used the clipppers as I did not want to give him a bowl cut!

Zion

2010-08-20T11:37:00.000-07:00

We just returned from a family reunion to the Zion Ponderosa Ranch Resort in Utah, near Zion National Park, with my extended family. It was a whirlwind of a trip with flying to SLC late Wednesday evening, driving 6 hours to Zion on Friday, then back to SLC on Tuesday and an early flight home on Wednesday again, but it was worth it! We enjoyed every minute of it, but missed Grandma and Grandpa and others who couldn't come. Here are some highlights.

Playing with cousins in SLC

Visiting my aunt Karen on my dad's side

Bryce Canyon Museum

BFF's

Bryce Canyon hike on the way to Zion

Driving with beautiful scenery

Mmmm, sand!

Our hike to Slippery Rock

Swinging

Victoria's first tooth came out!

My tall, "cozy" cousins

Dancing and dressing up

Our huge "cabin"

Looking for lizards

Beatles Rock Band

Kite flying

Animals

My Mom's children and grandchildren

Extremely friendly squirrels

The Narrows

And of course, the BYU bookstore. Go Cougs!

Walking and Talking

2010-08-08T18:14:00.000-07:00

Austin loves to walk anywhere and everywhere and with whatever "walking accessory" he can find. He uses his walker (the one inside and the one outside)

the baby doll stroller

even the baby doll high chair

or just on his own.

He will go outside any chance he gets, as that is his favorite place to walk. Yesterday, he walked halfway around the block! He will grab his sandals and bring them to me so I can put them on him to go outside, usually saying "Aht, aht!" or "Uh, uh!"

Which brings me to his "talking". Now, when Victoria was Austin's age, she was saying water bottle, banana, doggie, baby, mommy, daddy.... Of course she was the first, and female, and happens to be very talented in the verbal area. Austin communicates very well, but most everything sounds more like a grunt. He'll say "Uh, uh!" for me to take his sippy and put it on the table, or "Ah, ah!" for me to give him a banana. Of course these are all combined with the motions of reaching for what he wants, so I don't usually have to guess, I always know. He does say "woo, woo" when he sees or hears a dog. He also jibber-jabbers to himself as he plays with things, so at least he's got something going on!

11 Years!

2010-08-01T08:32:00.001-07:00

Jason and I celebrated our 11 year anniversary yesterday. It's amazing how fast these 11 years have gone by! We are definitely out of the newly-wed stage, though I don't feel like one of those "old married" couples. Luckily, we had Jason's parents visiting this week and they graciously watched the kids a couple times so we could celebrate by going to the temple on Wednesday and out for a bite to eat and on Friday we got a couple's massage, which was divine! On our actual anniversary Jason and his dad worked on putting our new swing set together, but it worked out well since we had already celebrated.

Other activities we enjoyed while Gramms and Abuelo were here were:

-going to the library

-visiting the botanical gardens and conservatory

-Victoria got to go roller skating with her summer playground program

-attending the theater to see High School Musical on stage

-going to Ann Arbor to see where Jason goes to school and eat at the famous Zingermann's Deli

-visiting the Henry Ford Estate

-enjoying a free jazz concert around the corner from our house in the JC Penny parking lot, where Victoria and Karissa put on a lovely dance concert for everyone

We all enjoyed our time with Gramms and Abuelo!

All Because of a Taco Salad...

2010-07-26T10:27:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago, for my long Saturday run I ran 13 miles and I felt awful! My breathing was off, which led to a side ache for most of the run, and I was really tired. Three days later, when I ran my 7 miler my feet were hurting and I had a couple of pains in my tailbone. Wednesday night I actually iced my feet because they were hurting. Luckily, I had my two day break, and then only a 10 miler the next Saturday. By then I realized what my problem was, when I had no problems before that and I had run a 12 miler and a few 10 milers. The night before that awful run, I had a taco salad for dinner! Of course everyone knows that you're supposed to have a meal high in carbs the night before a big run, some sort of pasta is best. I just didn't really think about it that week. I had been feeling so good on my runs and didn't think 13 miles was very far, compared to 16,18, or 20 miles. We just happened to have our leftovers scheduled for that night and taco salad is what we had. It didn't help, either, that we were out of bananas, my preferred snack before a run for the past 10 years, so I had a plum instead. Needless to say, I have made sure to have a good pasta dinner every Friday night since. It definitely pays off. Last Saturday I ran 15 miles and felt great!! I even managed to pull around an 8.6 minute pace. The best part is that I felt good on my run today and am not dreading my 8 miler tomorrow.

Note to self: Do not eat a taco salad the night before a big run!!

Swimming and Camping

2010-07-18T17:46:00.000-07:00

Victoria and Karissa completed their swimming classes for this summer. Though I gave them the option to take anther course, neither of them was interested. Victoria has a ton of fun in the water and loves to get wet, but she always says she's nervous about jumping in and getting her face wet. I could always hear her telling her instructor how nervous she was, even though I was across the pool room, up in the bleachers; that's how loud her voice is! Of course, everyone already knows how excited Karissa is about the water.... Luckily, we've been swimming in our neighbor's pool every weekend for the past month now, so they are actually getting more comfortable even without lessons anymore. Karissa even lets me let go of her now so she can hang onto her ring and sit on a raft without clinging to me for dear life!

Here's Karissa with Jason at her last class. She was actually enjoying herself here!

Victoria was supposed to swim without her instructor here, but didn't feel ready yet. She'll get there!
Last night we went camping at a lovely site. There were some flowers and nice trees, the ground was even freshly mowed! Okay, so the chicas and I camped in our backyard just for kicks. We haven't been in a while and had to cancel our upcoming trip at the lake. To make it up to the chicas, we sent up the tent, started a fire in the pit, had s'mores, and really enjoyed our "camping trip". The first thing Victoria said this morning when she woke up was, "This was the most fun ever!"

Musical Theater

2010-07-12T18:17:00.000-07:00

Last week Victoria and Karissa went to a musical theater camp. This was their "big" summer activity, besides our vacation in August. Karissa's was for an hour each day and Victoria's for 1 1/2 hours immediately following. It was at the Village Theater here in Canton, which was beautiful! They both got to sing, dance, act, dress up, and perform on stage, as well as learn some technical aspects of the performing arts. While there, we discovered that High School Musical will be performed there at the end of the month. Since my chicas are major fans of the show and the soundtrack, I jumped on the tickets! The teachers even commented on how Karissa knew all the words to every song on the soundtrack. Now, Victoria goes around pretending to be Sharpay or Hannah Montana (it's amazing how fast she went from her obsession with princesses to "rock stars", as she calls them!)

Here's Karissa holding her puppet after her puppet show.

Here's the videos of their final performances.

Finally!

2010-07-11T07:48:00.000-07:00

Austin finally walked long enough for me and the camera was nearby, so here is a little video of him.

Long Weekend

2010-07-05T16:47:00.000-07:00

We started our long 4th of July weekend with Jason coming home early on Friday with Slurpees, as a special surprise! I seriously could count on one hand how many times I have had a Slurpee in our 11 years of marriage, as opposed to the many, many times I had them as a kid. I don't if there's just fewer 7/11's around where we've lived, or if I've just been getting too old to care, but I sure enjoyed my special treat! Karissa, however, the weird eater that she is, wouldn't even try it. Victoria happily had hers the next day.

Friday evening we went to a wedding reception at the U of M botanical gardens and it was sooo beautiful and lovely. The kids had a great time between the yummy food, the dancing, and all the gardens we could wander through. I took some great shots there.

We had some friends over for a bbq on the 4th and used our special grilling rub we got from our grilling class. The chicken was excellent! Jason and I watched fireworks from our window. We figured since he and Victoria saw them two weeks ago, there was no need to have another tired day for her, or anyone else for that matter. We had to save our energy for the our tri-ward picnic at the park today in the 95 degree weather with humidity to make it feel like over 100! We enjoyed low 70s all last week, but Mother Nature decided to crank up the heat a little for the holiday. So, luckily, we were able to swim at our neighbor's house on Saturday and today in the afternoon. Even Karissa had fun and I enjoyed soaking my running legs (I'm training for a marathon).

Happy Independence Day!

First Steps!

2010-06-30T10:56:00.001-07:00

Austin took his first steps yesterday! I keep waiting for it to happen, since he has been standing very steadily on his own, here and there, for a couple weeks now and is very confident with his walkers. Of course, I didn't get any of the three times on camera. The first one happened while Karissa was blessing our food at lunch and I heard the slow, steady sound of feet walking on the floor. I took a peek to see him take about three more steps to the chair he was aiming for. Last night, when I was with Karissa at her swimming class, Jason said Austin took a few more steps in front of our garage and then again in front of our neighbor's house. I am determined to get him to do it again and I have the camera close by today. Here he is this morning showing how well he can stand alone, but he wouldn't walk. I'll keep you updated!