Lydia with Straight hair

I know I still have not blogged anything about Christmas but hopefully I will get around to that. We did have a wonderful Christmas though. I just had to put up these pictures of Lydia with straight hair. This morning I straightened her hair. At first she hated it. She cried and said "it doesn't even look like me". She wanted her curls back. After realizing that she could actually brush her hair it became a little more appealing but after about ten minutes of brushing she was once again ready for the curls. She then told me "Mom, next time you want to play with my hair, please don't straighten it. It just too hard to get the curls back. " Of course she was thrilled when all we had to do was wet her hair and all was well. Now her hair is back to those beautiful curls but I took lots of pictures of her with straight hair since I don't know when she will ever let me do that again.

Rafael's office party

Rafael

Rafael's office party

We had all of Rafael's employees over for a Christmas party. This was definitely the best way to have a party. We hired a caterer and it made my life so much easier. They came in and set everything up and then waited on us as we ate and cleaned everything up before they left. The food was outstanding! We had beef tender loin, chicken, green beans, hash brown casserole, some sort of pasta/cole slaw salad (awesome!) , rolls and of course tons of desserts. I wish I could hire the caterer just to come cook for my family atleast once a week. That would be awesome!

Neighboorhood progressive dinner

The first weekend in December we had our first annual neighboorhood progressive dinner. My aunt Marian really helped me prepare for this a lot. She was definately in her element. I absolutely love all the Christmas decorations. I think we made a really good team.

My house hosted desserts. I hate that I didn't get any pictures of the desserts. I had a spice cake and a german chocolate cake. They were both so beautiful and so yummy. My neighbor who was paired up with me for the desserts brought a bunch of goodies from a local bakery. She had different cookies, chocolate covered strawberries, and brownies. Everything looked and tasted so good. We started at 6:00 and didn't get to my house for desserts until about 10:00. CRAZY!!! It was a very slow progressing progressive dinner but it was still fun. I am excited to do it again next year but maybe I will volunteer to be in charge of keeping up with the time then.

Andrew's Birthday

The Saturday after Thanksgiving we celebrated Andrew's birthday. We also had a lot of friends over to watch the Alabama vs. Auburn game. It was really not so much a game but a slaughter. We wore our Auburn attire like any good fans would but for once we were actually deep down hoping Alabama would win. Alabama had so much more to gain from the win than Auburn and actually Auburn stinks this year so they didn't really deserve a win. Anyways, back to Andrew's birthday. He absolutely loved everyone singing Happy Birthday to him. In fact that was his favorite song for the next few days. Everyone seemed to be on the same wave length for his gifts this year...the Gil's finally have a boy...CARS!!!! He got lots of cars and even a car puzzle. He loved it!!! He is such a boy. I say that a lot.

Thanksgiving

I know it's almost Christmas and I am just now posting about Thanksgiving but I couldn't resist blogging a little about Thanksgiving in my attempt to update my blog. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving this year. We had my family and the Stinson family over to our house for lunch and everyone stayed all afternoon. Right after lunch we walked down to the pond and some people attempted some fishing while others watched Adams dog fetch a ball out in the water. Poor dog he had to fetch that ball for each of the kids but he jumped in every time with no hesitation. We all played for a while down by the pond before heading back home for desserts. Then everyone sort of did their own thing. The men played pool, shuffle board, and ping pong and then took naps all over the game room. The women played dominoes, jumped on the trampoline with the kids, and some of the ladies took some naps too. It was really a lot of fun and a very relaxful Thanksgiving.

It's been a while

Okay so it's been a while since I have had time to update my blog. I have been super busy with lots of parties...tis the season. Also I've been reading a lot lately so that has taken up all my free time. I love this time of year. I love all the parties. No matter how exhausted I feel later from all the prep. I love all the shopping!!! I love buying presents for people (mostly, except those hard to buy for people....my dad, grandparents...). Most importantly I love spending more time with family and friends. I am so excited that Lydia is going to be out of school for a couple of weeks. I love having her home with us.

Pow Wow

We have a babysitting club in our family. We take turns watching each others kids on Friday nights. It's great because it gives mommy and daddy a date night, the cousins get to play together, and the aunts and uncles get to spend time with the nieces and nephews. Matt and Jenn haven't joined our club yet but maybe after baby number two they too will be ready for a break every once in a while.

Tonight was our turn. We decided to have a pow wow. Don't I have the cutest nieces? I have to say this is the most adorable bunch of Indians I have ever seen. We made our Indian headbands, we then decorated tepees (ice cream cones decorated with frosting and mini m&ms), then they ate the tepees, and to wind down we finished by watching Pocahontas. It was a fun night and the time flew by. I love when Rafael and I have date night but I also really look forward to having all the kids over. Now that they are all starting to grow up so much they are more and more fun!

Ladies Night

Okay, I don't have any photos but I still wanted to blog about this. Last night I was invited for a Ladies Night Out. I have to admit I was a little apprehensive at first. We all went to La Parilla. I only knew the lady who invited me. For those of you who know me, I can be loud and crazy around my friends and family but around people I don't know I can be pretty shy. This "expanding my friend circle" is a new experience for me. My friends consist of family, members of my church, or friends that I have had since high school. Since I'm a stay at home mom I haven't had too many opportunities to make new friends. Now that my kids are becoming involved in more activities I get to meet other moms. Lately I have found myself going out of my comfort zone more and more. So last night I went out to eat with 1o other ladies I had never met before but most of them I knew of because of their husbands occupations (mostly lawyer's and doctor's wives). I actually had a really good time and I am excited for the next Ladies Night with these ladies.

Yeah!!!! I Did It!

Many of you know I have been training for my first 5k. I ran on Saturday and my goal was to run the whole way and finish strong. Now I will just have to work on my time. I did it in 33 min. and for those of you who are runners you know that's not great but I was very pleased. I was happy to finish under 45 min. so I was thrilled with 33. The best part of it all was that I felt great after the race. I was glad to cross the finish line but I felt like I could have kept going so that just tells me that next time I can speed it up a little. This is such a big accomplished for me because just a few months ago I was out of breath just running 1/4 a mile and I have slowly worked my way up. My ultimate goal is to do a triathlon. I think that would be so awesome so now I am going to start training for that. In the pictures are Amanda Meyers, Andrea Balcena, and me. It was all of our first race. Sarah Murray also raced with us but somehow I didn’t get any pictures of her but she did great.

The rest of the day we stayed pretty busy. Some friends of ours were there to cheer me on at the race and they joined us as we went to a Fall Festival mainly so the kids could ride on a pony. It was Andrew's first time and of course he loved it. His only complaints would be that they didn't go fast enough and it didn't last long enough. I had to pry him off. Then after grabbing a bite to eat we headed out to the Headland airport for a "Fly In" . We watched several planes take off and land and the kids got to sit in our neighbors plane and pretend to be real pilots. It was a busy Saturday but we had a great day.

The dance party

Lauren watching the parade

Disney and Sea World

After hanging out at the hotel all day we met up with Nana and Papa and Jason (my brother) and Maria and their girls. We went to the Mickey's not so scarry halloween party and we had a blast! I was a little disappointed in how crowded the streets were but you could walk right up to any ride. We had fun dressing up and getting our faces painted but our fairy wings didn't last very long. We had to take them off to ride the rides and when we walked around with them we kept poking people with our wings so they ended up in the stroller and we looked a little more like ballerinas for most of the night. It rained on us when we first got to the park but luckily it didn't last too long and we had a great evening.

We got tons of candy!!! Atleast we won't have to buy any candy to give out at halloween.

Lauren was finally tall enough to ride splash mountain and she loved it! On the other hand, Lydia cried because we kept seeing a lot of empty carts going down so she thought the people had fallen out so she thought we would fall out. Needless to say she wasn't getting back in line to ride that one.

The parade was awesome. We almost had as much fun watching Lauren watch the parade as we did watching the actual parade. She was really enjoying herself. We also really had a lot of fun at the dance party. The kids got to dance with Donald Duck (dressed in a pumpkin costume) and Pluto.

The next day we went to Sea World. We love Sea World! It's not Disney but I'm not sure that the kids don't enjoy it just as much. I love being able to push a double stroller around and not bumping in to anyone. There were times when we would have the whole side walk to ourselves. The shows our great and my kids (even Andrew) are still going around chanting "Shamu! Shamu!" The pictures I took are of the kids getting ready to watch a show and the girls on the glass floor with fish swimming under them. That might have been their favorite part. Of course I love the pic of PaPa in the stoller. Don't we all wish they made those big enough for adults???

More Fall Vacation

After leaving St. Augustine we drove down to Orlando and checked in the Gaylord Palms hotel. The hotel itself deserved a day of exploring. We loved the kiddie pool area. One of the best parts was that it is a huge pool and it doesn't go over 4 ft. deep anywhere so Lydia was able to touch bottom everywhere in the pool! We also had a lot of fun playing with Rafael's waterproof digital camera that I bought him for Father's Day. (It was a replacement for the camera he dropped in the lake)
The inside of the hotel has a huge attrium and the kids were in heaven with all the fish and alligators. Andrew would wake up in the morning and try to open the hotel room door and cry for the fish. I loved all the vegetation. They had orchids everywhere and they were so beautiful!!! We all loved this hotel and Lydia is still telling me that she wishes we could go back there and live.

Our Fall Vacation!

We decided to take a short trip since Lydia had a week off from school. We first went down to St. Augustine to visit some close friends of ours. We loved St. Augustine! The old downtown St. Augustine was really a neat place to visit and I was really impressed with how clean it was. I think for the kids the highlight of the night was making shadows on the wall of the old spanish fort. We also were able to go to the outlet malls and do a little shopping :o)!!!! And before we left we went to the beach. It is different from the beaches we are used to in the Gulf so it was fun to see the surfers catching some big waves and the strangest part for us was being able to drive your car on the beach. All in all we had a great weekend in St. Augustine and loved being able to visit with our friends. We have missed them so much and it was great to spend some time with them.

Our Fall Vacation!

On the Farm

We are so glad the weather is finally cool enough that we can visit one of our favorite parks and actually stay for more then 10 min. before we all get too hot and grumpy. We love to help "Farmer Sid" feed the animals. He is such a nice man and loves for the kids to help and he always makes it an educational experience for me and the kids. I highly recommend those of you who live here to try and make it out to Landmark to help Farmer Sid. He does it everyday at 4:00. It's not advertised so usually we are the only ones there when we go. This was the first time Andrew was actually old enough to help out so he LOVED it. Although he kept calling every animal from the chickens to the mules "dog-dog". Hopefully we will be able to make it out there once a week while the weather is so nice.

Gymnastics

Okay...I finally got some pics of the girls at gymnastics. Check out how nice the gym is. The girls and I love it!

Lydia's school

For the month of August Lydia was the "Good Citizen" at her school. Each teacher chooses a child to be the good citizen for the month and they get a certificate and then they go to a special lunch with the principal. Lydia got to ride on the school bus for the first time!

Every Tues. and Thurs. morning I go in and volunteer at Lydia's school. I love being able to go into her classroom and work with all the kids. Lydia loves me being there. She told me the other day that she was so glad that I worked at her school. :) The only down side to this is that I have very little time to do the other things that I really need to be doing while my two other little ones are in mother's moring out and preschool. But starting next week I will only be going one day a week because Lydia's teacher has asked her mom to come in and help on Thurs. so that will free up one day a week for me to do the not so fun things that I have to do to keep my life running smoothly i.e. grocery shopping...Here are some pics that I have been able to take at Lydia's school

March of Dimes Cruise In

This past weekend I joined some of the young women in Dothan 1st and 2nd wards volunteering at the March of Dimes Cruise In. We were in charge of the kiddie area. They had several inflatables donated by Jumparoo and free snow cones and popcorn. It was really a nice event and I hope they do it again next year. They had so many really cool classic cars and some really decked out new cars too. It was $10 for the family to get in (Rafael brought the kids) and in the kiddie area everything was free. They had live bands and a lot of food venders including Brusters, The corn dog man, BBQ shack, Lowe's Hot dog stand, and more. As a side note, I had to be there pretty early and I wanted to make it easy for Rafael so I got the girls all dressed and their hair fixed so I had no time to eat breakfast before I left home. So I was starving come 10:00 when I could smell the aroma of those corn dogs. Everyone laughed at me when I said I wanted a corn dog that early in the morning but when I came back with it in hand it sent more then a couple of girls running to get them one of those famous corn dogs too. Unfortunately I left my camera in the car so you'll just have to take my word for it that it would be a great thing to take your family to if the do it next year.

Get up and Go, Go, Go

I have been out of the blog world for a few weeks now and I finally decided to make some time and check it out. We have been really busy...but who hasn't? I have also realized how bad I am at remembering to take pictures of things. I was really tempted to just write and say check out Jay and Mia's blog for updated pictures of Lauren's dance and check out Jay and Mia and Dan and Holly's blog for pics of us at the Lake. Although I still recommend checking out their blogs I am going to try and update mine a little. I still don't know how to do too much (like those cute collages) but I can upload a couple of pictures. I have some pics of Lauren at dance but none of Lydia because I am busy entertaining Lauren during her class. I have some pics of Lydia at gymnastics but none of Lauren because I am busy chasing Andrew during her class. Like I said we've been busy! Lauren has gymnastics and dance on Mondays and Lydia has dance on Monday and gymnastics on Tues. Thank goodness my mom watches Andrew for me while I am at the dance studio for 2 hours on Mondays. (THANKS MOM!!!) It would be complete torture for him and me to be cooped up in the small observation area they have for 2 hours. He's a very busy boy and his favorite thing to do, turning on and off lights, has just been replaced by a new skill, opening and closing doors. For some reason I don't think the other moms at the dance studio would appreciate his skills. Okay, so I just looked through my pics of Lydia and Lauren at dance and gymnastics and I don't have any that are good enough to post (why can't they just freeze in mid air while doing a cart wheel or pause while shaking to the rumba??) Anyways most of my pictures are just blurs. I think I need a new camera although I just got this one...maybe I should read the instruction manual. Hopefully I'll have some good ones next week.

Andrew

Here is my little man. I thought about posting a picture of him where he is wearing cute clothes and has his hair combed but this picture shows who he really is so much better. In this picture he wasn't so happy about being dirty because this is grease not dirt and it doesn't come off so easily but otherwise he would have been right in his element. He is all boy and always getting into things. He certainly keeps me busy. He is a lot of fun though. He is always so happy. He thinks everything is funny and loves to make people laugh. I definitely see a class clown in the making. I never really believed it when people would tell me how different girls and boys where but now I am definitely a believer. It's a good thing he wasn't my first born or I would probably have been way too exhausted to have any more children. He keeps me going but I love him to death. Rafael can't wait until he is old enough to throw ball with or take fishing (we tried that once...all our lines are still tangled and Daddy went home in a really bad mood). Soon enough!

Lauren

Lauren has just started taking dance this year and she loves it. She has been taking gymnastics since the beginning of the year and she really loves that too. Lauren just loves to play and be active. She will probably be really good at gymnastics because she has no fear. When she was 18 months old I took her to a neighboorhood park and she climbed the rock wall something her older sister wouldn't dare to attempt. She just learned to swim this summer. She was so excited to finally take her floaties off and jump in the deep like to big kids. The problem is once she's in she has to either make it to the side or to the shallow because she hasn't figured out how to come up for air and continue swimming. She is a very emotional little girl. Which can be a good or bad thing. She can be so loving, more then any child I've ever seen but when she is upset...I have to take deep breaths all the time and try to zone in to patient mom mode. Most of the time she is a really fun girl though.

Lydia

This is Lydia at her last dance recital. She is taking balet and tap. Right now we are making her stick with it because she is really good at it and quiting because tights make her hot is not a good enough excuse. Lucky for her Ms. Kathy, her dance teacher, told me that she doesn't have to wear tights to class anymore if she doesn't want to. So now she is almost excited to go to dance class. Lydia is somewhat of a perfectionist which is probably why she is good at dance. She is 5 going on 21. The other day I took her shopping because she cleaned her room everyday for a whole month and she wanted to go pick out a toy as a reward. After going down all toy aisles at Target she decided she wanted to go look at books. I was more than happy about that the last thing we need in this house is more toys. In the end she decided on a little book and a Hannah Montana CD. Usually when she gets home from school after her snack she heads up to her room closes the door and dances around her room listening to her new CD. Next thing you know she'll be wanting to wear makeup and asking for a cell phone. She sure is growing up really fast. She is just starting to learn how to read and she is so excited about that. She has always loved books. When she was barely even one all I had to pack in my diaper bags to keep her entertained was a few books. I could literally read book after book to her. Even now I get tired of reading well before she gets tired of listening. It will be so fun when she can read herself.

Where to Begin???

Okay...so as I said in my profile, My life revolves around my kids. I am the mother of three wonderful (and sometimes not so wonderful) children. My oldest, Lydia, just started school so I will be posting some pictures of her school experiences soon. She absolutely loves school. She just told me today that if it was her special day and she could pick anywhere she wanted to go she would go to school. She is only in kindergarten so we will give her a couple of years and see how much she loves it then. She is a very eager learner so maybe she will always like school. Lauren just started preschool. She is loving it too. She only goes half days on Tues. and Thurs. so I still get to have her home with me most of the time. My little man, Andrew, is in a mother's morning out program at the same place where Lauren goes to preschool so Tuesdays and Thursdays our my days to do the things that I want to do. Although now that Lydia has started kindergarten I spend atleast one of those mornings volunteering at her school. She is so excited to see me at school and loves that all her friends at school know me. I better take advantage of that while it last.