Leaves

Oh how the colors of changing leaves can make you smile...despite the fact that it's so cold that your smile may just freeze into position!!!

Fly. Sleep. Drive.

Thursday October 8th

We dropped the girls off at the neighbors and headed to the airport where we were off for a quick trip to CA to pick up a new car and visit with friends and family...VERY quickly! We had a 45 minute delay and only heard "oh his hair is soo cute" like a million times. I must admit, although he is adorable with it I ONLY consider cutting his mohawk off when it draws so much attention. If only the mohawk didn't TOTALLY fit his personality and of course, look SOO adorable. Either way, with a 45 minute delay and a 1.5+ hour flight we figured the best thing to do was wander the airport and take some pics!

Friday October 9th

We woke up, at 8am which is AWESOME, considering at home we wake up no later than 630 am. haha. Then off we went to Kohls in Downtown Napa for some late b-dcay shopping for Carina and Rian. We also picked up an outfit for Noah and Aaden, after all who can resist shopping for baby boys! NOT ME! So we shopped and then dropped off my mom at home so she could go grab my brother from UC Davis with my dad and off we headed to visit with the Snooks for an afternoon visit at Mary's for lunch and and evening BBQ. Man I forgot how nice it was to hang out with friends. Tiff and I FINALLY got to do our traditional Tequila shots, with some REALLY expensive Tequila (thanks Jaime) that is actually meant for SIPPING, but hey, when you have a tradition you use the best stuff on the shelf! Hehe. Needless to say that was ALMOST the only drink I took, outside of a Mikes Hard Lemonade and the rest of the time I hung out outside, inside, outside, inside...well you get the point. That night we sang some Karaoke (well RC and Gabe did) we heard Gabe sing with his Father In Law who looks like my boss, we heard Tegan and Peyten play the drums as well as use the harmonica (both of which made my ears ring) we ate yummy food (that Gabe and Tiff were so gracious to cook) and we chatted about sleeping babies (or the troubles we have all had trying to GET them to sleep) and we also took a few pics to remember that we are still able to have good times. I think the hardest part for me and RC was getting out of parent mode and it seems that it's harder than it seems. I mean, gooodness, we were telling other folks kids to not play by fires, not throw rocks, not run to close to the beers and then at the end of the night we also questioned if we were "stiffs" or "prude parents" and maybe we are but at least we know it. To bad for our kids I guess. haha.

Saturday October 10th

We knew we had to head home Saturday so the plan was to lay low. We got to sleep till 8 again!! I think Rian was making up for the LACK of sleep he gave us in Sedona, and so we took total advantage! Then we headed off in seperate directions. Grandpa Pete, Uncle Gabe and RC headed over to Highway 29 for some YUMMY denver omelettes and greasy food. Grandma Debbie and I headed over to Starbucks then Target, did some shopping and then off to Grandpa Rudys house to hang out with him, Grandma Jackie, Melody and Peyten. Ya know, if there is one thing MOST people miss about their hometown it's the yummy food and that is FOR SURE what I miss. I ate Mary's twice and had Taqueria Rosita. YUMMY. STuff you can only find in norcal! Anywho, we visited with them, the SUPER manly boys played on pink powerwheels, tried on football helmets and practiced being daddies. haha. Yep, Rian LOVES to push strollers. Its soo funny. He doesn't care for the doll to be inside the stroller but he loves to push the stroller (minus baby).

Funny moment that day:

Melody and I were going to run to my parents house to get laundry I had put in and I was trying to convince her to leave Peyten with RC and this is how that went...

Melody: RC are you sure you can handle this...
(kinda looks at Peyten and you could tell she wasn't sure what to do)
RC: Sure I got this!
Melody: Uhm...
(she looks at me)
ME: He will be fine, he's got this!
RC: Yeah watch...
(Rc looks at Peyten)
RC: Peyten. SIT!
Melody kinda laughs as do I and within moments Peyten is sitting on the ground.

I was convinced before that RC was a fun dad but for him to convince Peyten that he is a good guy is a HUGE feat. Haha. He loves kids so it was a huge ego booster than Peyten stayed with him. Either way, that was our entire weekend because after hanging out at Rudy's house we went back to Mary's with my parents and Bro and RC's mom Jackie, then back to Gabe and Tiff's to drop off the pack and play, give hugs to them and the boys and then off we went! Phew. Although it all went WAY to fast we decided it was totally worth it. We had TONS of fun and now we have a sweet new car. Well new to us!

P.S. My "new" ride! Yellow isn't as bad as I thought, I am actually LOVING IT!!

Wubbleyoo

Scene: Teaching Neya to sound out her letters in the living room

(mommy holding up a card that says WHITE)
Mommy: Neya, say the letters
Neya: Uhm
Mommy: Do you know the sounds
Neya: Yeah
Mommy: Okay what is this sound

(Neya kinda looks at me)

Mommy: Neya, thats a DoubleYou (yes I know thats not how you spell it)
Neya: oh a DoubleYou, that means it sounds like Duh. SO its a D!
Mommy: No hunny, its kinda tricky, it sounds like a WUH...

(Neya grins from ear to ear)

Neya: Well then its a WubbleYOO!

Aww kids. Love it.

Why you have more than one kid...

Just so they can pick on eachother :)

Food! Friends! Fun!

Last night at 830pm Carina was officially in the double digits. Our ten year old little girl is well on her way to teenage hood, but hey, lets not get ahead of ourselves :) Last night I got off work, RC got home early and the plan was to go to Chevy's for dinner. Why you ask? Well because Carina REALLY wanted a sombrero for her birthday. Haha. Silly kid. So we have some friends who live a lot farther than us, so we figured we would meet everyone half way so they could make it. WHICH begins a funny story.

Alison and Jack got to the "area" earlier than everyone else and they started hunting down this mysterious Chevys that none of us have ever been to. After texting back and forth to one another and making calls to M.A.X and my bro Alex and of course ALison we finally found out that TWO weeks ago (of course) that Chevy's closed! Haha. Happy Birthday Rina. Goodness. So as she is totally bummed, we end up coming up with Red Lobster as an alternative so we are driving around to find one and BAM! Arriba's shows up. Yep, heaven sent.She sees it and is totally stoked so we stop there. Yum. I luck out because it is my favorite restaurant.

SO after a rough start, we get all calls made and everyone in our Party of 11 meets us there. Soo fun. So after some drink ordering and such we opened up cards, gifts and even had happy birthday sang by the restaurants Mariachi guys. Carina felt sooo special, it was awesome. She also decided that her Uncle Alex could share in the birthday fun since we missed out on his 21st...soo...we made sure that when we told them about Carina's birthday in order to get the whole ice cream with a candle thing sent out we told them to bring my brother one as well as a shot of tequila. hehe. Carina said she wanted to do a "shot" so we got an extra shot glass, and her and my bro took shots together, of course Carina's was of Sprite and although some of you may be shaking your heads, if I know Carina at all, I also know I have nothing to worry about in the "alcohol" area, she just likes to have fun and be silly. WHICH IS GREAT!

Anywho, she lucked out, she got an ipod shuffle, an itunes gift card, a build a bear gift card, some lip gloss, 40 bucks, a really cute necklace and of course some bubblicious. What is a 10 yr old girl without a big wad of bubble gum to chew on :) I won't bore you with to many more details but here are some pics from the night...and man I still cannot believe she is 10 years old!

The videos are dark...SORRY!

Happy Birthday Baby Girl!

Today marks 10 years that we have been blessed with one of the most amazing little ladies that I know. Carina came into this world with such a bang and although she was born to a mommy who might have been "too young" she TRULY made me grow up and become the mommy I am today.

Normally I would say a bunch of sappy things but I think the best way to enjoy today is to remember her birth story...

It starts the day before I actually gave birth so here goes: I had walked that day FOREVER and also worked that night AND seen a movie! Haha. I walked to work and then after work walked back home and we went to see a movie. Exactly which one I can't recall completely but I know it was scary. Perhaps Blair Witch Project. Haha. Anywho, that night I got home around 10pm and remember thinking "wow that popcorn really hurt my stomach" oh to be young and naive! Either way around 11, after much cramping I realized they were contractions. At the time I still lived at home with my parents, yes I know I know, lecture lecture lecture about young parenting! Either way all I kept thinking was that I didn't want to wake my parents up in the middle of the night for no reason so instead I grabbed my mickey mouse watch and started timing my contractions. Around 530amthey were roughly 4-5 minutes apart and I should most defenitly have been taken to the hopsital but I was stubborn and my parents still weren't up. Yes I know, again, how naive was I!By the time my mom woke up it was 545am and the reason she woke was because she could hear me pacing my room breathing to keep the pain down. On the way to hospital I think I saw fear in my moms eyes as we drove to the Queen of the Valley in our breadbox Aerostar van. Aww yes, those were the days.

Once we got to the hospital the contractions literally STOPPED. The funnier part was that the day before my doctor (I had an appt at 8am) told me "I never say this when you aren't dilated to only a 3 or less (I was at a 2) but you are having this baby soon...you can count on it". Guess she was right. So there we are, me fully dressed and my mom looking frazzled and Carina well...she obviously got stage fright (never would guess from her bubbling personality these days). Nurse called the doctor, doctor didn't want to send me home so I stayed, they put me on pitocin, didn't feel a thing until 7pm that night (on the dot). I laid my head down JUST as Fresh Prince of Belair started (my fave show at the time) and at 8pm i lifted my head and they were in shock. I had just had an hour long contraction and still no pain meds. They put me up in the bed, I started pushing, eating ice and out she came a few pushes later and nearly into her grandmas arm. NO REALLY, the nurse said "first baby takes at least an hour to push" Yeah, not Carina she has always been an overachiever and out she came in record time and bigger than we imagined. haha. She was 8lbs 10 oz and only 20 inches long and BOY did she have a TON of hair.

She slept through the very first night and I knew she and I were going to be great together. Carina has always been amazing to me, she made being a mom easy (at least it USED to be easy) as she was so easy going and all about smiling and making people smile. She broke her first tooth at 4 months, she crawled at 6 and she said her first word at 7 months. On the night before her first birthday (I was BOUND AND DETERMINED to get her to walk before her first bday) she took her first step and from then on she didn't even do the normal step fall step, she just flat out walked (apparently she had been practicing long before she decided to show me). haha. At 1 and a half she was using 3-5 word sentences, at 2 she was fully potty trained (only had one little accident and oddly she was the one who instigated the whole "big girl underwear" transition, after all...her friends were all doing it..yes even then she had to be in the in crowd). At 3 she was a little fashion diva who had a vocabulary that amazed me and that is also when she got her first barbie. STINKING RC! I am totally anti barbie yet he insisted. At 4 she graduated preschool and new how to spell her first and last name and at 5 she was reading full books.

In no way am I bragging about how great of a mom I am to have had her reach these goals in fact, quite the opposite. She has always led her own life, made the decisions and just showed me how to help her along the way. At times I swear she was the teacher and I was the student, but I suppose that is how it goes when you have kids. We just soak it in and they teach us the lessons. Even when we think we are in control we are not.

Carina has amazed me at each milestone and although I look at her and think "wow" I also watch her and think "she is amazing". I love her with all I am and all that I may become and I must say....

Happy Birthday Baby Girl...you have come so far in just these short ten years, you are going to make great things happen in life. We love you so much!

Silly boys and a Birthday!

Xander and Rian are finally at that age when they are around one another they play and can interact. We got a cute 10 second video of them playing together. So cute!


ALSO, we had M.A.X over for dinner on Wednesday night to celebrate Matt's Birthday. BY the way for those of you that don't know, M.A.X is Matt, Ashley and Xander :) So much easier than typing out everyones name. Anywho, they were the first official non family visitors to stop by and it was, as you can see, filled with the boys playing, lots of convo and just some catching up!

Here are a few pics from the night:




On another totally unrelated note, this upcoming week we are flying out to CA to pick up my mom's "old" car. It is a Ford Escape, Yellow, and those of you that know me fairly well are probably chuckling to yourself that I will be driving a yellow car and giving up MY super cool sporty mom car to my Dear Husband. I love him very much, but I will FOREVER consider that car MY car as he bought it for me on my birthday a couple years back! It was exactly what I was looking for, and now, he gets to take it back. Of course. Hehe. NOW back to the yellow Escape. I am ACTUALLY super excited, it might be a little bright for me, but with my HOTG33K license plate, some tinted windows and my skull family sticker, it should fit me perfectly :) My poor mom won't even recogize her car! Hehe. So I guess a quick THANKS MOM AND DAD is in order, and I will be sure and post pics as soon as we get it...or at least CLOSE to when we get it :)

ALSO when we go to CA we will be flying for the first time with Rian, it is a pretty short flight but I am sure that he will be a doodoo head. We didn't buy him his own seat, so he will have the ability to wander around and sit on our laps. WHICH could have been a mistake in it's own. Haha. The girls will be staying with friends and family and they are SOO excited. They have never been away from us TOGETHER, so it is actually quite an adventure for them as well. Such big girls they are now! FOr our trip the question is, do we take a pack and play or do we find a friend we can borrow one from, does Rian even need one or can we just lay him on a bunch of blankets, THEN do we take a stroller, probably not, so this is our packing list. ONE bag to carry our clothes (we will only be GONE two days) and his car seat and a diaper bag. Thats it. 3 things. Seems like it isn't enough but I guess the really big concern is the pack and play. Maybe we will just take ours to be safe, UGH what a pain in the neck. KIDS! haha.

Well that is what we have going on life wise but DO NOTE, that I realized last night I am total chick as I watched Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice and BALLED my eyes out. NO so much for Grey's (until they sewed a babies arm back on, GAWD, tear jerker) but when Private Practice started it was INSANE. I teared up the first couple minutes in and it didn't stop the whole time. Even sometimes during commercials! I blame it on being a mom and then after the stuff we went through with Rian I just get SOO much more emotional with ANYTHING that is sad or even CLOSE to sad. Like commercials. Haha. WHo cries at commercials, well not me but some of them do make me tear up! Haha.

Alright, enough of that. Onto bigger and better things, time to go to work :)