Christmas Fun in Florida

To help keep this post as short as possible (which will not be very short!) I will try to condense my pictures and keep my writing to the point. So yes, for this Christmas we visited my parents in Florida for 2 weeks. It was so much fun and so busy since we had lot's to celebrate:

(1) We visited every theme park in the Orlando area. Of course we spent the most time taking our kids to Disney. Samuel's favorite ride happened to be the mini-rollercoaster they have for kids...thanks to his thick puffy hair, he made the height requirement and went on it 3 times.
Mason's favorite thing to do: WALKING! Yay, finally! My parents were so determined to see him walk before we left that they walked him all over Disney's Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom to get him confident. Finally, while waiting for us while we took Samuel on a ride, Mason started walking. It'll be fun to tell him one day that he started walking at Magic Kingdom of all places.
Here's a video of Mason walking for Joe's family. This is his 2nd attempt at walking after Magic Kingdom the previous night.


OK, back to our Disney experience. On one of the nights, we went to Disney's MGM studios to view the 80 million lights they had on display.
Here is a video of one of the many light shows they had that night. Pause the music on the side bar for better effect.
Here's Samuel participating in a persussion show at Animal Kingdom. He really got into the music and starting dancing with his bells. Before long, he was in front and center.

Now here is a video of Samuel dancing at a Disney World shopping center. It's pretty long, but just watch the first little bit and you can get a taste of how Samuel really gets into dancing!

(2) The boys got to spend a lot of time with Grandma Pauline and Granpa Kaleti this trip. They loved going to my parent's health food store and "helping" my parents out. Mason especially loved being wheeled around on a utility cart as my dad went about stocking shelves. One of my most memorable moments of this trip is when my dad volunteered to watch the boys while Joe and I went to Universal Studios by ourselves. He single handedly watched them all day, fed them, and then put them to bed at night. What a grandpa! (3) We had a wonderful Christmas day...presents, lots of eating, kids had long naps, etc. Other than Samuel having a major meltdown because Mason kept taking his new toys, it was really fun! For our family Christmas devotion that night, my dad played a beautiful medly of Christmas songs he arranged just for the occasion. We recorded one of the songs. Pause the music for this one, it's worth listening to I promise!

(4) We got together with my longtime friend Sarah, her husband, and little girl Kaley who is a month younger than Mason. Since my parents didn't have too many toys at her house, my boys went crazy when they saw all of Kaley's new toys. Needless to say, they had a ball. Thanks Sarah for the great dinner and great company! It was fun!

(5) December 31, 2008: Happy 2nd Birthday Samuel!!

This picture is completely Samuel showing his love for music. He got a music set for his birthday and it was a huge hit. Lately, we've been finding him drumming his hands to the beat of music and while we were in FL, he was attached to these drums at my parents store. This is Samuel beating the drums and blowing his recorder at the same time. If you think this is funny, you should see him try to play the piano and beat his cymbols at the same time!

My mom threw a little party at their store and it was complete with presents and a giant cookie for his cake. We knew better than to serve him cake, so we thought we'd serve him a big chocalote chip cookie instead. It didn't work. Afterwards, we took him to Sea World to celebrate and we had a ball! Even though Samuel couldn't have been any naughtier than he was on his birthday (I couldn't even count the tantrums!) it was still fun to see the delight on his face as he saw Shamu, dolphins, and other water life for the first time.

(6) Later that night, we took the boys home to bed and my sister offered to stay home with them while we celebrated New Year's Eve. We went back to Sea World and joined my parents for their special New Year's bash. Holy cow...so, so much fun!! We ate dinner in this gorgeous shark aquarium restaurant and then listened to an amazing philharmonic orechestra that played big band music. They played live while the fireworks coordinated with their music.

What a blast!! That night and our whole vacation! Joe and I are still talking about how much fun we had and are already planning our next big vacation to FL. Thank you mom and dad for everthing and we miss you already!

Happy Holidays!

Here are a couple of fall pictures that we took for our Christmas card this year. We actually had quite a few good pictures to choose from...thanks Suzie for making the kids smile in almost every picture...quite the feat, and thanks Tom snapping the photos!

When our next door neighbors first saw our picture, their response was "You guys sure like your football don't you?" We do like football, but that definitely was not what we were trying to achieve in the picture! First of all, we took the picture in UT and the clothes that I packed all clashed with one another. So plan B: Joe thought it would be fun to represent all the places we've lived in the past 8 years. That is the only reason why I would wear a sweatshirt for a picture we send out to our friends and family!

Did I forget to mention that we visited Joe's family in Utah for Thanksgiving? His sister, Bethany, also came with her hubby Allen, Taylor 10, Evan 8, and Alec 6. It was a very busy, but funfilled holiday break. Samuel loved hanging around the older boys and copied everything that they did. Samuel's favorite thing to do was spend time with Papa Tom in the train room. I've never seen him interested in something for longer than 5 minutes. He'd wake up in the morning and say "papa" than "choo choo"? On our last night there, we went to The Gateway shopping center to shop (if you can call it that with 2 kids) and then watched pianist John Schmidt play the piano before the Christmas tree lit up. It was quite cold that night and Mason made sure everyone knew he hates shopping, but other than that we had alot of fun. The best part was watching Samuel take in the music. He kept bobbing his head to the beat and would even tap his hand or foot to the beat. We managed to capture a little bit of it in the video.

When we got back from our trip, we went to a Christmas party a couple of moms in our playgroup put together. They all came in their Christmas PJs which was pretty cute. Notice that Samuel is the only one that cannot sit for more than 1/2 a second.
Along with eating yummy treats, the kids got to make reindeer shirts with their hand and footprints. I wasn't sure how do-able this activity would be with 7 toddlers running around but no paint was spilled! Most of the kids actually wanted nothing to do with the paint as shown:
But the shirts ended up looking really cute. Below is Samuel's shirt half done. We added eyes, a nose, and painted his name on the back.

Before I conclude this long and very late post, I wanted to add that Mason is now taking some steps! Yay!! He will only gather the courage to walk between Joe and I, but hey, at least we're getting somewhere! How different he is from Samuel. Samuel never wanted any help from us...one day he just let go of the coffee table and started walking across the room by himself. I am thinking that Mason will still take a couple of weeks before he gives up crawling and really starts walking everywhere. Enjoy grandparents! We thought this video was funny since Mason was able to make it across despite the distraction of Samuel streaking back in forth in his diaper.

Samuel...hitting those terrible two's!

Here is my dear Samuel, who is as usual squeezing out some tears for a dramatic effect. At this moment, his world is crumbling down because one of his socks came off and he cannot find it. And when I offer him other socks to wear, he gets even more upset and throws them and himself around on the ground. After 10 minutes of searching for the stupid sock with Samuel trailing behind me, he is so happy when I produce the sock. Yep, happy for about 5 minutes until the next meltdown begins when he wants to go outside to play while I am trying to get dinner started. And the cycle of mood swings continues...happy one minute and full blown tears the next...over and over it seems. Is anyone else as baffled as I am about the terrible, terrible, terrible 2 stage? Samuel is not even 2 for heaven's sake...I have a long year ahead of me!

Well, despite the tantrums, Samuel is at a pretty funny age where his personality is really coming through. Something Samuel really loves is music. He is always bobbing his head to the beat of the music when we're in the car and he will always start dancing if he hears music, even in public. Here is a video of Samuel dancing at the pumpkin patch we were at in my previous post. I wasn't able to download the video last time, so here's another try.

In this video, Samuel is wearing a pair of little girl glasses that he found at the pool. He loved them so much that he wouldn't take them off for hours, even through dinner. Once he decides he likes something, say a particular SOCK, Samuel becomes committed and there is no changing his mind. So here he is watching Diego, eating, and singing...all while wearing his new glasses.

So the terrible two stage: endearing and enraging...hilarious and frustrating all at the same time. All I can say is that I can't wait for Mason's turn.

Happy Halloween! Wait, that happened a week ago?

Thanks Grandma Suzy for the cute Halloween jammies!

So yet again, it seems that I am still a blogging slug. I almost decided to skip the Halloween festivities on my blog so that I could be "caught up", but there were too many pictures to ignore. Plus, the grandparents would probably have a fit for not being updated on our Halloween adventures. So here goes: We start off with Samuel the Spiderman...1 out of the hundred spidermen on my block alone. Thank goodness Halloween is a 1 night deal b/c Samuel split the back of his pants in mid-spiderman pose. Of course Samuel could care less. In fact, I'm pretty sure he enjoyed the breeze as he literally ran from door to door. We started off trick-or-treating with his little friend Emily, but after the 2nd house, Samuel was off to the races! At first Samuel invited himself right into people's houses, but he soon caught on and it was hard to catch up with him after that. He loved knocking on the doors and picking out candy. Samuel in action. Am I a geek for capturing his first "door"? Samuel literally RAN around our neighborhood for almost 2 hours. The boy never walks btw, he really only runs at full speed. I mean, how many 22 month olds can endure running for that long? Can you get a feel for what my days are like, trying to figure out ways to expend some of Samuel's energy?

Here is Mason in his dinosaur/dragon/lizard costume. We don't quite know what it is, but Joe picked it up at a garage sale for free. Hence, Joe's newest quote: "If it's free, it's for me!" So for those of you who remember Joe's frugal side, you can probably appreciate the humor in this qoute. And yes, we are still scoping out those garage sales come Friday and Saturday! We consider ourselves professionals by this point! Samuel of course got jealous of Mason's costume, so we gave him a turn in it. It put him in the cleaning spirit and he vacuumed in it for almost 15 minutes (vaccuum also a garage sale find). I just wanted to throw in a picture of the Halloween birthday party that we went to. The kids in our playgroup all dressed up in their costumes, made halloween masks, played and threw tantrums, and then ate cookies. My kids of course wanted nothing to do with the sweets. I had to eat both cookies...just so the birthday boy wouldn't feel bad of course! Here is a picture of Joe and his staff for Halloween. It was their idea to dress up in a theme around Joe's costume, so for that day, Joe was the prisoner while the women ran the show. Here are the boys at a haunted house at a pumpkin patch that we went to. I wanted to include this picture to showcase Samuel's 1st crush. Nope, not Mason, but the weird ugly looking witch that he is sitting on. While most of the other kids were too scared to even approach the witch chair, Samuel is holding it's hand and giving her kisses. Mason didn't even want to sit by the witch, but we managed to get a smile with Joe jumping up and down behind the camera. Samuel was too busy looking at his new friend. So now I am officially caught up on Halloween. Until Thanksgiving...haha.

What a fun week!

We went with our playgroup on our first visit ever to a pumpkin patch. This part is just the pumpkins, but we went on a hay ride, bounce houses, and a little hay maze. Samuel was very upset at first when he realized he couldn't pick up the "balls" since they were too heavy. Needless to say, he was very excited to find this little house full of small pumpkins. I had to pull him out kicking and screaming after he'd thrown a few "balls" around. I couldn't imagine explaining to Joe why I had to buy 50 damaged, little pumpkins. After several attempts, Mason decided to humor me and smile for the camera. Samuel is a little over stimulated at this point...I'm surprised I even got him to sit for picture time. I love the picture below of big brother showing Mason the tractor behind me. Now the best part of the week: My parents came to visit! We had such a busy, but fun time! Here we are at the BYU vs. TCU game. I never thought I'd see the Cougars play any time soon, but luckily they are in the same conference as TCU, which is located in Fort Worth. Unfortunately, we witnessed in person the Cougar beatdown and our dream to see them play in a BCS bowl went down the drain that night. What a disappointing college FB season!!! My Buckeyes lost AND my Gators lost. I better move on before I get upset all over again! During their visit, my dad helped us get our flowerbed in order...they dug out all the nasty weeds that had overtaken the bed, trimmed all the plants, planted flowers, and put up a stone border around the flowerbed. So here is the before (most of it looked like the side Joe is working on):

And here is the after picture. Thanks dad for helping us! You saved us so much money, time, and effort!

And here we are again at the zoo...we just love that place! It's always a big hit with Samuel.
And I just wanted to add that Samuel was such a huge fan of my dad's while he was here. It was so great to see this since the last visit, Samuel was terrified of my dad. Well actually, he was scared of anyone that wasn't me or Joe, so hopefully he is outgrowing this. I wanted to add a little video of my dad and Samuel playing the guitar. My dad is a wonderful guitarist and so we had lots of music time while he was here. I had him listen to all of Samuel's favorite songs and when he played the theme song from Diego or Popcorn popping, Samuel went wild dancing! Watch Samuel's wide-eyed stare as he plays with my dad. Also note Mason, ready to destroy the guitar.

Thanks mom and dad for coming to visit! We had such a great time and we already miss you! Can't wait to see you at Christmas time.

Life in Texas

I just wanted to start off with this picture to illustrate why I can't find time to blog. Aside from Mason never napping, my kids are destroyers!! I find myself constantly running around yelling "We only write on paper!", "Don't pound your car on that!", "No throwing blocks at the window!" Every day, actually every HOUR, you can find me mourning over all the marks, scratches, and dents on the surfaces of our furniture and new house...sniffle, sniffle. I'm beginning to think that I'm wasting my time and vocal chords trying to keep anything in decent shape around here. Anyways, by the time the kids go to bed I move into zombie mode, too tired to do anything except work the remote. As for the picture, we bought the boys a little tent for their playroom. Within minutes of playing with it, I found that Samuel had taken all the poles out and was scratching our walls with the ends of them. We then taped all the poles together so he couldn't take them apart, but it was no match for Samuel. He just had to get that tent through the doorway. Here's Joe and Mason enjoying the last day at our community pool. Isn't it awesome? There's also a 6 lane lap pool, another pool with a waterfall, other baby pools and slides shown below. This pool area was a major draw for us in choosing our house. We didn't get Crypto this time, thank goodness! Samuel and I going down the slide. Talk about a major fit when we have to leave the slide area!Joe and Samuel at the Fort Worth Zoo which is an awesome zoo. Samuel really loves animals so we've already taken him 3 times.
Here are some pictures of when our playgroup went to the zoo. I was not sure how fun it would be to take a bunch of 2 year olds and their baby siblings to the zoo, but we ended up having an awesome time. And, I swear my boys have more than 1 outfit! Our attempt at a group photo of the kids...Samuel trying to get as much space between he and all of the girls.

Samuel, not much of a socializer!
I just wanted to post this picture of my favorite grocery cart in the world. I absolutely cannot stand how most stores do not accomodate shopping with two babies very well. Samuel usually ends up in the basket part, either smashing my bread or throwing produce over the edge shouting "ball!" The big cars in the front are a pain to push and plus I can't monitor the hair pulling and hitting that goes on down there. So when I stepped into this expensive health food grocery store for the first time and saw this cart, I knew that I would be a frequent customer. Anything to make shopping with kids easier! Finally, my future golfer already in training. Just in case Samuel may one day want to go into the dental field, Joe wants to make sure that he meets the prerequisite of playing golf. Oh, and this is not a pose for the camera...this is really Joe trying to help Samuel connect with the ball.