more...

Continued

Family Pictures

Here are some choices for our family Christmas photos. A big thanks to our friend and photographer Whitney Dibble! Thanks again!

Happy December....

So I am one of those people who has a love/hate relationship with Christmas. I love it for all the family togetherness, decorating, music, buying presents, etc. .Okay, I love just about all of it...except for one thing....it seems to come earlier and earlier every year. :P As much as I love Christmas, I hate that it is "forced" on us. I think KEZ 99.9 starts playing Christmas music the day after Halloween...okay maybe not that early but it seems like it.

I refuse to listen to Christmas music or decorate untill after Thanksgiving. I reserve only once exception, my stake's production of Handel's Messiah in whicht my brother and I play. We have been doing it for a while and although we are not the New York Phil., London Symphony, or the Vienna Philharmonic, the concert helps get you into the holiday spirit. Thankfully it's just selected works!

So, if you wanna go it is at the Tempe South Stake Center on 1111 E Knox Rd, Tempe, AZ 85281 Sunday December 14 at 7:00PM. It's a sing-along on the choruses, but you can just come and listen too. :)

As for the non-Handel's Christmas music, I waited until to days to start listening to it. Twenty-Five Beloved Carols of Christmas by Michael Dowdle. If you don't have this album, then I highly recommended it-- just a little plug for a family friend. He has a newer one out this year too. I am hoping to get O Holy Night by Jenny Oaks Baker to enhance my collection this year. :) I mostly like instrumental music, because IMHO it is best for background music...which is the main reasons I play music at home.


I also got out my meager Christmas decorations today. We don't even have a tree! Wahhh! I decided that after Christmas this year, I will get some decorations in order to fully prepare for next year when we will be in town for Christmas (and I can decorate my new house. Hooray!) I did, however, put up some lovely mistletoe so that we can, at the very least, have the romance part of Christmas covered LOL. Don't worry, it's not right at the front door. MUAH*

Happy Thanksgiving!

So this year Thanksgiving was especially fun... we had a visitor staying with us. Nick's GF Lindsey. :) We also made tamales!

More info and pics to come....

Butter...

So the other day I was getting the last of dinner ready when Jack came home. He found Gabi in our room with butter...We figure she ate about half of a stick! I guess we need to put things more towards the center of the table now!

Spinach....

She may like it now....we will see. At least we have proof she did eat it at one time. Listen for the Yum at the end.

Late Halloween pics...Sorry

Here are some pics of Halloween. Gabi was Dora the Explorer. She did not want to pose for pics, and was not interested in Trick or Treat, she just wanted to run run run!

Gabi in her pretend car

We caught this cute video of Gabi the other day.

Big girl carseat!

Well about a week ago La Reina (the queen) finally reached 20lbs! Hooray! We thought she would be 5 before this happened. :) We went out and bought her a big girl carseat and she loves it! She looks SOOOO tiny in it.




Gabi is becoming a little more talkative, which is a lot of fun. She gets shy, but sometimes we can get her to perform. Here are some of her tricks:
Mama
Dadda
Papa (for grandpa)
Nana- Banana
Wa wa -water
Ba ba- Bottle....we are working on getting rid of this one. Arggg
Ga ga- We aren't sure if this means Gabi, sometimes she says it and points to pics of herself and sometimes she doesn't.
Yah
Yea- apparently we say this one a lot because she says it a lot!
Bappap - this means "backpack" which she gets from watching too much Dora the Explorer
Map
uh-oh
oh-no
booh- Book
boo
seh- ??? but she likes to say it. I think it might mean silly.
Fa-??? but she likes to say it.
She does the hand movements to "itsy bitsy spider" and "Paddy Cake"
She does hand gestures for "don't know" and "all done"
Some gibberish that we're pretty sure means "whats that?" and "who's that?"
She has a form of gibberish that closely resembles "Hello". She likes do do this while "talking" on her many cellphones.
She knows where her toes are and sometimes eyes and nose.
She loves to do butterfly and eskimo kisses.
She understands "Da me un beso" (give me a kiss) and will do so on command.

She LOVES to come and bring you a book to read to her....

Splash park....

Gabi and I haven't had much fun this summer because it's too darn hot!. Ever since I got a bad case of heat exhaustion a few summers ago, my heat tolerance has never been the same. Well since we have been cooped up in the house basically all summer long we finally went to the Tempe splash park. Gabi took a little bit of time to get used to playing in the water , but she managed to warm up and have fun.

She wanted to go up and down the stairs that went up to the big kid slide, but did not want to go DOWN the slide! So I spent much of my time chasing her and trying to interest her in something else!

Here are a few pics of her at the beginning. They aren't the best because I couldn't watch her very carefully and watch out for the camera too! LOL

Saturday mornings....

Some of you may or may not remember seeing School House Rock on Saturday mornings. Good times... Anyway, Jack and I made an impulse buy (surprise surprise) the other day and bought the 30th anniversary DVD. We had fun watching it, and since I can remember pretty much anything if it is set to music I had fun singing along.

Here is Jack's favorite...probably because we know a Lolly... LOL


He also said that we should change Gabi's name to.... Rafaella Gabriela Sarsaparilla



I like the song Mr Morton, among others. It's so cute... what can I say I am a hopeless romantic. LOL

Welcome Home!

Nick is home from the Orlando, FL! Here are some pics of his return!

If you are wondering where the pic is of me and my brother.....the photographer didn't have a good shot. The picture is far away of my brothers back and me and my sister's arms. :(

Forgotten 4th pictures!

Ok so not really from the 4th(they are from Memorial day) but still patriotic!

Her sunday best....

Some cute pics of Gabi. We took these pics a few weeks ago.

Gabi in pigtails...

I attempted to put a wiggly girl in pigtails the other day...Then I tried to take pictures. She just loves the camera too much! Whenever the camera comes out she just wants to play with it! Anyone got a spare P&S camera that doesn't work that we can have?

Father's Day, my Birthday and thoughts...

Just in case you all thought I was going to go through the entire month of June without another post...you were wrong.

We had a lovely Father's Day and went to the Vidaure's for a BBQ. Note to self, remember to assign a few items so you don't have duplicates. We had a grand time eating watermelon and greenbean dishes....enough said.

Pic of the Dads

Also I had a birthday...Now I have kind of a ritual that I made a few years ago on my birthday. I will get up in the morning and look at myself in the mirror. I usually say something like " So this is what (insert age here) looks like" As I subsequently flex my muscles in a pathetic attempt to look more toned. LOL. This usually results in me being depressed that I am not pretty enough or toned enough. Wishing I was bigger here or thinner there...you know how it is. Then I get dressed and make myself look more "presentable". Hoping this will somehow change the outcome. Well this last birthday I realized that all I wear is mostly tee shirts and jeans or some other kind of solid color bottoms.

Not that there is anything wrong with that....

But, I feel the need to look more...fashionable?? Something I have never been in my life...stop laughing. I know some of you are fashionistas...Stephanie (both of you), Jacque, Franny..I could go on...

Here is I think my biggest hold back when it comes to clothes...I am cheap. There I said it. Sometimes my DH doesn't think so, but I am. I think the most I ever spent on jeans was $35 and even then I had a gift card. Eeek. I try to find tops that are not tee shirts but then I look at the price tag and, well forgive me but I can't bring myself to pay $12-15 or $20 dollars for a shirt. Some of you I know are rolling your eyes or thinking that is petty change and you may spend much more than that on bottoms and tops. Well I grew up with 50% off at goodwill and shopping at the clearance rack at Target and the like. So I need a little adjustment!

Don't even get me started on the fit of clothes. I have the most problems with tops. Being a small gal it is hard for me to find cute tops that I can *ahem* fill out...I can't even fill out my underwear! I should also say being short and two different sizes on top and bottom brings a lot of interesting dilemmas to the table as well.

I would love to find clothes that look great but not too trendy so I can reuse them again and just change a few accessories here and there to update the look...oh and I need help on accessories too! LOL I would like to be more feminine in my clothing and just look polished even when casual. I know, a lot to ask huh?

So ladies how do you do it? Should I give up and just stay with the status quo? I know there are much more important things out there than fashion but I'd like to try anyway... :)


p.s. I should at that my wonderful DH got me a beautiful watch for my birthday! Thanks Hubbster! XOXO

Happy 1st Birthday Gabi!

Here are some pictures of the fun time we had! Happy First Birthday Gabi! WE LOVE YOU!