32 week Ultrasound

Here's the latest ultrasound from a couple of weeks ago I forgot to post before. Getting some cute chubby cheeks going on.

holiday greetings from our house to yours

Merry Xmas!

that's George!

A few weeks ago, while the weather was still nice and not so wintery out yet, Alicia and I headed up to the Kohl Children's Museum to check out the new Curious George exhibit they have. It is a traveling exhibit, and it is only there until early February, so if you want to check it out, make sure you go before it leaves! http://www.kohlchildrensmuseum.org/exhibits/curious-george The day we planned to go up, George was to be making a special appearance after the special story hour. That was indeed the highlight of our afternoon at the museum.

Of course, Alicia had to hit the grocery store area of the museum. I think this was our first stop in the museum, even before she got to the George exhibit.










Uhmm.. mom.. I don't think this is the "real" Curious George... (note, Alicia insisted on getting her picture taken with this George, too. It was cute.)
















Besides the normal music area and the grocery store, the construction area seemed to be a big hit for Alicia his time too. Although, she's a busy body and I don't think she stayed in one are for more than a few minutes anyways, this crane seemed to keep her attention span a bit more than some other areas.














Yeah!! It's Curious George finally!! Alicia was very brave this time and gave George a hug and stood all by herself next to George for a picture.

baby #2 progress

Here you go... for those that don't see me in person that often, here's a little visual progress timeline so far of the new baby...
we are moving along nicely. We are at about week 31, and have entered into the every other week doctor appointments now. They are watching me closely this time around for the pre-eclampsia condition that I had while pregnant with Alicia. We go back in next week for another size/weight check for baby. The last appointment a few weeks ago, the ultrasound showed baby was measuring exactly in the 50th percentile for weight and length which was awesome!! We've never really been there with Alicia, even from the beginning, she was behind the chart, so this was a great milestone for us with this new guy. We'll keep you updated on our progress, and here's to a smooth last trimester!

tool time

Alicia helped pitched in the other night while we were putting together our new bedroom dressers. She did a great job finding the pieces we needed and even tried to assemble part of dresser! Too bad Pat (the blue Handy Manny hammer) and Felipe (the yellow Handy Manny Phillips head screwdriver) didn't work the greatest or else Alicia might have been able to finish parts of the dresser herself! ;-) great helping hands, Alicia.

Goebberts Pumpkin Farm

We managed to sneak in our fall pumpkin farm visit to Goebberts this year while the weather was still really nice out. In previous years, it had either been really hot or really cold, but this year, it was just about right. We went with the Haney family and enjoyed our afternoon trip to the pumpkin farm. The kids really enjoyed running around checking out all the different characters and asking "take our picture" and "this is cute" by all the "cool" characters they liked the most. Of course, they had to pick out a few pumpkins to take home for souvenirs, too!

Sam and Alicia posing with all their favorite cutouts! Even Everette joined the fun with the girls and got in for a some fun pictures too.

Look how they've grown!
Alicia and Samantha - 2008

Alicia and Samantha - 2010

birthday wrap-up

This fall we had a bunch of our "big kid" 4 year old birthday parties! We celebrated Lucas, Carl, and Kaylee's 4th birthdays! Such a flurry of activity in just a few weeks kept us on our toes! Thanks everyone for such a nice time at all the parties and being such good hosts and hostesses.

I would have to say this picture below is one of my favorites from the recent parties... Alicia just has this look of cute and innocence, while her buddies Carl and Ben are rolling around being goofy boys. haha... boys will be boys and girls will be girls.



While going through the party pics, I was showing Alicia a few pictures for this blog and she said this one was her "favorite" of her and Carl, so I'm posting Alicia's pick too :)

Outdoor Birthday Bash 4 Lucas!!

Jumpin' Fun 4 Carl's Birthday

Fall Fun 4 Kaylee's Party

final vacation recap

Finally the last vacation post, haha! We just had so much fun and took loads of photos in California we had to keep sharing some with everyone. The last day or so, we spent them mostly by ourselves at Disneyland. This was nice to be able to have some time for the 3 of us together, as we have a feeling this will be one of our last real family vacations for a few years until baby 2 is old enough for traveling, unless we have additional vacation helpers, haha. :-)

Disneyland is definitely different than Disney World, as you can see quite a few attractions in just a few days. It is much more centrally located, so you aren't spend half your time traveling between parks. So that was nice for us since we only had a few days left to spend there, plus in the heat, I was all about enjoying mini breaks we could sneak in and relax back at our hotel. I think we only didn't get to one or two sections of the parks that we would have liked to be able to see, but I think we hit our must-haves and favorites over and over to make it a very successful trip!

Alicia obviously loved meeting the princesses and being able to have breakfast with them all was a real treat for her. I just loved watching the look on her face each time a new princess would stop by our table to say hi, as it made it all worth the wait and money. Other highlights that Alicia seemed to really like besides meeting her favorite characters, were the Its a Small World ride, Dumbo, the tea cups, and the carrousel. One of the other cool rides was the Nemo submarine ride, where you got to ride in sub-like boats, which showed clips from Nemo, while talking about marine life. It was interesting, as you each got your own little portal hole to view the underwater adventure.

In the evening, Alicia was surely not a fan of the fireworks yet, so that was an experience by itself... however, we did make it through most of the World of Color show there that featured lots of cool lights, music, fire, and a water show over the Pier area at the California Park at Disney. We were able to get tickets for two night shows for the World of Color, since our hotel on site was privileged to get early passes, we took full advantage of that. The one night at the World of Color show, mommy and daddy managed to get to watch the entire show, as Alicia fell fast asleep in her stroller for almost the entire show. I guess we wore her out that day running around ;) You can see some pretty cool World of Color pictures in this album here.

Like I mentioned before, we had a great time and it was really nice to be able to get away from the crazy and busy schedules at home to have some nice mommy/daddy and Alicia only time before the next big chapter of our family begins.