Happy Hawleyween!!

Ok, so my idea of catching up with all the prior pictures and months did not actually work out that well. I still plan on doing it, but just not before I start updating this blog now. We have hadso many things going on with pre-school starting for Alec and Adam starting on his masters degree just to name a few. As we get into the holiday months I will be posting current pictures and then also try to throw in some older ones to try and fully catch up.



Adam and his boys on Halloween night before Adam went off to work. Unfortunately Adam had to work at 5:00 p.m. so he did not get to see the boys go trick or treating, but we made the best of it.

Alec decided that he wanted to be Woody for Halloween this year so I gladly accommodated and made his costume. I made the shirt and vest and then we bought him boots, a hat, and an official deputy badge. He wore this costume so much before Halloween that it was SO dirty on the actual day. I am sure he will enjoy it for a long time to come!

Mommy and her boys at the Irvine Park pumpkin patch. Aaron has on his "I love my mummy" shirt and Alec is sporting a mohawk along with his "pirate " shirt.

What goes better with a cowboy than an indian? I had a bit of drama when making Aaron costume as he decided to grow a little bit between measurement and completion of the costume. I had some last second creative work to make it fit, but everything worked out in the end. He was quite fascinated by the fringe all over the place.

I'm BACK!!!!

Yes, I know how long it has been since I have updated this blog!! In the time since I have been on here we have moved, had Adam and Alec's birthdays, went on a small vacation and a million other things. I promise to update this within the next few days...that is if anyone is actually still checking the blog! :) If you are, then thank you faithfull readers!! I will be updating by date of pictures so the new entries will be under this entry.

Happy 4th of July!!

From the time that we moved out of our old house we had about two weeks work of work that needed to be done on our new house. We moved in with my parents for those two weeks and got to work. On our new house the entire house was painted (walls, ceilings, closets, trim) and all the flooring was changed out. We also had the fireplace done at the same time since it had the same ugly pink marble as the entry way. We were lucky enough to have two great contractors working for us and they busted their butts to get everything done very fast.

While many families around the country were celebrating the 4th with BBQ's and relaxation, we put ours to work. We wanted to be able to move in before Adam's work week started again so our families were gracious enough to come and help us bring the furniture and lots of the boxes from the garage into the house. We were SO happy to be in!!

This is our family room, looking from the kitchen. The fireplace is the same tile as the rest of the house and a mantle would be installed at a later date.
This is our living room and dining room looking from the entry way. We found the three couch pieces and the coffee table for a bargain at the JC Penney outlet store.
This is our kitchen and nook area looking from the dining room. No, your eyes are not deceiving you, that is PINK tile on the countertops in the kitchen. We only had so much money so some things had to be put off till a later date to fix. We are still not sure when it will be changed out, but we are learning to live with the pink.
Our staircase looking from the front door. HUGE improvement from the dirty smoky stained walls and carpet!! I will take some more pictures now that we have some more stuff on the walls and post them soon.

Goodbye old house!!

Friday night we finally finished moving everything over into the garage of the new house and cleared out of Mammoth Circle. It was so hard leaving! Adam and I took our time walking around to each room and enjoying our cute little house one last time.

The kitchen that we worked so hard on remodeling. It is weird that our new house has such a small kitchen compared to this one. I will REALLY miss my cabinet space and my granite. I won't miss my inconsistent stove! :)

Adam and I in front of our home for the last time.

The infamous fireplace...

The family room where we spent MANY lovely times as a family. Where Alec took his first steps...ok, going to stop now cause I am going to cry....

Our new home...eewwww!!

On June 20th escrow closed on our old house, and on the 21st it closed on our new house. Could not have cut it any more close! As soon as we heard word on the 21st that everything closed Adam and I headed over to the house to check things out. The previous owners were smokers and were aparently not very fond of using a vacuum. All the walls in the house were disgusting yellow and the carpets were just thrashed. We were able to get into the house a week before it closed and run an ozone machine to get rid of the smoke smell (which it did) and then we had to paint and replace flooring for the cosmetic work. I am actually very glad we had to do this since it gave us an opportunity to put our personal touch on the house. Here are a few pictures of the house the day we took posession.

Looking from the front door into the entry way and up the stairs. Notice how disgusting the carpet is and the ugly pink marble on the floor...YUCK!
Here is Adam opening the front doors for the first time after the close of escow. The first thing we brought with us to the new house was our crusifix. Adam carried me over the threshold just as he did on our wedding day in our condo and also the day escrow closed on our Mammoth house. How romantic!!
One other good example of the yuckness. This is our master bedroom. You can see how terrible the floor is and also how all of the silk roman shades were just trashed from the years of smoke in the house. It is amazing how much the room was opened up once we took down the window covering above our sliding door. We had a lot of work to do!

Packing up our home...

With all the drama we went through, everything finally came together at the last second and we sold our house! We were able to close escrow concurrently with the purchase of our new house so everything worked out great. I have to admit, it was MUCH harder packing up our old house and leaving it then I thought it was going to be. I know that partially it was because of all the work Adam and I did on the house together but the bigger part was the emotional aspect. This is the place where we brought our babies home from the hospital. This was where Alec took his first steps. So many memories!! We will ALWAYS love that little house!!

Taking a break from packing to goof around with my boys. How cute is this picture?
Boxes, boxes and more boxes!! Who knew it would be so difficult to pack up a 1400 square foot house to move just a mile away?
My boys goofiing around a little more. Even though that house was small, it was filled completely with love and laughter!!

Hangin' at Grammie and Papa's house

Grammie playing Uno with Alec. Believe it or not, Alec wins the game a good amount of the time! He is a VERY good player with minimal help from others! I can't wait till I can teach him 11 handed rummy!!

Aaron and CJ (cousin Jason) hangin' out. We LOVE it when he comes to see us!!

HEY PUNK!!!!

Monkeys at the zoo!!

Although the San Diego Zoo is by far our favorite, we still have a pretty cute little zoo close by, the Santa Ana Zoo. It mostly consists of smaller animals with lots of fun things for the kids to do. Pauline and I decided to take the kids down to the zoo and let them run around for the afternoon. We of course had a blast!!

Cormac and Aaron hanging out in the stroller together. They are such good buddies!!

After some initial devastation by Alec due to a long line at the train ride and my unwillingness to wait in it, Alec had a great time playing with Ian on all the trails. I think here they were pretending to be swinging monkeys. Let me tell you, Alec took a good nap when we got home!

What would a visit to the zoo be without Alec feeding the animals? Yes all you germ-phobes...I washed his hands very thoroughly afterwards!! :)

What a difference a year makes!!

So these are not pictures of me, but of our good friends the Tobins...

June 8th, 2006...Pauline and Cormac on Cormac's 1 year birthday at Miss Alicia's class. What a cutie he is!!
One year prior, on June 8th, 2005, Pauline and Ian (Cormac's older brother) at Miss Heidi's class. After this class Pauline went into labor and had Cormac late that night. We feel so blessed to have the Tobin family as friends and look forward to many more birthdays in the future years!

Sesame Street Live!!

On June 3rd we had the opportunity to go to Sesame Street Live with Mya, Maddie, Josh, and other friends. Alec and I had a fun morning together with some alone time that we don't usually get to have. Although Alec did not show it very much that day, he had a GREAT time and did not stop talking about it for about a week afterwards!

Mommy and Alec on a fun morning at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood. No red carpets were out for us though. How rude!!

Maddie and Alec watching the show.

My strange children...

Yes, go figure, Adam and Amanda have produced strange children. Not a big shocker I know. It is so much fun watching the silly personalities develop with the kids and especially noticing the differences between Aaron and Alec's personalities.

Aaron has this thing where he likes to find socks, shoes, or baby wipes and stuff them into his mouth and crawl around. I have no idea where it comes from, except maybe from our dog Obi. He also loves to crawl into small spaces and hang out there. In this picture Aaron has found one of his socks and stuffed it into his mouth and then he crawled under the dining room chair and was hanging out there happy as a clam. uummm....ok?

This is a picture of a almost three year old boy asserting his dominance in the house over the toys. This toy was one of Alec's favorites when he was a baby but I put it away when he was about 18 months old because he lost interest in it. I pulled it back out again for Aaron when he started moving around and Alec fell in love with it again. So much that he refuses to let Aaron play with it. This picture shows Alec's possessive move where he finds a toy he wants to keep from Aaron and then he throws himself on it as to keep Aaron away from it. Nice.

Snapping any kind of belts and buckles together has always been high on Alec's "fun list". Whenever there is a carseat, stroller, or in this instance, Aaron's booster seat, in reach Alec is always there making sure that everything is snapped together. Aaron thinks that this is hilarious!! I especially love this picture because of the big-ol cheesy smile on Aaron's face. Too cute. Sadly, this smile will not last long because right after I took this picture Alec ripped the strap out of Aaron's hand and made Aaron start crying. Ahhhh...the drama!!

hangin' out

After the crazyness of the baptism was over Brian, Carrie and Kasey were able to come over and spend some time with us before they went back to San Diego. It is so much fun watching the kids interact with eachother!

Kasey, Aaron, and Alec. You have no idea how hard it was to even get this picture of all three of them sitting in the same spot. Forget trying to have them all look in the camera and smile! This is as good as it gets!

Aaron is keeping a close eye on that Kasey-girl!!

Kasey Day's Baptism

Adam and I were honored when Brian and Carrie asked us to be Kasey's Godparents. Her baptism was originally suppose to be in San Diego but was moved up here when Grammie unfortunately fell and hurt her hip. Things were quickly switched around and the baptism was held at St. Joseph's parish in Placentia. Despite cold weather and a bit of a crabby baby the baptism went off very well and everyone had a wonderful time at the Emards house afterwards.

Carrie, Kasey, and myself

Adam, Brian, Carrie, Kasey and me with Uncle (Fr.) Paul in the background.

Adam and I look forward to setting a christian example for Kasey as she grows into a beautiful young woman!

Maddie's Birthday Party

Maddie turned two on the 18th of May but her birthday party was held on Sunday the 21st. Although we had a busy day planned that day with Kasey's baptism being that afternoon we were able to make it to the party and have a great time! The party was at Scooters Jungle in Placentia. They have a huge room with bounce houses, slides, air hockey and more. Tons of fun stuff for kids and adults to have fun on. We had a BLAST!!

The birthday girl playing in the bouce house. Those blue eyes are SO amazing!!

Mommy and Aaron having a great time watching Daddy and Alec on the slide.

Daddy and Alec at the bottom of the slide. Alec was a bit apprehensive about going on the slide at first but then loved it once he got to go down with Daddy. Daddy makes ALL things better!!

Daddy teaching Alec how to play air hockey with Aaron supervising.

Personalities...

Thanks to Aunt Allie, one of Alec's favorite hair styles is a mohawk. Outside of Allie's birthday and a few other rare occasions, I can usually just do it this way in the tub, show it to Alec in the mirror, and satisfy Alec's mohawk craving. Let's hope this does not carry onto his teen years!!

Alec and Aaron's favorite past time together, watching Thomas. I think that this is the one Thomas item that Alec does not mind sharing. I guess it would be pretty hard for him to make Aaron NOT watch his show. I am sure if Alec could figure out a way to do that then he would!!

This picture pretty much sums up Aaron's personality to a "T". Adorable little boy, smiling pretty much all the time, but always getting into something!! This time it was only the cabinet of books but it has also been our CD's, our Videos, other book cases, etc. The really cute thing is that once he finishes emptying everything out of whatever cabinet he is working on, he crawls inside of it and hangs out. Too cute!

A morning with our friends...

I am lucky enough to have my good friend Pauline in my life with her two little boys, Ian and Cormac both being the same age as my boys. Pauline and I rely on each other not only as confidants, but also as back-up when we need middle of the day babysitting for each other. This day Pauline had a hair appointment so I had all four boys for a few hours. Alec and Ian had a blast playing together while Aaron and Cormac pretty much slept the entire time. Here are some cute pictures of our adventure...

Alec and Ian actually SHARING Alec's trains and train tracks. Wonders will never cease!!

This picture is truly amazing to me. All four boys sitting in one place and all looking into the camera at one time! Now if they were all smiling then I just might have had a heart attack!!

Cormac and Aaron sharing a toy together

Obsess much??

I went in to check on Alec about a hour after he went to bed and HAD to take a picture of him. Can you say OBSESSED with Thomas the Train???

Tunnel time

Grammie and Papa gave Alec a pop out tunnel last year for his birthday and it has been a favorite toy ever since. Once Aaron started crawling it quickly became one of his favorites also! The only problem was making Alec understand that he needs to SHARE his tunnel!!

What a handsome guy!

Aaron making his way through the tunnel towards Alec, laughing the entire time!

Now THERE is a happy boy!!