A late mothers day

For Mothers Day Alec's school put on a program for all the mommies. We met up in the church and then the kids came marching in. They stood on risers and sang songs for us which was very cute. My son, of course, just stood there waving at me or with his fingers up his nose the entire time. Go figure.

Alec is of course standing right next his main girl, Carly.

After the program we went outside to the grass area and the teachers had all set up different blankets for the mom's and kids to sit on. In class that morning the kids had helped make us a lunch of cookies and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. We ate our lunch and then the kids presented the mom's with a special gift.

Alec is such a special little guy and I am so proud of him. I am wearing the gift he made for me in this picture. I have also worn it quite a bit since. Alec gets so tickled whenever he sees me wearing it!

Surprise!!

Adam came into town earlier than expected so we were able to get an appointment a week early for a gender determination. We went out to the place in Diamond Bar and I was quite nervous. I sat down in the chair and the tech started looking around. We could hardly believe our ears when we heard her say, "Yep! It's a GIRL!!" WHAT!?!? Seriously?! I made her check 4 times before the ultrasound was over and there was no denying it. We were thrilled!

The only person that knew we changed our appointment to a week earlier was Allie so I called her and told her the news. Everyone else was told on Saturday as a surprise. Right after we left the ultrasound place we had gone down to Target and bought two cute little dresses. On Saturday morning I went to my parents house (Adam was at school) and I gave my mom a gift as a early mothers day present. She opened up the bag and saw the little dress and looked at me. I told her that we had a ultrasound the night before and she just went NUTS! She and my Dad were so thrilled for us. We told Adam's parents that night in the same way and they were also thrilled.

As much as I hoped and prayed that I would have a daughter, a small part of me just never thought it would happen. I can't wait to meet this little girl and see what a different dynamic she brings to our household. She is certainly going to have to hold her own with her two big brothers!

We can't wait to meet you Ashley Marie!!

Field Trip Time!

For Alec's school they do a field trip every year down to the tide pools at Laguna Beach. I dropped Aaron off to spend the morning with Grandma and Alec and I made a day of it!

This was Alec's first bus ride and he LOVED it, despite his face in this picture. It was an old school yellow school bus so you can guess how a 6 foot tall pregnant lady fit in there....

Alec at his favorite part of the tide pools. He liked this spot because he could get close enough to the water for it to lap up over his feet.

We saw some crabs, lots of shells, and some other really slimy stuff. After the tide pools we went up to a grassy area and had a picnic lunch with the rest of the school. It was a wonderful day and I look forward to going on many more field trips with Alec!

Third time around...

It is interesting going through this pregnancy for the third time around. Not that I would ever expect pregnancy to be boring but I suppose I thought there would be a sense of, "I have done this two other times already, how exciting can it be?" Pretty darn exciting actually! We had our first ultrasound at 13 weeks and my heart just melted all over again when I saw that little heart beating along with arms and legs moving around. Absolutely NO sense of been there, done that.

We had our "big" ultrasound this last Friday before Adam left for his training up in Sacramento. We of course wanted to make sure that all the important parts of the body were working properly but we were also looking forward to hopefully finding out the sex. The ultrasound is usually done at 20 weeks but because Adam would be out of town for almost 3 weeks we decided to do it early. Thankfully everything showed up as being healthy with the baby but unfortunately they could not tell the sex yet. The ultrasound tech said that according to her measurements the baby was about 17 weeks 4 days instead of 18 weeks 2 days. That means that my due date has now been pushed back to October 1st! I guess 4 days does not seem like a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but it sure sounds like a lot right now!

The boys have been so wonderful with me and this pregnancy. Aaron is vaguely aware of what is going on. He will come up to me, lift up my shirt, and say, "Baby!" So cute!! THEN he will lift up his own shirt, pat his own tummy and say, "Baby!" Still cute, but not quite accurate! :) Alec is the one that is SO much fun to watch this time around. For the first few months he was convinced that we were having a girl but the last few weeks he has changed to a boy. It will be interesting to see what we get! Alec loves coming over, putting his hand on my tummy and saying that they baby moved and that the baby is giving him hugs and kisses. I love seeing him get so excited about it. I just hope the enthusiasm stays as high when the baby is actually here!!

I am starting to pop out much more and actually look pregnant instead of that weird in-between stage where non one is quite sure. Despite a little heartburn things are feeling really good and hopefully it will stay that way. Adam gets back into town on the 17th of May so I have scheduled a outside ultrasound for Friday the 18th at 9:00 a.m. I will be 21 weeks at that point so there should not be any issue determining if it is a Ashley or Anderson...we hope. I will keep you updated!

Kasey and Aaron

On April 7th we met up with Brian, Carrie, and Kasey at The Whole Enchilada for dinner for Brian's birthday. It is always difficult taking the little ones to restaurants but it certainly makes it easier when Aaron and Kasey entertain each other!

Kasey and Aaron enjoying rice and chips together...this is how romances start, right?
OOHHHHH!!! Is that hand holding that I see?
Wow!! Is this a glimpse into the future? Alec and Kasey sitting in highchairs K-I-S-S-I-N-G!! Someone needs to tell Aaron that he is suppose to close his eyes when he kisses a girl!

Go Angels!!

On Friday, April 6th Phil, Natalie and Mya called and invited us to the Angel game. They had 3 extra tickets so we were able to take Alec to his very first game. Natalie's company owns the tickets so they were field level, right down the third base side...the perfect seats to have two 3 year olds in.

Alec and Daddy before the game. We got there early so that we could show Alec all around the ballpark. Alec was SO excited!
What is a child's first baseball game without a souvenir? Daddy went and bought Alec his very first official Angels hat. Alec did not want a child's hat, he wanted one JUST like Daddy's so he ended up with one that was about 10 sizes too big for him. Oh well, at least he will be able to wear it for a LONG time!!

Alec and Mya did very well at the game and had a blast playing together. After the game, which the Angels won, they had the Friday night fireworks. Alec was a little apprehensive at first since they were so close being shot off in the parking lot, but he really got into them during the show.

We had a wonderful time introducing Alec to the world of Angels Baseball and he can't wait to go again!!!

Camping with Daddy

At the beginning of April Adam took Alec on his first camping trip! They went down to Caspers Wilderness Park right by San Juan Capistrano. Alec was SO excited to be able to sleep in a tent and spend the day with Daddy. They did all things fun, including picnic lunches, long hikes, and playing on the playground at the campground. The only bummer with the trip was the blisters that Alec got on the back of his feet from the new hiking boots he was wearing...but that certainly did not stop him from having lots of fun with Daddy. They can't wait to do it again!

Long overdue update

It is so hard to believe that it is March 31st and I am updating the blog for the first time this year. So sad! Well, not to make excuses, but it has been quite busy. The Christmas season went by in a flash and we enjoyed spending it with lots of friends and family. In December we received the wonderful news that Adam was going to be assigned to a detective spot starting in January so we had to bust our butts and do some shopping! Since Adam was used to wearing uniforms to work and jeans and t-shirts on the weekends we had a lot to buy. Thankfully we found out early enough to put nice work clothes on Adam's Santa Christmas list!!

We welcomed in the New Year by having some friends and family over on New Year's eve. It was a nice night and we actually stayed up past midnight! Quite a accomplishment for parents of two young boys! New Years day we spent hanging around the house and enjoying our family. Adam was scheduled to start at the detective bureau on January 16th (which happens to be my parents anniversary) so we decided to head up to the mountains the weekend before with my entire family and have a nice snow weekend. Unfortunately we had a incident on the way up on Friday, putting on snow chains, where my Dad started having some chest pains. We immediately headed home and sent him to the hospital to get checked out. Long story short, my Dad ended up having triple bypass surgery on January 15th to repair a 98% blockage on his main artery. The doctor said that if the surgery had not been performed then he would have died of a massive heart attack within the next month or two. We could not feel more blessed that the blockage was found and fixed so we have many more years with my wonderful Dad! What a wonderful anniversary gift for my parent's anniversary!!

The week following the surgery was crazy to say the least. Adam started his new position, we were trying to visit Dad at the hospital and helping my mom out at home. To add to the craziness Adam and I found out on the Thursday of that week that I am expecting a baby! WOW were we shocked!!! It was certainly not something that we planned, but who are we to question God's will? The new little one is due on September 26th of this year and we are getting pretty excited! The most fun thing was telling everyone that we were pregnant. Since we were not even trying it was a shock to EVERYONE!!

The boys are doing wonderfully. Alec is SO excited about the new baby that he kisses my belly every morning and every night. He is convinced it is a girl and refers to her as Ashley. I keep telling him that it might be a boy (Anderson) but he is not buying it. Sure would be nice if he was right, but I would certainly take another little boy also...as long as it is healthy. Alec is enjoying school and I just registered him for next year's classes. He has made lots of friends and our social calendar is filling up quickly with play dates and birthday parties. His favorite friend at school is a little red headed girl named Carly. He calls her his, "sweet girl." I just about DIED when he referred to her as that the first time as that is usually his name for me. I thought it would be much longer before I had to deal with this stuff! Alec is so compassionate and smart and I am so proud of the boy he is turning into. I can't wait to see what the future holds for him!

Aaron is doing well also. He is still a peanut but he thinks he is about the same size (and age) as Alec. He wants to do whatever Alec is doing and play with whatever Alec is playing with. He has quite the temper and will not hesitate to let you know when you have done something that does not agree with him. Although whining is still is primary source of communication, he is starting to use more words. Popular ones are now...doggie, mammie (grammie), baby, peeees (please), and ah-ah-ah (his blanket). Aaron is completely in his element when he is outside, preferably on his scooter. If his scooter is not available then he will settle for sucking the dirt off of rocks in his mouth. Yes, this is a inherited trait...I used to suck on dirt clods as a child...but see how well I turned out!?! :)

Things look bright for the future and we are enjoying every second of it. Adam LOVES his new position and is drudging through school. He only has one year left and can't wait for it to be over. I am finally past my morning sickness stage of pregnancy so hopefully I will be able to take on projects that have been neglected over the past few months and get moving. I promise to update the blog more frequently and add some pictures. I hope all my faithful (but few by this point I am sure) readers are doing well and I will keep you updated!

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!