Happy Halloween!!!

Introducing:

Alexandria as a Snow Angel

Isabel as "Mouse Mouse"

DJ as "Dark Vader"

And

AJ as "A White Guy"

And a quick picture of Isabel's lovely lashes before they got washed away.

Happy Birthday Isabel

Our big two year old. Here's some pictures for you Papi.

The Cake

The Presents

Decorating Cupcakes

Hello Abuela!

And a little video like you asked.

Memory Monday

Happy Birthday Isabel!!!!!
This is Isabel just a few minutes old exactly two years ago today. Alexandria was at the hospital and waiting for her sister to be born. So she was able to come back to meet her new sister right after she was all cleaned up at looking all cute. As you can tell it was a strong bond from the very beginning. Alexandria had already named her La Fidel and she was so excited about our new baby. Isabel was beautiful weighing in just over 7 lbs. She was perfect. When I first heard her cry I knew she was ours because her cry sounded exactly like our other babies but thankfully hers was much more quiet. HA! She soon developed her lungs and now she knows how to make herself heard in our crazy house full of her brothers' and sister's loud, loud voices. She brings much laughter to our home and is never afraid to join in the party. We're so glad we have her. Love you Isabel!!!

Low, Low, Low, Low, Low

Isabel's Singing Debut

Sorry, the quality's not great but I wanted Papi to be able to see it in Mexico so I used a lower quality for downloading purposes. Still it's pretty cute!

Help Me!!

This is why you shouldn't try potty training too young. (Which we're not even starting until she's 3, but she likes to try.) The kids were getting ready to get in the bathtub when I hear, "Mom, Isabel fell in the toilet." She got on and IN by herself. To make it worse, I made her stay there while I went and got my camera. It was too funny of a moment to not get a picture.

An AJ Quotable

Today in church I was filling out some spotlight information for primary on AJ. I was asking him his favorite animal, food, etc. The last question was, "If you could be anything in the whole entire world what would you be?"

AJ answered, "A white guy."

"A what?" I asked. Then I remembered he calls the Storm Troopers in Star Wars the "white guys". "Do you mean a Storm Trooper from Skywalker (that's what he calls Star Wars)?"

To which he replied, "yea!!!" And started fighting with his pretend light saber.

Memory Monday

Because of AJ's quotable today in church I thought I would share this story for Memory Monday.

When Dionys and I first met I liked to hang out with him just to practice speaking Spanish. He was very patient with me and it was easy to try to speak to him. As the relationship progressed, my Spanish got better and so did his English and we noticed that we had a lot of cultural differences, I mean we were from two different countries, so we dealt with those as they came. Three years after we met we were engaged and driving back from California together. We stopped to get gas and I ran in to pay. While I was inside this guy, who had no idea who I was or who Dionys was, asked me, "How are you doing in your interracial relationship?"

I stopped and thought, interracial relationship??? What is he talking about? Then it hit me. Oh, other people see us as black and white. This whole time I had thought we were Dominican and American. Yes, we had cultural differences but what did that have to do with race? I know it probably sounds silly because I guess it seems pretty obvious but never in the three years that we had known eachother had I ever thought of our relationship as an interracial relationship, and I still don't. However, because of this one little question from a total stranger I now know that other people do see us as black and white. It's funny how somethings hit you at certain times. Still it seems weird that other people see him as black and me as just white. But I'm reminded of it everytime we go somewhere and all the black guys give Dionys the "whatup" nod. Or when we're in Mexico and people look at me when we're out to eat or at the store because they think I'm the one that speaks Spanish, not him. At least it gives us something to laugh about.

Can You Tell I'm LOVING This Camera

Finally, a camera that shows how cute I think my kids really are. This is fun and it's only a few of my favorites! I might have found a new hobby. :) Papi you're going to love this too.

Fitness Friday

What's one thing you can do lower your stress levels? Believe it or not, EAT BREAKFAST!!! A hormone, cortisol, is at it's highest in the morning. This hormone contributes to stress. When we eat first thing in the morning cortisol decreases and we feel less stressed out for the rest of the day. Not to mention eating breakfast will increase your metabolism because it immediately fires it up first thing in the morning and keeps it higher for the rest of the day. Plus breakfast foods are delicious! So do something good for yourself and grab a great breakfast in the morning.

Which Would You Choose?

Camera A
Camera B

All this time I thought it was the photographer. And now I find out it was just the camera (and probably still the photographer but not as bad as I thought). So, I'm not such a bad picture taker after all. These were taken on the same day, same light, both cameras on auto. So which camera would you choose?

New Chicks

The kids have been begging me for some chickens ever since we saw the chicken at our contractor's parent's house. So we finally found some chickens. We started out with 3 but one of them got played with a little to roughly. So now we're down to 2. I thought it would be the dog that I would need to watch around the chickens but apparently it's DJ I need to pay more attention to. So there's a new rule. . .DJ can't touch the chickens until they're bigger. I think we'll get another one if we can to replace the one we lost so hopefully, we'll have some delicious organic, cage free eggs by February.

Memory Monday

I saw this great idea on this blog and wanted to do it too. (Thanks Kasey, hope you don't mind if I copy your brilliant idea.) I have a ton of pictures from pre-blogging and since I don't scrapbook much all these pictures are just sitting around taking space on our computer and will just be forgotten if I don't blog them and put them in a blog book. So great idea!

This is the boys and Alexandria when the boys were 4 months old. Alexandria was the BEST big sister (and she still is). She took such good care of her brothers. One time when the boys were about 3 weeks old they were crying on my bed while I was trying to shower. Yes I had to let them cry. I needed a shower!!! We had tried every pacifier out there and none of them seemed to work. Alexandria was really into pacifiers so I just assumed all babies would be. Ha! What a naive mom I was. But Alexandria, remember she was still only two years old, gets on the bed and takes her pacifier out of her mouth and starts giving the boys a turn with it. Pretty soon I didn't hear anything so I'm wondering what the heck has happened to my twins? I yell, "Alexandria, are the boys okay?" To which she happily responds, "yes, I'm just sharing my pacifier with them". After I hurried out of the shower, we had a quick talk about germs and not sharing pacifiers and then it was off to Target to get the 6+month pacifiers for my not even 1 month old babies. But hey, if that's the one they wanted I wasn't going to tell them they were too young. At around 4 months they had both found their fingers. . .but I'll have to save that for another post.

Gone Fishing

We had a fun Fall Break. Alexandria had Thursday and Friday off of school so we decided to do something with our extra long weekend. We went to the zoo and and fishing with Clint and Katie. Isabel loved the boat. She had to go twice. Alexandria is a born natural fisherwoman although we didn't catch anything she's the only one that got a nibble. And talk about casting, this girl know her poles. And AJ as always would NOT let me get a picture no matter how hard I tried but you can see him in the background. He-he! I think he thought he was too cool to have his picture taken with a life jacket on because he specifically told me not to take a picture of him while he was wearing it.

Not the Receipt!

Not this goat!

Nope, not this one either!

And not this one.

Nor was it this one!

But there was a goat that ATE our zoo membership receipt while we were in the petting zoo today. Janalyn needed the receipt for her tax records so I had to chase the dumb goat down and try to get the receipt out of it's mouth. I saved the receipt, well at least the middle of it.

DJ and Isabel

Seriously, one cute picture!! Isabel is getting so big. She has to keep up with everyone else and she loves her brothers and big sister. When Alexandria gets home from school she runs up to her and says adada (Isabel for Alexandria) and gives her huge hugs.

And DJ definately protects his little sis. One day at church we were out in the foyer and another little girl knocked Isabel down. DJ stood up and got right between them. I was afraid he was going to punch the girl out but he remained calm and just stood there to protect Isabel like a big brother should. Isabel's going to love/hate it when they're all in high school together but I hope it'll always be that good.

Could they be getting it?

The boys were cleaning their room today and I heard DJ say:

"Come on AJ, lets clean up so Mommy will say oh it looks so good and she'll be happy because if the Gunny Bag comes out then we'll be sad. So we want to make Mommy happy, huh AJ?"

AJ agreed.

GRANITE!!!

A Flash is A Wonderful Thing

The boys were being so cute. They were supposed to be going to bed but they were sitting on the top bunk together reading a book instead. So I grabbed the camera and tried to sneak a picture but they caught me at the last minute and AJ who never lets me take a picture of him smiled. When he asked to see the picture I showed it to him and he looked kind of confused...

AJ: "But I thought you took a picture of us in the dark?"

ME: "I did but cameras can see in the dark."

DJ: "Huh?"

AJ: "Look, see, D, (his name for DJ) Mommy took a picture in the dark and you can still see it."

Irresistible Peaches

YUM! Don't these fresh peaches and pears shipped straight from Utah look delicious?

Apparently, Chloe thought they looked yummy too. She was sneaking them out of the box in the pantry.

What's New in Our Kitchen?

Well we have uppers and some doors. YEA!!

And the fireplace is done. Now I need to pick out a paint color for it and we're still working on a mantel and doors for the cabinet boxes on each side.

I Did It!!

Thank you Katy for putting this on your blog so I knew how to do it. I got it a few weeks ago I just haven't got around to posting about it yet. But I'm so excited. I figured I'll do it every year on my blog anniversary. Knowing that I can make a book out of my blog makes it so much easier to blog. I'm not a scrap booking kind of gal unfortunately so this is great! To make your own go here.

Here's a peek inside. If you want to see the whole thing you'll have to come visit. :) Or you could just review my blog but that would definately not be as fun.

And here's where it sits now on the bookshelf to look at anytime.