Angels vs. Boston, Martinis and Tapas, and so much more...

What a weekend. Art and I kicked off Friday night by going to the Angels vs. Red Sox game and let me just say that Boston fans are crazy. Our seats were right next to a guy that easily weighed 500 pounds (and he was a Red Sox fan btw). By the 4th inning my back was hurting so bad from having to be cramped to one side since the 500 lb gentlemen was literally spilling over into my seat, we were forced to take rescue in the only 2 empty seats in our area, which were unfortunately right next to another group of Red Sox fans that had had 5 too many beers. After some terse exchanges between myself, Art and the crazy Sox fan, I proclaimed that I would rather be sitting next to the heavy set man than this guy. I told the Sox fan that he was way too tense and he was stressing me out. I don't think he liked that very much...

All ended well though by us taking a nice stroll around the stadium, a landslide Angels victory and an awesome fireworks show.

Saturday was a lounging day but we did get some exercise in. Our new bike trailer arrived and so we took a stroll arond the neighborhood and to Fresh and Easy. We felt so good biking instead of driving to the market and I finally remembered to bring my canvas shopping bag! I bought some ingredients to make grilled eggplant stuffed with feta cheese for a tapas and martini party we were going to later that evening. We got to see our nanny Jill. It just so happened that we needed a sitter for the tapas party and she was going to be back in town for the weekend. Taylor was thrilled to see her and was very excited to get to stay up late and watch a movie with Jill. We had a great time at the party and enjoyed visiting with our friends.

Sunday was dedicated to going to church, grabbing lunch and then after naps we went back to church for an Old Fashioned Picnic. The kids had a great time playing with the hool -a - hoops and watching Art play tug of war. Papa even got to go and proclaimed that he is going to try and make it to church with us every now and then.

And that's the recap of our adventure filled weekend! A couple of pictures at the top are from earlier in the week. We went to Adventure City, a small amusement type theme park for little kids in Anaheim, and we went to the Nature Center with some friends to hear a Celtic band play.

A 2 week update!

Gosh, where do the days and nights go? For the first few weeks of my blog I was so proud of myself for keeping up to date with current posts and pictures, and for the last 2 weeks I have been non-existant. What can I say, life with 2 little ones makes things crazy right? So I will give a quick update on the last 2 weeks and include some pictures and a couple of videos too!

4th of July Weekend:
The weekend started out with Art getting home early on Thursday (yay!) and we had plans to meet up with some friends at Marine Stadium for concert in the park. Well, as the video below shows, both kids woke up in horrible moods beyond belief and I had to get it on tape just to prove that life with 2 little ones is not always a pleasure cruise (as if anyone with kids could ever believe that right?) Sydney has started to throw major temper tantrums when he does not get his way; the tantrum in the video ensued after I did not let him play with the computer. And little Miss Taylor has what i can only compare to as PMS. She can be very sensitive and moody and will launch into these episodes where she is "just so sad" and she doesn't even know why. She's "just sad." I roll my eyes and tell Art she's hormonal because I know exactly how she feels and he rolls his eyes back at me for being so insensitive. And I'm thinking he's the one that's insensitive because he really has no clue as to the hormone fluctuations us ladies have to go through, even 3 year olds! Anyhow, I digress! We ended up skipping concert in the park and heading down to 2nd street to enjoy Open Sesame. YUMMO! We had forgotten how dang good that place is so we revisited it 5 days later. 4th of July was a LONG day but a good one. We started out at Nana and Papa Howe's house and had a very mellow BBQ there with all the in-laws. Around 6 pm we headed over to the Leos casa for more food and fireworks. All the kids did great staying up so late and had a great time.



SWIM LESSONS:
While our weekly battle to actually get Taylor to swim lessons continues, she at least enjoys them once she gets there. I finally got to go and see her swim over 4th of July weekend (due to the holiday lessons were rescheduled and did not conflict with Syd's nap time). I was so proud of her! She is swimming for a good stretch of the pool under water and jumping in by herself. She no longer is afraid to go underwater and get her head wet and is even using her arms to move forward. She has some work to do on her kicking still, but overall she is doing awesome! We are so proud of her.


Sydney is loving the water too!
Don't know if I mentioned it but Sydney, up until very recently, hated the water. Would not set foot in a bathtub (except the tiny newborn tub), pool, jacuzzi, or ocean without screaming bloody murder (if you haven't caught on yet, Sydney has very strong emotional recations to things he does not like, hence me continuously using the term screaming bloody murder). We think it may have something to do with the fact that at about 8 months old we tried the big bath and he slipped out of my hands into the water face first. Anyhow, a couple of weeks ago he finally started warming up to all forms of water including the tub, kiddy pool and big pool. We can finally give both kids a bath at the same time! Thank goodness. We have to be grateful for the little things right???

They're CRAZY for music!!
This past weekend we enjoyed 2 outdoor musical events. Friday night was El Dorado Concert in the Park. I brought some cake I had made which Art declares is the best cake he has ever eaten. I think that is a very bold statement, but it was a damn good cake if I do say so myself. If anyone is intersted I can email you the recipe. It's called vanilla rich chip cake. The video is of Sydney utterly enjoying his cake and dancing at the same time. I kid you not his eyes were rolling in the back of his head! Saturday we headed over to the Bella Terra for dinner and outdoor music/dancing. It was a surf band playing and while Taylor loved the music, Syd thought it was a little too loud so he and daddy sat in back. We all enjoyed some Pinkberry during intermission - YUM!!! so that has been our last 2 weeks in a nutshell. We have done some fun things in the last 2 days but I will post more later...I think I have written a long enough novel as it is. Cheers!

A great weekend

What a fun weekend and it's not even over! Being that summer is here it seems like we are trying to cramp in as many activities as possible, but what else is new?

We kicked off the summer concert in the park series on Friday and joined a few other families and my sister over at El Dorado park. Tina brought all 3 kids by herself and made it look effortless. I don't know how she does it! She basically has 2 newborns and a 4 year old that is a typical rambunctious boy, even trying to escape on us to a neighboring family. He's no match for us though and we quickly found him and brought him back to our site thank goodness. She then shocked us by saying they might have another! Not sure if our look of shock and horror scared her from the idea though...

Saturday was our usual of swim lessons in which Taylor protested and whined the entire hour before going, but then once she got there she was a champ. She actaully swam under water for a few feet! I can't wait to go next week so I can see for myself. Before swim lessons though, Art cooked breakfast and was so sweet. He cut up a nectarine for her and laid it out beautifully on her plate. When she saw what he had done she shrieked in horror and said rather rudely "I did not want my nectarine like that!" I had to capture the moment with a picture (attached). I said to Art, "you treat her like royalty and eventually she will act like royalty."

Saturday afternoon I went to get a mani/pedi and then met up with a friend for coffee and shopping on 2nd street. We ended up having such a nice time sitting and talking we didn't have time for shopping. Probably better that way I guess. Thanks for such a nice afternoon J!

I came home to find that Taylor had taken a pair of her craft scissors to her hair because she wanted bangs like Dora and mommy! She cut a chunk of her hair down to about a 1/2 inch stub. Aghhh!!!

We then headed over to Shahe and Amy's (and baby Andrew) for a delicious dinner. It was so nice just chilling in their backyard. although Sydney was in a foul mood I must admit. Super fussy and cranky. Oh well, I guess all moments can't be picture perfect right?

lastly, this mornign we went to church and then had a picnic lunch afterwards at Heartwell park where the kids (Taylor and Art) climbed trees. The day couldn't have been more gorgeous.

Phew! That's about it. We are now just researching bike trailers to buy. With summer in full swing we thought it would be great to get on the road with our bikes and save some gas money too!

My husband is a computer braniac geek and I love it!

So tonight I was telling Art that I wanted to change my blog around a bit and spread the text out so that it wasn't running just down the middle of the whole screen. I mentioned that there was an edit HTML option on the blog and he said "oh, i could fix that in about 10 seconds, let's go do it now."

He proceeds to start opening the page (he has never even been on blog spot) and starts moving crap around and entering code in HTML and all this crazy stuff. he's saying, "look you could rearrange the pictures like this by typing in this code, and blah blah blah." You get the picture. I ask him how he knows all this stuff and he says "just by reading it and figuring out what it was saying and this is nothing, you should see all the crazy stuff I have to do." I'm thinking, okay you're a nerd and a total genius all at the same time and I love it! He did teach me how to sort of move pictures around in posts. See how I put one picture at the top of the post and one picture at the bottom of the post in the Summer Lovin' post? Aren't I cool! :)

Summer Lovin'

Yesterday evening we enjoyed the warm weather and extra daylight. While waiting for daddy to come home we ventured out front and Taylor picked flowers and Syd crawled around like a crazy man. Have I mentioned how much Sydney DOES NOT like getting dressed and prefers to be in as little as possible? Hence the shirt and diaper look. Anyhow, i really don't understand how babies can crawl all over the place, including concrete and not get calloused knees?

Syd does not like crawling on the grass though so he does the cute bear crawl thing. taylor noticed him doing this and said "look, Sydney is doing yoga!"

Daddy arrived home and we all played out front for a bit more. But before going inside for the night daddy and Taylor had to practice their cheer moves and Art was throwing her in the air as high as he could. I was kinda getting freaked out, but he did catch her everytime :)

A Full Day

Today a friend of mine that I used to work with at SJK came over for a playdate. Her son was born on my bday actually and is just 1 month older than Sydney. In preparation for their visit Taylor helped me make homemade hummus (1st time ever). Taylor loves to help anytime anywhere if it involves cooking in the kitchen. The recipe was super easy and very good:
1 can Garbanzo beans
1 cup roasted red pepper
juice of 1 lemon
pinch of cinnamon
Toss above in a blender and pour in olive oil while pureeing to desired consistency. S/P to taste.
Taylor LOVED it and ate a ton of it with pretzel slims, carrots and cherry tomatoes. I have never seen her eat so much hummus and I was happy because I knew she was getting a good dose of veggies :)
The kids played all around the house and in the yard and even got into the kiddy pool.
We had Jill over for dinner to say goodbye. Jill has been our nany 1/day a week for the last 9months and is moving back to San Jose after graduating from CSULB. We will miss her dearly.
I made spinach and ricotta stuffed chicken (ala Jillian Michaels) and it was delicous!
After the kids went to bed Art and I had a nice, albeit tearful heart to heart about the family, where we're heading and so forth. Sort of a taking stock talk. After our talk I stumbled upon a freind's blog and read a post about an author named Sally Clarkson. She gave a review of one of her books she just read and I also linked onto the author's blog and reading it was just waht I needed tonight. I plan to pick up the book soon and give it a read:
The Mission of Motherhood: Touching Your Child's Heart for Eternity
Here is an exerpt from the book:

No calling is greater, nobler, or more fulfilling than that of motherhood. Every day, as we nurture our children, mothers influence eternal destiny as no one else can. Tragically, today's culture minimizes the vital importance of a mother's role. By catching a vision of God's original design and allowing it to shape your life, you can rediscover the joy and fulfillment that can be found in the strategic role to which God in all his wisdom has called you, for a purpose far greater than you can ever imagine.
Maybe I will see if mom will go to Lighthouse tomorrow and pick it up for me.

Nighty night.

Art and Andrea

So since I know the whole purpose of this blog is for everyone to hear about the kids, I won't bore you all too much and will keep this update short and sweet!

Art is still running CIU very successfully, however, he is in desperate need of hiring a tech so he can take a vacation! It's been 3 years since he has taken more than 2 days off of work. he is an amazing dad and the kids just adore him. In his very very spare time, he still enjoys watching movies and reading science fiction and murder mystery novels. His favorite movie of 07 was that Cohen brothers film that I didn't get at all but he absolutely loved. He'll kill me for not remembering the name of it! I had to go back and add in that the movie is called No Country for Old Men! there, happy Art?
I continue to work part time (2 days a week) at St. John as the product knowledge coordinator and Nana and Grandma watch the kids those two days. When not at work I revolve my days around the kids various activities and sneak in some time for the gym, reading and cooking (just barely though). I also have made a great group of "mom" friends here in Long Beach and we do a lot of fun things together both with and without the kids. We went to see Sex and The City on opening night for instance and had a blast. Big and Carrie did get married after all :) My favorite movie of 07 was Juno.
Alright enough about us!