Lagoon

We were not planning on going to Lagoon this year. Disneyland was supposed to satisfied our wanting of thrill and adrenaline rush but I guess we just couldn’t take it.

 

Spencer was on vacation and his friend offered us some discount tickets and you just can’t say no to that.

We went on a Tuesday morning right after lunch and the crowds were non-existent.

We got excited checking their web site the day before looking into their height restrictions because their restrictions start at 36" and 46". Josh measured 38" and Julia was 45 1/2.

Josh was just the perfect size, but to make sure Julia could ride the bigger rides what did her mommy do?

She made her a tall hairdo that day and filled the bottom of her shoes with cotton balls.  The result: she was able to go in all the roller coasters including Colossus which has two loops that put you upside down. She loved it.

 



Julia rode Colossus, the Bat, Spider, wooden roller coaster, wild mouse and she rode the Odysea  and the Log Fume seating on her own.

We couldn’t have planned this better. Spencer and I took turns with the kids going on the rides.  I used to be able to do it all but times have change I guess. Oh, and I have motion sickness so no swings for me. Spencer did most of the rides that just go on circles and we took turns with Julia to go on the roller coasters. By the end of the night neither of us was exhausted and the kids just loved cheering up for each other and telling each other what a great job they were doing and how brave they were. It was so cute!

Josh was also able to go on his very second roller coaster ride, the new Bambora ride which is really smooth and easy roller coaster. The first roller coaster he rode was in Disneyland. He also tried Puffed the Fire Dragon with Julia only. It was great watching the kids being independent together. Julia took Josh to the line and made sure they got good seats

We didn’t pay for Andrew because he was too little and wouldn’t have enjoyed it or remember anything about this trip anyways. Besides, Julia and Josh had to wait until they were 3 to start going on the rides. A.D. was such a good boy.  He enjoyed just hanging around on his stroller and eating all the treats with us. I couldn’t be prouder of my little man

It was such a perfect day, one of those really rare peaceful times where there are no tears or tantrums or winning or screaming. It was just glorious.

The funniest moment of the day was watching Josh drive on those electric cars. He couldn’t figure it out how to turn the wheel, so he ended up driving in a big circle on the same spot during the entire ride. His face was comical. He is on the green car at the very back

As we were attempting to go on the Ferris wheel a huge storm hit us, but by then it was 8:00pm anyways and we happily agreed it was time to go home.

July part 2

Swimming lessons Second round

Julia really loved her swimming lessons this year but because I wanted to try Surf n’ Swim she got to have swimming lessons a second time around.

I put Julia on level 4. When the teachers were calling their roll and were introducing themselves I noticed a bunch of 10 and 12 year olds being called to her class. She was at the end of the roll and a half a body shorter than everyone else.

While I was trying to find the supervisor to have her transferred from that class I noticed her walking with her class and going to the pool with the big kids. Without complaining she got into the deep water and was beginning to do front crawl like everybody else. She couldn’t even touch the bottom of the pool!

I was very proud of her for trying something as hard without doubting herself. I did however, had here transferred into level 3 which was still mainly for 8 year olds. She did awesome. She swims now. Not only that, she can jump out of the diving board.  We couldn’t be prouder of her.  Thank you Grandma for coming to see her, she really likes showing off

Another First

We usually learn new things and grow a lot during summer time and this year wasn’t the exception for Julia. She wears size S in cloths, size 12 shoes and hates soxs.

She can swim, she can do a running cart wheel, a back bend and is really close to doing a back flip all by herself, but the thing that she is most proud of just happened this month. We got to say goodbye to two good friends of ours. They are left and right training wheels.

Yeap, on July 8th at 6:47 pm, Julia rode her bike like a big girl. I can’t remember how many attempts it took me to learn this skill but it took this girl I’ll say about 4 tries and 3 minutes.

She loves feeling all grown up

Pee Wee sports
I feel bad that we have Julia in swimming lesson, tumbling and pretty soon soccer again. I had to find something for Josh to do. After researching a lot I found a program at the Clearfield aquatic center where they teach kids 3-5 how to play 3 different kind of sports; baseball, football and soccer.

 Josh was one of the smallest kids on his group but I was so proud of him for trying his very best. Of course there were moments when it was better to pay attention to the craw flying nearby or that plane zooming by than the coach but all and all Josh had an awesome time.

 

The best part was that his coach made it necessary for parents to interact with the kids. I think Josh really  enjoyed having all that attention to himself.

July part 1

INDEPENDENCE DAY

We had a great 4th of July. Sometimes you take for granted all the sacrifices that people are doing overseas to keep the liberties in this country that we enjoy so much.
We went to the Layton fair. It was super crowded but we loved seeing the kiddos go on and on the bouncy houses they had available. This time Josh actually climbed in and went through their obstacle course. We picked up a couple of bags of cotton candy and headed to grandma’s Smith house.

The kids swam with all the cousins and had a blast. Even this little munchkin got all wet.

 

You can’t celebrate the 4th without hamburgers and good ol’ corn. Yum!

Spencer had bought fireworks for the kids and we had the family come over to our home to watch them together.

Can you guess who was scared and who wasn’t?....

Josh ran to the background and watched from the safety of the door steps. He takes after me. Believe it or not I was scared to death of fireworks when I was little.

 Julia was very brave, but I kept seeing her chair slowly move further and further back and away from the fireworks.

Spencer lighting the fireworks, although he had a great deal of help from little Luke who was extremely excited about the fireworks. 

I don’t think Andrew even blinked while the fireworks were going on. He was perfectly snuggled on his grandpa’s legs

The kids loved it. After our show was over we walked to the end of our street and were able to watch dozens of fireworks being launched everywhere around us

Andrew 1 year

 Yes it was a month ago that my little monkey turned 1 year old but would you believe how busy my summer has been.

Andrew at 1 year:

His Stats:

Weight: 23.38 lbs

Length: 30 inches

 Can crawl and is very close to walk. He actually took 5 steps the other day towards his daddy. He just won’t walk towards me. He looks at me, growls like saying yeah right mom, be serious and goes right onto crawling.

He has 8 teeth; 4 on the top and 4 on the bottom.

He is a very picky eater. He eats according to his moods. Some days he loves chicken, other days he can’t stand it, but so far macaroni and cheese and rice have never failed. The sad thing is that when something is not of his like he grabs it and throws it to the floor, pretty bad. Let’s hope this stage gets over with quickly because I do not like it a bit

Wears size 4 shoe and hates socks

He loves to play peek-a-boo with Julia and Josh

He loves to share. He will get his bottle out of his mouth and try to feed me. He gets a kick when I pretend to drink out of it.

He loves babies but like any other one year old he just can’t be gentle

He is a TROUBLE maker. Sometimes he cries intentionally to get Josh in trouble

Trivia question:

Did you know that little boys have drama? If you didn’t I invite you to watch A.D. and you’ll discover in 10 minutes how true this is.

His very favorite words are: mama, mas (more), buk (book), baby and that’s about it

He loves music. He stops to listen to it and if he likes the tune enough he even hums.

He is a snuggler BIG time. At night time he goes to the floor and plays until he gets tired, then he climbs right up to the couch and snuggles next to either Spencer or me.

He is strong. Julia tried to take a toy away from him and she couldn’t. He’s got a firm grip

He loves to read. He goes to Julia’s room and sits in front of her bookshelf with a book and pretends to read, funny thing is that he makes noises and flips the pages and even points to the pictures like he knows what the story is about.

Andrew loves to watch movies. So far the one he loves the most is Mosters INC.

He is one smart little cookie. Sometimes I had hidden my IPod or the controller between the couch cushions. He waits until I am gone and crawls straight for it and digs until he finds what he was looking for.

Loves to climb up and down the couches, bed toys you name it.

His favorite relaxing spot is under the dining table. He is usually joined by Julia and Josh.

He loves being outside.  Watching his siblings or just scavenging for those potato bugs. His eyes don’t move once he has found one until he has reached for it.

 



His favorite time of the day is Bath time, especially because he gets to share it with Josh. This is not a good combo. I usually have to clean a gallon of water off the bathroom floor, not to mention the many times that I’ve discovered a bathtub full of bubbles and an empty bottle of shampoo that I forgot to put away.

When he is sleepy, he is sleepy. These are pictures of the many times that he fell asleep on his bouncy chair

He got his first hair cut the day after his birthday…handsome boy

He has the most expressive eyes that I’ve seen. I could easily guess what he is thinking just by looking at his face

" I love you mommy..wait a second you got that camera again don't you, don't you"

He can climb up and down the stairs, but he is such a dare devil that he would turn around and start bouncing on the steps so he is forbidden to go downstairs.

Andrew is quite the character. He is definitely my artist. He loves to draw sadly his favorite spots are the couches. He has a very strong character and it is very determined. He never gives up even if it takes him an hour to climb up through the stack of chairs that are holding him captive inside the living room.

He thinks he is part of my baking supplies because I always find him putting himself away in the oven drawer. He opens it up and can sit there forever if he wanted to.

He is so tender hearted; he is always petting the cat even when he doesn’t want to be pet.

The thing I love the most about my Andrew is his laugh. He laughs about the silliest things and when he does it is so contagious.

I love my boy, his kisses, his smiles, and his drama. He makes it so worth it to wake up in the middle of the night when Josh is being too loud while going to the bathroom. I really don’t mind sharing my side of the bed on nights when he can’t fall asleep and I love the way he hugs me and cuddles his head right against my arm and holds on to my finger to make sure he is staying on bed with me.

I love the feeling that I get when I see him with Julia and Josh and I see him fitting so perfectly in our family.

This first year has being a blessing, I am excited to see what new things he will learn to do in the next couple of months

Syracuse's Heritage Days

June is over and with it the million things that we had going on. No wonder it flew by!

Syracuse’s Heritage Days festivities are one of my favorite things to do. This year we started our celebration on Thursday night by attending the fair and game booths.

I purchased wrist bands for the kids a month in advance so that the kids could have unlimited rides. My oh my they were worth it, we could have easily spent a couple of hundred dollars with the amount of times these kids rode on the rides. This was the first night the fair was open so we literally had all the rides to ourselves and the cool breeze of the evening to make things even more pleasant.

Julia made me go on this really grown up ride. while she was smiling and having a good time I was about to die. I felt all my blood rush to my toes and my head was spinning out of control.

When we got in the ride there were 6 people laying on the grass outside of it and I though that was weird, by the time the ride ended, I joined them. Apparently you needed a couple of minutes to recuperate from this particular ride that's how bad it was. Little Julia wanted to go again. I must be getting old because I hated that thing.

We played until 9:30 that night, but look how bright and sunny it still looks. We ended our fun with some shaved ice.

On Friday they had a free magic show for the kids. The kids loved it! There was a point during the show where the magician had a bunny puppet doing some magic with him. The bunny told the magician he wanted to turn all the kids into frogs, wouldn’t you know that my 5-year old bought it. She turned around looked at me all scared and said “I want to get out of here”. These are some serious words. If she ever says that is because she is really scared. Anyways I asked her why she wanted to leave and she said that bunny wants to turn me into a frog. I couldn’t do anything else but just laugh.

Every time that bunny touched the magician’s magic wand she got really concern. I don’t think she trusted that bunny at all.

The kids have been doing magic downstairs ever since that time. I smile every time I hear Josh say “Ada cadaba” and apparently this makes Julia turn into an animal because I start hearing animal noises all over the house.

They had a movie in the Park that night, but it was Rapunzel. Let’s be honest, right now we are watching that movie twice on a daily basis. We skipped the movie and just walked around the booths for a couple of minutes grabbing some cotton candy on our way home

Saturday finally came along. This is the most anticipated day for my kids besides Halloween, why? Well because of all the candy you get.

This year Julia got to be part of the parade though. She went with her tumbling class Flipside Tumbling.

We got her a bag full of candy to throw to people and I guess she took her job very seriously. When I went to pick her up from the trailer she rode on she told me: “mommy I tried so very hard but I just ran out of candy”. I guess throwing candy is a tougher job than what you though.

Josh was in charge of gathering all the candy from the parade. He was great at waving to people, so great that people threw candy at his head three times, not a very pretty picture as you can imagine.

When Julia’s parade trailer came around he stopped and logically got excited to see his sister. His priority was to wave and say hi to her, Julia’s response was: “Tell Josh to get the candy”

Although she had lots of fun being part of the parade, she made it clear to me that she rather catch the candy next year because Josh was waving too much and just not paying enough attention to the candy.

Thank you grandma and Grandpa for coming over and supporting her, we really enjoyed it.

We couldn’t end these festivities without fireworks and what a better way to enjoy them than from the comfort of your own front yard. The kids were ready with their PJ’s, so at the end of the show we just walked inside and took them straight to bed. Hassle free event! I love it.

 That was the end of our fiestas!

a cookie monster party

A.D you broke your promise, you told me that you were going to stay little for your mamma and just look at how big you are getting.
I remember when you came out as I was listening to my favorite Beatles song on the operating room. All the sudden there you were. A little bundle of joy, all cover in hair.
We were so happy to see you. I remember they put an I.V on your tiny little hand and I cried every time I saw it. You could barely even fit on the car seat. It looked humungous against your little cuddly body.
You are such a blessing to me. You love me so much. You know the sound of my footsteps and are so alert when you hear them in the morning. You can tell the sound of my voice from afar and I love seeing how your face lights up when you can finally see me.

You know just the right way to cuddle with me; like the other day when I was laying on the couch and you climbed up on it and snuggle and fell asleep right next to me.
You make me laugh and cry and when I am tired all I have to do is look at you and your siblings to get through my day.

 So I guess now you are going to start doing all that walking and talking and ignoring your mamma, but that’s fine. I have a year full of memories that I will cherish for the rest of my life.

We had a cookie monster birthday party for Andrew. It wasn’t because he likes this character but because he has learned how to growllike the cookie monster. He does it all the time and Julia and Josh think it is so hilarious.

We went to his favorite place so far, Arctic Circle. Their playground is so child friendly and he has learned how to climb up and crawl down their tube slide.

He has such a charisma that everywhere we go all the kids want to play with him. This time he was playing with 6 year olds.

Won’t you look at this picture?  It looks to me like one of those high school graduation pictures where they have the kids leaning against a tree and looking at the camera. He looks so grown up!

 

This place is one of our favorite because they give out some little ice cream cones to the kids. This was the first time that Andrew joined the gang on tasting this yummy treat.

As you can see it on the pictures, he absolutely loved it. He ate that thing in 5 minutes. All the sudden we heard him saying mas mas, which means more in Spanish. I love the last picture. can you see him saying: what happen to the ice cream, where did it go?... I sure can


 
That night we had a little party. The kids are always thrilled to have their cousins over and this was no exception.

A.D. had fun just chilling with grandpa and watching the commotion around him.
We opened presents and as I expected he loved the wrapping paper better than the toys inside. Good thing Julia and Josh were there to make sure those toys were put to good use.

When it was time to blow the candles we put him on his high chair. It was funny to see his face when we all started singing the happy birthday song to him. He was looking at us with one of his funny expressions that almost say: “what in the world is going on”; of course that was followed with one of his heart melting smiles.

Before he could figure out what to do with the candle, Julia helped him blow it up. After that the real party started. He was introduced to his first piece of cake.

Unlike Josh, who didn’t want to touch the cake and hated ice cream, Andrew went right for it. He took one little bite at first to see what it was all about and then handfuls of cake were flying left and right.

Every time he had a bite of the ice cream he made a funny face but the funny things was that he kept asking for more. I guess it was one of those sweet but though moments in life and at the end the sweet won.

We forgot to tell this kid what to do after he was finished with his cake and ice cream. He though the plate was part of his wardrobe and decided to balance it o his head like a hat. Thank goodness he had eaten all of his food or we would have had one messy hair-do.

Oh Andrew, never stop having that sweet smile of yours and that sweet temperament you carry yourself around with.


We love you big guy…

Your family