The End of T-Ball 2013

Chloë's first season of T-ball has finished.  She seemed to really enjoy it (MUCH more than the Pee-Wee soccer she was involved in last May/June.  However, almost every parent I mentioned that to told me their 3 or 4 year old also didn't like soccer...maybe it's the age?).  The T-ball practice and games were held every Saturday morning.  30 minutes of practice followed by a 30 minute game.  Chlo was one of two girls on her team.  She really enjoyed it, but I think her favorite part of all was getting her medal on the last day!  (We missed the last day of the soccer season so she never got that medal).  She was SO excited to get that medal and said, "I guess I am pretty good at T-ball".  

The Green Team

My proud baby girl!

This girl can run!  

Looking professional, huh?

It's Beginning to Look a lot like Christmas!

12/9/13

Ready to head to the boys' preschool holiday performance

Now that the bump in the road that is Thanksgiving is over I can finally start immersing myself in all things Christmas.  KIDDING (about the bump in the road)...kind of..hahaha...I love and appreciate the Thanksgiving holiday and I'm all about counting my blessings, but I'm just feeling READY for Christmas this year.  More than any previous year.  Maybe it's because I have four children?  Maybe it's because we are spending it in our new home this year and I'm not having to think about packing suitcases, fighting the holiday crowds, etc.  Who knows.  Either way, I'm excited and I'm loving the holiday season.  Last year I was 8 1/2 months pregnant with Ella and we traveled to Colorado for the holidays.  It was A LOT of fun, a really great trip, but, since we weren't around for actual Christmas AND since we were moving THE DAY AFTER we returned from Colorado (literally...less than 12 hours after our plane landed back in San Diego the moving truck arrived at our house to move us) we didn't decorate.  So decorating this year was a lot of fun.  I hadn't seen my decorations in 2 years and I didn't even remember what I had.  Also, this year Chloë is 4 1/2 and really GETS it.  She's a big help.  She decorated the tree, helped put up other decorations around the house, helped Myke string lights outside, etc.  She's really into it.  That makes it all the more fun.

Chloë doing her thing

We found a singing Elmo stocking in one of our tubs of holiday decor.

Must have been a grandparent-purchase back in 2011!

Myke got a remote control Christmas train that circles the bottom of the tree.  The kids LOVE it.  

All my little ones.

The boys (Eli peaking out on the left, Owen in red on the right)

at their preschool holiday performance.  All the kids kind of stood there like 

deer in headlights.  

Santa was there post-performance!  Ella still did not LOVE Santa.

Here we are visiting Santa the week before.  

Speaking of Ella, she's suddenly eating EVERYTHING.  

Not too interested in pureed baby food these days.

Her she is trying pizza for the first time.  

Love that toothless grin :)

Sant

Post Thanksgiving Ramblings

Myke headed off to bed but I'm awake...and I'm feeling awake...not completely exhausted like I usually am at the end of a long day rearing 4 small children.  At first I couldn't figure out where this surge of energy was coming from, but then it dawned on me:  Ella has been sleeping through the night for the past 5-6 (or more?) nights!!  FINALLY!!   It has been nine long months of waking up to feed her in the night.  She quickly went to just one wake up back when she was just a few months old, and was even doing long stretches and sleeping until 4:30 or 5am back in July....so I THOUGHT she was going to be starting to sleep a nice 12 hour stretch at any time.  But NO!!  Besides a couple flukes where she actually slept from her bedtime (6:30/7pm) until around sunrise, she, for the most part, regressed since July.  Started waking up 1-2 times here and there.  Woke up to eat at 3am.  Then it moved to 1:30am?!  What?!  Anyways, she has now slept 10-12 hour stretches for almost a week in a row so (I'M HOPING!) it's not a fluke this time.  I'm so excited about the whole idea of a solid night's sleep!  Now, if I can just get Chloë to stop waking me up at 3am to "fix her sheets"!  Argg!

It's Monday.  Back to the grind after a lovely 4 day holiday weekend.  Was nice to have Myke around and have a second set of hands.  Makes it much easier to go on outings and do fun things with the kids when there is another adult.  We kept to our very un-traditional Thanksgiving and went out to eat.  The "un-tradition" started two years ago when the boys were just 6 months old.  We had a 2 1/2 year old and twin 6 month olds.  We definitely weren't traveling and we don't have family in the area so we celebrated at home in Pacific Beach.  No one had time to cook/wanted to cook/was allowed to cook because it meant leaving the other person with 3 small children for a prolonged length of time....whatever the reason, we ordered food from our favorite Thai place and called it a day!  It was fabulous!  Last year, we planned to do the same thing...but found out last minute that the Thai place was closed that year.  We ended up taking the kids to Denny's for pancakes instead (and Myke and I cooked our own pad thai at the house later) and thus started yet another un-tradition: pancakes on Thanksgiving.  It's PERFECT for toddlers and young kids.  They LOVE it.  Otherwise, it will be a fight for them to try green bean casseroles, squash, etc.  I have picky eaters.  Growing up, I was a very picky eater.  In fact, I remember thinking that traditional Thanksgiving meals were my "worst meal I could imagine".  I never liked turkey (except in cold-cut form), gravy and cranberry sauces made me cringe, I despised mashed potatoes.... green beans and sweet potatoes?!  Forget it!  I never liked (and still don't) pumpkin pie.  It wasn't until later in adulthood that I started really liking the traditional Thanksgiving fare... except substitute tofurkey for turkey, please :)   So pancakes are fun.  There is no complaining with pancakes.  No whining.  Just happy children.  I think we'll keep this up for another few years...at least!

Thanksgiving at Encinitas Cafe

(we stepped it up this year in our new hometown!)

Chocolate chip pancakes!

Owen loves it!

(He also loves his new Batman hat and won't take it off)

Eli is a plain-pancake-type-of-guy

Even Ella got to munch on some pancake

Chloë's preschool Thanksgiving potluck feast

(I was the mom who supplied the vegetarian chicken nuggets..it wasn't on the sign-up sheet (surprise, surprise) so I added it, drew a line, and put Chloë's name next to it)

Another November tradition is family photo shoot at JC Penny

Then a visit to see Santa (which is at the same mall)

At least Eli didn't cry this year...!

A few more pics from our weekend:

Sisters at the park

Best invention ever at VONS grocery store

And today (on Myke's lunch break)

picking out our tree!!! Yay!

Except Myke had to take all the seats out of the van and go back to the tree lot to pick it up after work since our van doesn't have a roof rack on it.

And this is the inside of our minivan.  No tree is fitting in here.  Is it weird that this is starting to look

normal to me?  4 car seats!  At least there is still a spot for Kyla.  

All the previous pics were taken with my iPhone.  It's sad.  Of course it's nice to have a camera on my phone and the ability to quickly take photos whenever I want to capture a moment....but I really need to use my "good" camera more often.  The difference in quality is amazing.  Here is a pic from Ella taken today with the "good" camera.  Much better than the above blurry photos.  Man, my little baby is growing up way too fast....but at least she's sleeping through the night!!  :)

She's crawling now! Started 2 weeks ago at 9 months old.

Celebrating ONE YEAR

It was one year ago today that we closed on our house here in Encinitas!  Memories are flooding back as we watch our neighbors putting up their holiday ornaments.  We closed 11/30/12, which was a Friday and the 5 of us headed up to the house first thing on Saturday morning to have our official "first entry" as homeowners of the place.  We didn't actually move in until after Christmas, but we came up quite a few times during the first few weeks of December 2012...slowly moving in a few items, meeting various contractors, trying to get a feel for the new pad, as it all seemed so surreal.

A year later, we have really settled in up here in Encinitas.  For you non-San Diegans, I say "up here" in reference to our move to North County.  We are still in the San Diego COUNTY lines, but no longer within the city of San Diego.  Exit to exit, we now live about 20 minutes north of where we used to live down in Pacific Beach.  And 25-30 minutes north of downtown San Diego, the airport, the San Diego Bay, etc. That's on a good-traffic day.  Before moving here, North County may as well have been hours away as far as I was concerned.  Now that I have lived here, I LOVE it.  Encinitas is great!  I will always have a spot in my heart for Pacific Beach for sure, but when I go back there, I don't miss it at all.  It's nice to visit...but that relationship is over.  We have moved on.  That was a different place and time.  Many fond memories....but it was time for a change.

So here's to one year as North County San Diego home-owners!

East Coast Visit

The house I grew up in (from third grade on...)

Beautiful fall colors at the entrance to my parent's neighborhood...of course the photo doesn't do it justice!

The girls' trip to the east coast has come to an end!  Chloë, Ella and myself are back in San Diego now. Back with the boys.  We've actually been back a week already...not sure how that happened??!  I still have one suitcase left to unpack.  We had a really nice trip.  It was so nice to go home...especially this time of year.  The weather was just beautiful and autumn-like every single day.  Crisp, fresh-air, leaves falling all around us.  My parents neighborhood is SO full of trees that (at certain times of year) you can barely see openings of sky when you look up.  That makes for A LOT of work when it comes to raking leaves.  The top photo of my parent's house was taken the day AFTER we had raked the entire front lawn.  It was completely covered again within a matter of a few hours.   The good thing was that Chloë was so excited about raking leaves.  She wanted to rake leaves every day.  So we did.  She loved helping to make a big pile to run and jump in.  She also loved using the leaf blower to help Grandpa blow the driveway and parts of the yard.  Growing up, I cursed the fact that we had to many trees and so many leaves.  We were constantly raking and raking in the fall (at least that's how I remember it!).  I even remember stating that I when I grew up I would NOT live in a house that had a yard full of trees.  I guess that plan came true (you can see a previous post photo of the amount of raking we have to do hear in Encinitas).  

Using the leaf blower

Gramma & Chloë

The girls in the leaf pile

Other highlights of our visit:

Visiting Grandpa on the set of his play.  He was the producer for the play his theater group put on.  This is the main reason for our trip back east.   

Tea Party with my old Beanie Babies (so glad I kept them)

ice cream!

We were also excited that Myke's sister drove down from the DC-area to come visit us for an afternoon with her kids.  So great for the cousins to get some time together!  Everyone had fun jumping in the leaves and playing with all of Gramma's toys (and she has a lot!).

Trent & Ella (the youngest cousins)

Wish Owen & Eli could have been there!

jumping in the leaves!

Trent & Declan

Ella & Mira

We also got a visit from my bestie-since-third-grade, Crickett, and her family.

Katelin (10), Chloë (4.5), Megan (6)

Here are two other photos of the girls together.

On the left is Fall '09 trip to VA and on the right is from their San Diego visit this past Summer.

Crickett - Love this girl :) 

Friends since we turned 8!  So for 10 years!  (haha)

(or maybe 26 years?!)

 (and you, too, JT!- Somehow I didn't get a photo with you in it :*(  )

The next day I got to see 2 of my college friends, too.

Vanessa & Chandra.  Good times!  

It was so great to see everyone and do all that we did!  The trip went fast.  It always does and I always wish I had more time there.  It's never long enough.  There are always people I want to see that I don't get to see and things I want to do that I don't get to do.  I need to make a month-long visit next time.  Haha, my parents might keel over if I did that!

River City Diner 

Grandpa & Chloë 

All of us

Making gingerbread cookies with Gramma

Ella 

Saying Goodbye to Grandpa 

(it started snowing!!!! as we loaded the car to head to the airport!)

On the plane home!

Meanwhile, back on the ranch:

Playing in the box forts (at least Mom-Mom was?!  Are there any kids in there?)  :)

On the iPad with Pop

Snuggles with Pop 

I love this photo!

Thanks to Thom & Maureen (aka Pop & Mom-Mom) for taking such great care of my boys while we were away!  I know they had so much fun with you guys.  It's great knowing they were left in such wonderful loving and competent hands while I was gone!  

A few leftover Halloween photos:

Ella-Bella looking so cute in her ruffle buns

The boys preschool Halloween party -

stuffing their faces!

Who is this guy?!

The boys first trick-or-treating!

The boys with their class for the costume parade.

Neither would put on their costume!  

At least they had festive shirts :)

A side-by-side (photoshopped) of Chloë's first Halloween (left) and Ella (right) wearing the same costume.   The Ella side looks pretty weird...might have to try another photoshop attempt.

Celebrating Maureen's birthday at Casa de Bandini