Long Time No Write

So...I'm a little behind.  Okay, a lot behind with this blog!  I have no excuse except that I'm a busy woman with these two kids!  Plus, when I get behind in blog world, I easily get overwhelmed and then don't want to work on the blog at all.  It's a vicious cycle, I know.  I'll try to get better, I promise.  ;)  

Okay, now that we have that out of the way, let's get to it!  Instead of trying to write an individual post about everything that has happened since March, I'm going to do a quick synopsis.  If I leave anything or anyone out, I'm sorry.  Like I said, "quick" synopsis.  

Over the past four months, we were busy....

 ...playing with Daddy!  Playing video games is one of Michael's pastimes, so we had to come up with a way for Joey to "play" too.  We just gave the kid an unattached controller while Michael had a connected controller.  Worked perfectly!  Michael got to play his game and Joey thought he was playing too!  Thank you Pinterest! 

...celebrating St. Patrick's day by wearing green.  That's it.  No big hoop-la.  No drinking festivities.  *sigh*  I miss the good 'ol days sometimes. 

...celebrating Easter with lots of egg hunts, visit with the giant bunny, Easter dinner with some good friends, Michael left for dog school, and a house fumigation!!  Fun times!  

...getting B off of the boob and onto the bottle.  She gave it up with no problems at all!  I was a little sad when Joey weaned, but I had no hang-ups at all this time.  All I had to say during this, was "FREEDOM!!!"

...trying new foods and places in Southern California.  We went strawberry and blueberry picking which the kids both loved.  

...catching up with lots of friends and family!  We went to North Carolina for six weeks to spend more time with Michael while he was in school, go to some weddings, and just visit with our loved ones.  Joey and Bristol loved getting to see their first cousins, Emma and Evan.  

 ...getting to see one of my longtime college friends tie the knot!  

...celebrating Daddy's birthday!  

...sightseeing in NC!  Who knew that dinosaurs currently live in North Carolina AND let you ride them?!?!  

...celebrating Joey's 3rd Birthday with a big party, a trip to the zoo, and then a family party!  He is not spoiled one bit. 

...sleeping and swimming with girls!  Yikes!  No worries, though...this little lady is his sister from a different mister (and mother!).  :)

...spending lots of quality time with some very important mothers in my life on Mother's Day!  (Aunt Dolly is with us, she's just taking the pic).  We had a nice breakfast with everyone and then a movie out for my Mom and me!  So nice!

...enjoying the amazing comfort food of the South!  Mmm, NC BBQ and sweet tea!  

...catching up with a lot of great friends and welcoming in a pretty awesome lady to the family!

...going to the kid's first baseball game!  They both loved it!  I think they liked all of the junk food we let them eat versus the San Diego Padres get whooped up on! 

...camping in the San Bernardino National Forest.  Beautiful spot that was only a couple of hours from our house.  We had a lot of fun, until B woke up at midnight and cried until 4 in the morning.  Yes, you read that right.  4 straight hours of crying.  It was awesome.  We even put her in the car seat and drove around for a little while hoping that she would pass out.  Yeah, that didn't work, so we threw everything in the van and left the campsite at 4 AM!  We got home around 6 AM and we all crashed!  We haven't tried camping again, but are thinking about trying it next month.  

...graduating Mommy and Me!  This has been such a great program that we are so glad we have been able to be involved in!  

...celebrating Father's Day!  The kids made Michael homemade cards, which he received early because Joey couldn't keep a secret, and a lunch of crabs! This lunch was also where Joey had one of his worst public tantrums to date.  It really was a doozey and we ended fleeing the restaurant before we were asked to leave.  Ugh.  I love three year olds.  

...climbing and doing tricks.  B has become super mobile and acrobatic.  She really does get herself into some interesting positions.  

...graduating swim level 1!!  Woohoo!!  Last year, we tried swim lessons for Joey and we had to quit on day 2.  This year, he flipped out on day 2, but then was fine for the next 6 classes.  Three year old=Bipolar.  

  

...getting into lots and lots of trouble!  Did I mention Bristol is a climber?!!?  I foresee lots of trips to the E.R. with this one.  

...celebrating Bristol's first birthday!  Since most of her friends are 3 year olds, we rented a bounce house and got pizza.  It was a great party with great friends.  (I will post more about this later).

...just spending as much time as possible with each other.  Michael is getting ready to deploy again.  He's been gone for the past month, which has been a hard reality about how much this family is going to miss him during the actual deployment.  *sigh*  

Christmas

Christmas is so much fun when you have kids.  It definitely is all about the children.  We did lots of things this December to celebrate the Christmas season.  

We went to a Gingerbread Cookie Play date.  Of course, Joey was more interested in eating the candy instead of decorating the cookie! 

We attended the Mommy and Me Christmas party.  This was wonderful!  Toyota sponsored it, so we all got very spoiled.  Full catered meal and very nice presents for the kiddos.  It was so nice and we were very grateful for Toyota's generosity!

Joey saw Santa a few times this season.  The first time was at the Mommy and Me party.  He wouldn't let go of me!  

We decorated our house for the season.  I saw this felt tree idea on Pinterest.  We cut this tree out of felt, as well as some felt ornaments, and let Joey go to town.  His own personal tree to decorate!  It was great for the two days he was interested in it!  After that, he could care less about this tree.  Oh well.  We tried.  

We picked out our Christmas tree at the Trees for Troops tree giveaway.  This is an amazing program that gives away trees to military families!  We are so thankful for this program, too!  

Joey really liked decorating the real tree this year.  He only broke one ornament this entire Christmas season!  

 Joey's second visit with Santa went so much better than the first!  We told Joey that he only had to walk by Santa and say "Hi".  Joey did that and jumped into Santa's lap!  He also pointed out what toy he wanted.  Lol

Bristol was in a pretty crappy mood for this entire Christmas party, but she did cheer up right before Santa rode off.  We were able to get a pretty cute photo of little miss!

As for Christmas Eve and Christmas day, we are trying to start or continue a few traditions we started in Alaska.  Christmas Eve day we got up, had pumpkin pancakes, tried to drop off toys at the Children's Hospital, let the kids nap, went to Christmas Eve service, came home ate a nice dinner of appetizers, and put the kids to bed!  Then, the parent elves got to work turning the living room into a present extravaganza!

On Christmas day, we got up when the kids did and opened presents!  Joey was in heaven!  He loves presents and opening packages!  It took us a few hours to open gifts because Joey wanted to play with every present as he opened it.  This isn't a bad thing at all, except when Mommy and Daddy want to open their presents too!  Ha!  

I had made a breakfast casserole in the crock pot the night before, so breakfast was ready to go when we woke up.  This was very nice! 

After we opened our presents and stockings, we started on Christmas dinner.  Our good friends, who also came over for Thanksgiving, joined us for Christmas dinner, too.   We had lots of yummy food and we actually set the table for the adults this time, just in case the kids wanted to play instead.  

 

The kids got us the best Christmas present ever...they both napped at the same time on Christmas day!  It was amazing!  We were able to get dinner all ready, the house cleaned up, and had time to chill out before our dinner guests arrived!  

It was a truly incredible Christmas and I am so grateful that we were able to spend it together as a family.  We are very blessed.  

 Merry Belated Christmas from us!  

Grateful

We have decided to stay in our homes versus visiting family back in North Carolina for most holidays.  It is just way easier to stay where we are instead of buying expensive tickets, traveling during super busy times, having quick visits with family members because they have another party to go to, and now that we have kids, we want to do our own traditions in our home.  I know a lot of our family members aren't happy about this arrangement, but the plane flies both ways.  You all can come stay with us for the holidays!  ;)  

We had a Thanksgiving Feast in Joey's Mommy and Me class.  Daddy got to come eat lunch with us which was super nice.  However, there were three classes crammed in one tiny room during a lot of kid's nap times.  Can you say stressful and chaotic!?!?  Michael told me that he didn't know how I do this with two kids twice a week.  I told him I don't...this was not a normal day!  The teacher even told me that she will never combine the classes again if we don't have a bigger venue.  Ha!  

After the party, Joey rode on this miniature carousel.  He loved it and talked about this for days.  

 In preparation for Joey's feast, we made turkey hats and place mats in class.  

 Our little turkey!  

For Thanksgiving day itself, we invited a few friends over to eat.  Our friends, Shawn, Cari, and Ella, (the ones Joey and I went hiking with at Joshua Tree last year) are back in Arizona for the winter, so they drove out to spend the long weekend with us.  Two different neighbors of ours also joined us.  We had seven parents, two babies, and FIVE toddlers!!  I think we were crazy!  

We had dinner at 430 so all of the kids had a chance to nap.  Some did, some didn't.  We also placed the food on the counter and did buffet style so the kids wouldn't mess with the food on the table.   We also set the table for all of the family members to sit down together.  That was stupid.  This is what our table looked like.  Notice any kids?

Yeah, they're not there because they were in here and outside.  Way too busy to eat.  I don't think any of those toddlers even ate anything at this dinner!  We said next time we do something like this, we're going to set the table for adults only.  We'll just let the kids run and play while the adults eat and actually get some adult conversation going on!  This dinner was so anti-climatic.  Cooking and preparing for days, and we didn't really sit together and the table just didn't look like Thanksgiving.  Ahhh, how kids change things.  

The next day, we took our friends to the San Diego Zoo.  They had never been to this zoo so it was nice to see it through their eyes.  We actually got to see some new stuff ourselves since we never visit the whole park and we always go the same route.  

The beginning of the day was great!  The kids ran, laughed, played, and just had fun.   

 

It was so nice getting to hang out with our buds.  It's so cool getting to hang out with friends from the past.  We were discussing that we've known each other way longer long distance than we did in the same location!  Ha!  The story of our lives.  

The kids did pretty great most of the day.  But once we hit one o'clock... 

it was over!  Tantrums, tears, breakdowns, the works.  This stroller for these two toddlers was probably a bad idea.  It was great only having to deal with one stroller, but these two were constantly messing with each other and when one got something, the other saw it and lost it.  Fun times.  I hope this isn't what I have to look forward to.  

The next day, we took our friends to the beach.  It was actually a little chilly that day, but the kids didn't mind.  They threw rocks into the ocean.   

Ate sand.  A lot of sand.   

Enjoyed the sun and fresh ocean air...well, as fresh as southern California air can be.  Ha!  

Loved on each other!

And played in the super cold water!  Don't worry Grandmas...we only let them play in the water for about 15-20 minutes before we took them home to warm up.  We actually stripped Joey down to his birthday suit and let him ride home like that since he had sand in every unmentionable place!  Both kiddos got lunch time baths!  

 The zoo was fun, but very exhausting.  This beach day was a nice, relaxing way to balance that out.  Once we got the kids home, they all three took naps, and Cari and I went and saw the last Twilight movie!  It was so nice to go to a movie with a friend.  I miss those days.  We then convinced our friends to spend the night at our house so we could have a fire and actually get to visit once the kids went to bed.  It was such a great visit and I'm so glad we got to see them.  

This was a great Thanksgiving and we are so very blessed.  I am truly and honestly grateful for two healthy children.  You hear people say that and think that it's not such a big deal, everyone has healthy kids.  But this year has been a sad year for some people I know and really makes me realize how very lucky I am to have healthy children.  

I am so very grateful to have a husband safely home from deployment.  In the five deployments Michael has been on, he has never missed a Thanksgiving or Christmas.  He's also come home *almost* unscathed those five times.  Two guys in his company weren't so fortunate this time.  They never made it home.  Unfortunately, it's things like that that really make you appreciate your blessings so much more.  So this Thanksgiving, I give thanks, a hundred times, for my children and husband.