Showing posts with label birthday. Show all posts
Showing posts with label birthday. Show all posts

Saturday, April 5

Easter, Birthdays and April Fools' Day

I guess it's that time again.... update on the fam! Click on any picture to enlarge it if you want!

Now that the weather is nice (most of the time), we went out and bought the girls some golf club sets. They have been all over the yard practicing their swing so they can play just like Daddy.
Lauren even participates in the golf thing. She's having such a blast.We're not quite sure if Bella like golf or softball. She's pretty good at both though!I think Lexie is going to be the one who surprises us with golf though.
I think Brayden's just a little young to tell his abilities so far, but we're hopeful and getting him used to the feel already.Ah, the heck with golf. Modeling is going to be Lexie's field. Look at that pose!One of Lexie and Bella's favorite thing to do is go to the dentist. They may not understand the seriousness of taking good care of your teeth, but they understand the new toothbrush and the prize at the end of their dentist visit!
Brayden is going on 7 months old and so it's time for him to start eating baby food and easing into solids. He's not a fan of the baby food yet, but as you can see below, he's really into the solid food - even if it's a toe! Best friends already. Ryan and Brayden actually pass toys back and forth to each other and share. Ryan's 6 weeks older than Brayden and so he's a little more advanced as well as aggressive. He tends to be a little rough on Brayden. I've gotta' get Bray into some confidence building so he doesn't become the punching bag later in life.Bella just finished her science project. She was the only one in her Kindergarten class who did a science project this year (Teacher's Pet). Even though I helped with the harder things, she did it all. She grew plants in the full sun outdoors, medium sun in the window and no sun in the garage. She planted the seeds, watered the plants, picked out the decorations for her board - she did it all. It was pretty cool. Hopefully she'll have an interest in this sort of thing later in the school year.Imagine this? Dublin, CA having an Irish Festival and St. Patty's Day parade. Each year we go and each year the kids have a blast. The weather was cold and nippy but the girls loved to watch the parade and catch the necklaces and candy that gets thrown from the floats and the parade participants.As you can see, Lauren really liked certain parts. I think this was when the clown went by.Daddy took Lauren for a ride on the little car. Maybe one of these days they'll make the cars more comfortable for the parents too!
Mommy and Lauren having fun watching Bella & Lexie on one of the big girl rides.
Here's my current attempt at looking risque. Milenko thinks it's a great picture and I'm sure it's because of the cleavage from my nursing breasts. However, I find this a little awkward and changed out of this as soon as I could. Boy, I must become prude in my older years as this type of stuff would be fun to wear back in the early 90's when we were out at the bars. Now, it makes me feel "dirty."Easter was a lot of fun at our house. Not only did the Easter Bunny come, but it was also Milenko's birthday. Only 2 more years until the big 4-0!Easter morning was full of giggles, yelling, smiles and gawking at all the fun things the Easter Bunny left. Thank goodness the Easter Bunny doesn't bring candy to our house. We'd be in big trouble with all the excitement already!Little Man Brady enjoyed Easter too. This was the first time I had a child old enough on their first Easter to sit up and have fun. The other girls were too young by the time Easter rolled around!For Easter we had the entire family over. Both families came together and we had 16 people. At 3pm we let the girls and my nephews Nic & Chris do a hunt for eggs. It's always a riot to watch the youngest kids try and find something and when they do, it's like finding diamonds!Bray & Deda have fun watching all the other kids run around looking for eggs during the Easter Egg Hunt.
Baka helps Lauren find an egg that's hidden under a chair. She didn't really understand the whole hunt thing but she sure understood that the eggs had jelly beans inside and that's all that mattered.
Chazzy is all dressed up for Easter and does a great job at finding lots of eggs!
My little Nicky is growing up so fast. He was the best egg finder of the group.

Well it's time to start out April. Had lots of fun with April Fools' Day and with the fact that most people know that Milenko had a SUCCESSFUL vasectomy, I was able to fool my mom, Donna and Laura into thinking I was pregnant with #5 and just didn't know what to do. That was a hoot. However, the best joke we pulled was around 10pm when Milenko and I called my parents in a panicked voice asking if they were all right. We told them there was a huge earthquake and we were still in shock. Milenko pretended to go to the USGS website and check the magnitude of the quake. We told them it was a 5.9 and then yelled for them to hang out and pretended to go through another large quake. We were screaming and my Mom was in another panic asking us if we were ok. We told them again that Milenko was on the USGS site getting the magnitude and this time is was 7.1. We were even trying to be statistical and telling them it was 10.8km away from the San Andreas fault line. While we are pretending that all of this is happening, we were sending my Dad a text message on his phone saying "April Fools."

My mom is still pretty pissed off at us - with a smile though!

Gotta' end this blog so we can get the girls ready for Soccer. They start their soccer league today. Bella and Alyssa, Donna's daughter, are on the same team. Lexie plays just after Bella's game and she's on the Daddy and Me Soccer League. :-)

Sunday, February 24

January/February Update (It's Long)

It's the end of February and I'm finally able to make the time to get back online and update the blog. When you see how long this blog is, then you'll understand how busy we've been. I'm including a lot of photos just so you can actually picture what I'm talking about.Bella just had her first Spelling Bee on 02/22. She had to spell mom, dad, see, it, at, a, I just to name a few. She called up some friends & family and asked each person to sponsor her. She's so proud.
Lexie turned 4 on January 5th. She keeps insisting that she's 3 because if she turned 4, that would be that she's not little anymore. haha ...and I thought it was only adults who don't want to grow up.
Lauren is such a handful but now that she's talking up a storm, she's hilarious. She sings her ABC's, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star & Happy Birthday To You. They're all in her own versions but its pretty clear as to what she's singing. Even the tone/tune is right.
Brayden is back to normal. He gets the occasional cold but that's expected for this time of year and because he's more prone to it from the recent RSV case he had. In fact, we were rather surprised that he & I didn't get strep throat last week. Everyone else in the family did.


We've started Lauren with some chores. She's in charge of mowing the lawn, emptying the trash and mopping.
Lexie is in charge of vacuuming, dusting, cleaning the gutters and waxing th cars.
Brayden is obviously in charge of the laundry! haha

Lexie turns 4!

We didn't do a party on Lexie's birthday. The weather was bad and we also had to keep the family away from others while Brayden recovered from the RSV and got stronger. Instead, I took Lexie to the nail salon and had her get her fingernails and toes done. They painted them with little pink butterflies. She showed them off so proudly!
If you ask Bella what she wants to be when she grows up, she'll tell you "A MOMMY." Lauren is already practicing for motherhood. She takes her baby dolls and while I feed Brayden, she pulls up her shirt and sticks her baby on her boobie.
She even has the part down where she crosses her legs. Awhhhh!
In past blogs, you've seen how "devilish" my child has become. As with any of the photos in these clips, you can click on them and the real picture will enlarge. Lauren's face says it all. No comments needed.
We've hired Lisa Vasquez to watch the girls 3 days a week. On Mon/Wed/Fri, she watches the kids from 12:15 - 5pm. I get the chance to do my tax work, my eBay work and get my height challenged body to the gym to work on the exercises to make me taller and fit better with my current weight. ;-) Lisa has been watching the kids since Lexie was a baby. They sure love her and I completely trust her with my children! I'm probably one of the only people out there who doesn't mind in her friends or boyfriend come over and spend the time with her. She gets them involved with the kids and they just love the entire experience.
Brayden is now grabbing EVERYTHING, rolling over and even sitting up on his own. He makes it about 3 minutes or so and then teeters over. He's there though. He even took 2 bottles from Lisa at the end of February. That's wonderful! Now I know I can leave him for longer periods if I need to.
Lauren is doing great with her listening skills. We told her to get her fingers out of her nose - it's gross. Instead she puts her finger in her shirt and her shirt in her nose. Technically, she's following our instructions just as we asked. haha
Lauren is also working on using the bathroom by herself. We have to check the little plastic potty often since we find it full of "tinkle" every day. She's very private and doesn't tell us she's going to the bathroom. We should know from the quietness upstairs that she is doing exactly that.

On January 19th, we threw Lexie her 4th Birthday Party. We had perfect weather. At 11am the party started and the 17 kids that came played in the jump house for hours and hours and hours. They came out to each pizza and have drinks, destroy a pinata and to decorate butterfly, ladybug, dragonfly and bumble bee cakes with frosting and treats. At 5pm we actually asked the kids to come inside because it was getting chilly. - oh yeah, Laura needed to take her kids home too. They were the last ones here.Brayden enjoyed having Auntie Sissy hold him - as well as Grammy, Baka & a few others who wanted to keep Brady occupied.
Here's perky Me with my new hair-do (or should I say don't!). I cut off 10 1/2 inches and now it takes me more time to do my hair each morning than it did for me to go out on the town with long hair. Sigh! I only cut it off so that it wouldn't get tangled in Brayden's little fingers as much. I'LL NEVER DO SHORT HAIR AGAIN!
My two favorite men!Bella & Lexie play with Zachary & Jordyn and some neighbors in the jumphouse.
Here's the birthday girl. She had such a good birthday party!
When it comes down to it, although my kids might seem like little horrors, they are so sweet and loving - even to each other.
There Lauren goes again. Picking a good one for Mommy!
Now that's a Son of a Scrapbooker!
Brayden had his 4 month check-up in January. The doctor said that he didn't need to go onto rice cereal or real foods just yet since the Boobie Juice was doing just fine and he was gaining weight like a 6 month old!
I couldn't resist trying to give him some rice cereal. He wouldn't take a bottle from me and he wasn't too keen about the rice cereal either. Maybe I'll have to ask Lisa (the babysitter) to try the rice cereal since she was so good at giving him the bottle.
Most of January was crappy weather. However, when the weather was nice, it was extremely nice! Here are some nice photos of the girls taking their car out for a drive.
Lexie waves hi while Lauren adjusts the radio. (Yes, it has a real working radio.)
I think Lauren likes it better when Bella drives.
Nah, I think she likes it when all 3 girls get to pile in the car together.
Lexie gave bowling a try in February. He friend Olivia had a birthday party and it was at the Dublin Bowl. They had the special bumpers up on the lanes so the little ones could play and they had some bright - but light - balls for the kids to use.The balls were still a little too heavy to Lexie but she found a way to "roll" the ball down the lane.

Daddy helped Lauren color the picture but I didn't realize she asked for a self portrait!
Baka is trying to teach Lauren how to drink responsibly. She's doing such a good job.
LAUREN TURNED 2!
We didn't do a birthday party for Lauren since her friends are Bella & Lexie. Lauren's birthday was on February 14th so we had a special Valentine's Day/Birthday lunch.
Here are my Valentine's.
Lauren enjoys her birthday cupcake.
....a whole lot!
Bella is participating in the Science Fair Project this year at school. She doesn't have to but she seemed really excited so we came up with a great project for her. She planted 2 sets of plants. They will stay in full sun, partial sun and then no sun. We'll check them each week and at the end, we will put a project board together and do something really neat with all the photos for the Alameda County Fair.
Lauren just enjoyed the great weather and the ability to get dirty by putting her shovel in the mud!

On February 24th, Alyssa (who also had a birthday on Valentine's Day) celebrated her 5th birthday with a pony party. The weather was cold, windy and pouring down rain - until the pony rides. Each child (there were 17 or so) got to go out on one of the 2 ponies for a ride. During their ride, not a drop of rain fell. It was absolutely perfect!
Here's Alyssa, the birthday girl, on Strawberry the Pony.
Donna helped Lauren put on her helmet to ride the pony. I didn't get any photos of her but Milenko did get a lot of fun video of her riding the horse.
Lexie kept yelling "Weeeeee" throughout the entire pony ride. Again, I was a little occupied with Lauren so I missed all the great photo shots. Milenko has it all on video though.
Bella absolutely loved this horse!
Stacie (aka Dr. Doolittle) helped show Lauren how to feed the pony carrots. She was terrified of the pony but each time it at the carrots, she thought it was so hilarious!

Okay, now you're up-to-date on the Dugorepec house and what we've been doing.