LONG OVERDUE FAMILY UPDATE

Okay, last time I updated this blog I was somewhat sane, it was 4^th of July and things were a breeze. What have we been up to? You asked – here comes your novel…

First of all, we thought it was time to experience OUR FIRST FAMILY VACATION! We packed up our gear, packed up the kids and headed, yes in the car, to Oregon. We started off 3 days before we had to be in Oregon so that we could take the coast and see the views.

On our way up, we stopped by the beach. This was the first time that the kids had ever been to the beach. It was foggy and overcast and extremely chilly but the kids enjoyed the water and sand. Lexie fell in the waves – it was hilarious. She didn’t think so as it got colder but thank goodness we had extra clothes packed in the car.

We stayed in Mendicino the first night and the kids loved swimming in the indoor pool. The next day we headed up through the Redwoods. The kids were pretty good for the most part. It's hard to expect little kids to stay well behaved, but they were pretty great. We did cut across the state and take the quick way up Highway 5. Good thing. We made it to Salem just before midnight. If we took the coast, we'd probably still be on the road...

We went up to Oregon for a Gardner/Beaird Family Reunion. While we were there we went to the kids 1st baseball game. Boy, was that the wrong thing to do. The Red Robin mascot, The Chuck E. Cheese mascot, the Oregon Beaver Mascot and some Bumble Bee mascot scared the CRAP out of Lexie. She went into complete hysteria. At the same time, Lauren went into an uncontrollable hysteria too. It was so bad that we had to leave the ball park. I was attributing Lauren's horrible behavior to the possibility that she was teething. I was soon to find out that I was wrong in that assumption.

We spent a lot of time at Grandpa Bob's apartment. The kids couldn't get enough of his pool. These kids swim better than fish now-a-days. Lauren didn't sleep much during this trip and had me up every night. I was functioning on 3-5 hours of sleep each night. It was sure the worst trip I had ever been on.

The last day that we were there we spent in 3 places. We went to visit my cousin Mick & Julie's house in Salem. They moved up there about a year ago. Cute place - it's just too far from us! :-( After a good couple of hours over there, we went to Aunt Gloria & Uncle Lee's house (Mick's parents). Bella & Lexie know them foundly as Mimi and Papa Lee. They are in love with their dogs because they're just the right size for a 2 and 3 year old. Lauren was a pistol the entire weekend and we finally got her to smile ONCE for a picutre with Mimi. As for Lexie & Bella, they have a secret crush on Papa Lee.

Well on our way home, we found out the true reason why Lexie had been crying the entire weekend and why she was so fussy. When we got to Lake Shasta I took a peek at Lauren. She was covered from head to toe with the Roseola Measles. (Symptoms: fussy, unconsoleable, restless, won't eat, fever - for 3-4 days before spots show up.) Yup! That was Lauren. All the kids had it when they were small so we knew just what it was and how to treat it.

Now that we're home and things are back to normal, Lexie has been potty training since the beginning of the month. She was doing great the first week but she seems to be slacking off now. However, when she does use the bathroom, she's so excited and proud.

Here are the links to the other pictures in the albums. In fact, there are so many that I've put them into albums by month. Here is the link to the albums that I've created. The password is DEBBIED:

http://deardebbie.shutterfly.com/action/?a=8AaMWLRq3ZNGz9

Oh yeah, the other good news. Bella & Lexie are in preschool. I haven't uploaded the pictures from the camera yet but as soon as I do, I'll post the "big girls" on the blog. :-)

4th of July Holiday

CLICK ON ANY PICTURE TO ENLARGE IT - ESPECIALLY THE ROLLER COASTER PICTURE AT THE END.
What a fun 4th of July. The girls got together with the neighbors and the Larsens and we all did fireworks the night before in our court. This was great for the kids because there weren't a bunch of older kids stealing the lime light or adding fireworks that scared them.

Lauren enjoyed the fireworks too. She loved the colors and the sounds didn't scare her at all. She never smiled, but she didn't cry and was completely glued to the firework show.


(L) Lexie, Bella, Laura, Zachary, Lauren, Jordyn & Greg
(R) Lexie under the blanket, Bella hiding on Laura's lap & Zackary ohhhing.


On the 4th, Bella & Daddy had a swim race. Bella & Lexie are now swimming all over the pool with their floaties on. They're doing great. Thanks to Milenko and Uncle Dan, Lauren is learning to use the computer at an early age. :-)

Dave and the boys came by on the morning of the 4th. Bella & Lexie did some "sparklies" with Nicholas and Christian. They had a great time.

Bella and Lexie had more fun during the with the sparklers just because they could see them a little better. (So could mommy's camera - thanks for the advise Laura!)

On the 5th, Mommy & the girls went to the Alameda County Fair with Donna & Alyssa. The kids spent most of the day looking at the animals and eating gummy bears and very expensive ice cream. While I was changing Lexie on the grass, Bella fell down and split her tongue open pretty badly. Thank goodness Donna was watching her. It's always great having a nurse for your best friend! After spending about $30 on the worst food ever, we packed it up to get the munckins home for a nap. Boy did my kids need it! (Wait, so did I!)

Since Bella & Lexie didn't get a chance to ride the ponies on our first trip to the Fair with Donna, we went back again at 7pm that night with Daddy. The kids were able to get their pony rides and they played on the carnival rides too. We took a million pictures!

The Kanagroom ride was a favorite.

So was the car ride. Milenko said that the only thing he saw when he was taking pictures of Lexie was the back of her throat. She was constantly laughing.

Bella & Lexie also got to go on a real roller coaster. This was Bella's 2nd time on the ride and Lexie's first. 1/2 the time that we were looking at Bella she looked terrified. When the coaster came to a slow spot, she was cracking up. Go figure!

Lauren had a pretty good time too. She was in the carrier on Mommy's chest. She stayed nice and warm and got to people watch - her favorite thing.

I've created a bunch of albums on Shutterfly for you to see all the pictures we've taken over the past 3 months. You can go there by putting this link in your browser and entering the password debbied:
http://deardebbie.shutterfly.com

Can't Slow Down - We Just Keep Going....

It's been a little over 3 weeks since we last got on the Blog and told you about our life. There are a bunch of new things that have happened since then so let me see if I can remember them all and tell you about them.

The Croatian Extravaganza - June 10th
We went up to Sacramento for the annual Extravaganza and had a really nice time. We were expecting the weather to be hot, humid and very uncomfortable but it was great. In the late afternoon some cloud cover came and cooled things down just a little to make it enjoyable.

As usual, the food and drink are always in abundance and the food is so good. With all the different choices of Croatian style food, it's only a matter of time before we get some good Croatian restaurants out in our area!

The live music is always fun to listen to. They start off the ceremonies with the US and then the Croatian anthems and then a few dozen kids come out in the traditional Croatian outfits and perform some old style Croatian dancing. Bella liked to watch that. However, she found dancing with Teta Visjna (Aunty Sherry) much more fun. Lexie also loved dancing with Viktor. She holds a special place in her heart for him!

There was a jump house - actually, there were two jumphouses and a slide for the kids to play on. Bella was constantly getting Baka or Deda (Milenko's parents) to take her to the jump houses. Eventually Milenko and I took them on a round too. It was nice to have some extra helping hands though.

Lauren was just content with Baka holding her. She also warmed up very nicely to Teta Visjna. Every time that Visjna held Lauren, she fell asleep. She was extremely comfortable with her.

Later that night we went to Baka & Deda's room to say goodnight and Bella coerced us into letting her spend the night in their room. She slept with Teta Jasna (Milenko's sister) in one bed while Baka & Deda were in the other. This was Bella's first sleepover. Lucky for Bella - Lexie kept us awake in our room until 3:30am because she was whining and crying. She didn't do well staying away from home.

Crop Street Cafe is FINALLY Open
On June 1st, Crop Street Cafe went live as an online Scrapbooking and Stamping business. With all the things I had to do to get this business off the ground, I never thought we would get there. I spent about a week designing and implementing the website and then I hired a "professional" to help me install a shopping cart so that people could order off my website. Boy, was that ever a mistake! He was a professional alright, a professional pain in the ass! He screwed up so much stuff on my website that I ended up just doing the entire thing by myself. It doesn't look as professional as I would like it to, but at least it's up and running. I'm already getting orders so I must be doing something right. Once the website starts hopping, I'll actually put some money into advertising and even having the website re-designed.

Check it out - it's www.cropstreetcafe.com.

New Stuff With the Kids
Bella is completely potty trained! Yea!! No more diapers! One down, two to go!

Bella just finished her first year of preschool. Her last day in preschool was actually in May. She very sad that it's over because she's just now getting used to the teachers. She's excited to go next year because she's getting "new" teachers.

Bella learned how to lie. This one is a fun one! She obviously lies because she doesn't want to get into trouble but it's so hard to get her out of doing it. We've eased up a little on punishing the girls so that they aren't afraid of consequences as much. All in hopes that the lying will stop. (I need to go to Laura's parenting classes to find out what to do about this one!)

Bella is actually spending the night at Baka & Deda's house tonight. This is her first official sleepover. She packed her suitcase and Baka came to pick her up. I can't imagine what she'll do over there but I know she'll have a blast.

Lexie is growing by leaps and bounds. She still acts possessed at times but not as often as she used to. She does get this deep growling voice that even sounds as if she's possessed. It's kinda' scary because neither Milenko or I can do anything to calm her down when she get's all stirred up.

Lexie is speaking in complete sentences. Every meal is started with a prayer that Bella learned in school. Lexie's little voice is getting louder each time as she repeats "GOD BE WITH ME ALL THROUGH THE DAY, STAY CLOSE BY MY SIDE IN WORK AND IN PLAY. AMEN." Of course the AMEN part is being screamed at the top of her lungs. She says the entire prayer though and we're so proud of her.

Lauren went to the doctor in May and they told her that she was in the 95th percentile. At 3 months old, she was the size of a 4 1/2 month old. She's looking more and more like the Michelin man to me. hahaha

Lauren also got her ears pierced by the pediatrician at the last appointment. She looks so "girly" now.

That's about it from our household. Maybe we'll post something new after Father's Day in case anything interesting happens.

A Little Hell Here on Earth

It's it Summer Yet???

Well I'm not sure what happened but we had a two week deal of hot spells. A little different from the constant rain that we had for 100 days straight. Yuck! Funny thing, when you don't have something you want it - when you get it, you wish it would come in moderation. The high 80's and 90's were a little too hot for Spring time. Bella & Lexie love it though. More time outside and lots of time in the sprinklers....

Mother's Day was a scorcher for us. Milenko and I went to Barone's in Pleasanton with the family. My mother and Milenko's parents went along with his sister and his godparents. It would have been nice if the weather wasn't so stinkin' hot. We were outside in a covered canvas tent which turned our area into a sauna. Lexie couldn't take the heat and gave us sass the entire time. Bella liked the air-conditioning in the bathroom so she of course had to go 5 times. Lauren found it too hot to sleep and just couldn't get comfortable. Next year is going to be different. We'll visit the mom's on the Saturday before Mother's Day and I get to have my own Mother's Day at home with my family - no plans but spending it with hubby and the girls. This was just too much.

Lexie has turned into a devil. I don't know if I wrote about this in the last blog but we're offering her up for adoption to the first person interested. Okay, not really, but I'd be lying if I told you the thought hadn't crossed my mind. Bella never had the terrible two's this bad. Lexie throws the worst tantrums you can imagine. At times you wonder if she's possessed because of the things she does. She got a nice little shot of tabasco in the mouth today from her lovely teeth imprint on Bella's arm. (It was realllly bad!) Bella loves to antagonize her so I'd have to say it's not all her fault. Bella isn't good at sharing and Lexie's even worse.

Doesn't coming to my house sound fun!?

Lexie's becoming an artist. As you can see from above, I told her not to play with the pen. If I tell her not to do something, guess what she does? Yup! The opposite. We're having a little difficulty with Bella on this subject too. Bella is constantly lying and we can't figure out where it is coming from. If we ask her a simple question like "Did you go potty?" She'll tell us one thing when the opposite it true. Who said that having girls was easy??

We do have a little angel in the bunch though. Lauren is just a doll. She has a few outbursts from time to time but 3 a week is nothing - especially when they only last a few minutes. I left her at home with Milenko's mom while I did work at Bella's school. She almost took a bottle but finds that it's not as good as the real thing. Since I didn't want to waste the bottle I put some rice cereal in it and tried to feed it to her later. She took about an ounce and then gave up. Later that night she tasted rice cereal. That was fun to give her and she did a lot of giggling while I fed her.

Although it sounds like we live in hell over here, we wouldn't trade our little imps for the world. They still wake us up each morning with smiles and kisses and hugs. The do the funniest things and get us giggling at them all the time. Thank goodness this stage will pass - we'll always remember the good things though.

Busy, Busy, Busy!!!

It's been a while since we're put anything on our Blog. With 3 kids ages 3 and under, gee, I wonder why? Let's just update April for the time being:

POTTY TRAINING - It's finally here. Bella is successfully going potty and #2 on the potty. It started out on the training toilet but now she's in the big people toilet. Everything is going well and she's been doing great on her own. The hardest part is teaching her not to use the entire roll of paper after going to the bathroom. We've had a few clogs toilets lately but she's working on it. Lexie

DUGOREPEC DIVAS - Bella & Lexie went to Party Palooza with Donna & Alyssa this month. Besides jumping their hearts out in the jump houses, playing lots of air hockey, tossing the basketballs in the hopes and running & climbing the jump house mazes, the learned how to sing their ABC's in the microphone. It's a kareoke bar for kids. They obviously got into it.

EASTER - This was Lauren's first Easter. She got baskets from Grammy, Baka & Dede, Tete and of course the Easter Bunny came to our house too. Bella & Lexie didn't do too bad either. The Easter bunny gave them baskets at Grammy's and Baka's as well.

The morning was spent at the Larsen's house doing the annual Easter Egg Hunt. Since it was raining though, this year's hunt was inside the house. We ate lunch there, had the Hunt and then the kids decorated cookies and ate them. Laura always comes up with something fun for the kids to do.

In the late afternoon Grammy came over to bring goodies that the Easter Bunny left at her house. Of course she had to bring chocolate which made the trip worth while! (She's getting me back for all the crap I did when I was younger....)

We had Easter dinner at Baka & Deda's. Teta & Baka helped the Easter Bunny prepare the baskets for the girls and they were loaded. After all the candy this Easter, I took all the candy out of these baskets and hid it - mainly from Milenko!

Although the girls are a full-time job, I've also been working from home since November 2005 and didn't even take maternity leave when Lauren was born. I've been doing taxes for Clearswift Corporation and April was a huge month! On top of that I started a new business. It's called CROP STREET CAFE (www.cropstreetcafe.com).

My friend Laura and I started thinking about the idea a few months ago and I finally got off my keester and got a business license, resale permit and a website. I suck at making websites so it's very crappy so far. Laura is great at making pages and so she is going to sell her scrapbooking layouts with me. We've had to postpone opening the store until the middle of May. We have a lot of web work to still do. I'll update you in May on our progress.

That's it for now - okay, the kids are waking up from the naps now and I have to scoot!