Ho Ho Ho! (Hack Hack)

Happy Holidays - if you're not under the weather like a few of us in our household. :) This time of year is always fun. We decorate the house inside and out, get to shop a lot and get to pull out the winter clothes. This year we had the tree up 2 weeks before Thanksgiving. (Hey, it was never put away from the last time we took it out so there was a purpose to finally get it out of the garage!)

We did our family Christmas pictures just before Thanksgiving and even had Brayden's birth announcements done. Although everything was ready to go, we didn't get out cards until the 5th of December. Boy, it sure does take a lot of time to do these things when you have a large family. In case I forgot to send you a card, please don't take it personal. I can't remember if I kissed my husband good-bye this morning for work, I don't remember if I even used the bathroom today. I think I may have remembered breakfast this morning and I'm sure that I called Lauren by Lexie's name, Bella by Lauren's name and possibly Lexie by Brayden's name. My brain is fried and I haven't ever touched a drug before! How do the people with 10 kids do it??

We chose this picture above because all eyes were open and Lauren looked so cute. Lexie could have used a bigger smile but she makes up for it in the picture below.

Now you tell me.... How often can you get 4 kids to look at the camera? Well, at least 3 of them anyways. We were just so excited that they all smiled. We'll give Brayden another year before he's required to show us any teeth. He's getting away with it this year since he doesn't have any teeth yet. ;-)

For Bella's birthday, Donna & Alyssa got her a scooter. She has been practicing outside on the semi-warm days. She loves the thing so much. She'll be ready for a real one by the time the weather gets warmer again. The one she has right now is just a training scooter.

Lexie is also enjoying her outdoor play. She's such a ham. When I tell her to smile for the camera she cocks her head to the side and puts her hand on her face. What a total shmoozer!

Lauren is the biggest outdoor kid of all our children. It doesn't matter if she has shoes & socks on, if she's in pj's or if she's in a diaper. She'll go outside as much as possible if the door is open.

When I get a free chance, I'll scan in Bella & Lexie's school photos and post those. They both turned out so good. I'm hoping to do that before the school year end at the rate I'm accomplishing things. hahahaha

What's going on with us in December? Well, Milenko is healing from his vasectomy. It's taking a little longer than normal since diabetics have a longer recovery time. He's "hanging" in there though. (pun intended) Good news - no more ooops! for us. hee hee

We have a few get-togethers with friends for the holidays but mostly staying at home. As always, we'll have Christmas Eve with the Gardner side of the family and all the cousins, etc. here at our place. We've been doing that for 8 years now. It's always so much fun. For Christmas, we're headed to Dan & Anita's (Kum & Kuma), Milenko's godparents, for dinner. We'll stop by his parents (who live 3 doors down) for a little while before heading over there and will hopefully be home early and off the roads before the Holiday drivers come out.

We had to throw in the photo of Biscuit with Brayden. I had just come home from the store and was unloading all the groceries in the house. I left Brayden outside since he was asleep and it was nice and warm in the sun. While I was busy putting things away, Biscuit went up to Brayden's car seat and started "making biscuits" on the end of the fleece blanket on his feet. She grabs the corner of the blanket and sucks on it and kneeds the blanket like

October & November Updates - Better late than never!

OCTOBER

Guess we're a little late in getting everything posted online. Must be the fact that raising 4 kids isn't quite as easy as it looks. What's hilarious is all the people who don't know me that well that say "Wow, you're a super Mom!" This is when they see me at 8am in the morning dropping off the kids on a day that I have to go somewhere and have the make-up and hair done. It's the other days that they never comment because I look like a train just ran me over. It must also be a day that I'm not yelling at Lauren to sit down, Lexie to buckle her seatbeat and Brayden must have dozed off in the back seat. If they only knew....

Here was one of Lauren's last days of enjoying the great summer weather back in October. We had a pretty warm October - definitely a "California" summer.Lauren is just testing out the water in the bathroom. She loves the fact that her sisters do it and she tries to mimic everything. She has the flushing toilets down as well as a pretty good handle on the toilet paper. In fact, her handle is a little more than we'd like as we've had a few clogged toilets recently.

In October, we headed to the pumpkin patch. The kids and I went with Donna and her kids. We needed some festive photos for the scrapbook albums. We didn't feel like heading out to Joan Farm so we went locally to one of the pumpkin patches in Pleasanton. This particular patch had pony rides and of course....that's where all the girls went....straight to the ponies.

Bella puts on the riding helmet and takes the pony for a ride.

Here is Lexie having a riot on this pony. You can click on the photo to enlarge it and see how big that smile really is.
Here's a cute one of Alyssa on the pony too. It was fun to get Bella, Lexie & Alyssa on the ponies at the same time but hard to focus on just one child as their smiles were all so big!
IAs you can see, Ryan is growing by leaps and bounds. Alyssa holds her 3 month old brother in this photo. He sure is an angel.
Here's a candid shot of Bella that I snuck in while I was trying to get a good photo of Brayden. It looks posed but it's really a candid shot.
This one isn't as candid. Bella and Lexie however choose this pose on their own.

Bella's loving every minute of Kindergarten. She was one of the Princesses from Shrek for Halloween. It was the only costume I could find with long sleeves for the cold Halloween parade at school.

Our very dainty princess.
Lexie dressed up too. She was (in her words) a Hello Kitty Blue Butterfly Fairy.
For Halloween, Lauren was a cow. Ironic that she's stuck with cows milk in her mouth just before going out trick or treating. haha
Here are Lexie and Bella trick-or-treating around the neighborhood.
We always walk down to my friend Laura's house. We were fortunate to run into them and get a photo with all the kids.
(L to R:) Bella, Jordyn, Lauren, Lauren, Adam, Lexie & Zachary.
Since it was a little cold, Lauren and I headed home with Brayden. While I was getting him out of the stroller, Lauren snuck into her candy bag filled with chocolate.

NEED I SAY MORE.....?

At the end of October (25, 26, 27. 28th), I co-hosted a Scrapbooking Retreat at Camp Hammer with my friend Cindy Bryson. It was a blast. Camp Hammer is a Christian retreat camp up in the Santa Cruz mountains. We had 100 participants this year and we did our scrapbooking for 4 days straight. I actually completed 43 scrapbook pages over the weekend. Pretty good for a mom with a 6 week old. Donna and I brought the babies with us and stayed up at the front with them and with our friends Laura & Kris. I have another blog that I created just for Camp Hammer attendees... here are the photos and all the details about our great weekend: http://croptoberfest.blogspot.com

NOVEMBER

Well our little girl is growing up so fast. Bella turned 5 on the 4th of November. On her actual birthday (below), our family went to Hana Japan (like Benny Hanas) with Donna & her family, Grammy Charlotte, Bake & Deda, and Kum & Kuma. After dinner at the restaurant that make dinner at your table, we went home for cake and presents. It was a quite little party at home but a lot of fun for Bella.

(L to R:) Lauren, Bella, Alyssa & Lexie

For Bella's actual birthday we had a big party. 17 of her friends showed up to help celebrate by jumping their hearts out in the jump house, decorating their own cupcake/birthdays cakes and eating as much pizza as they could. The party started at 11am and we found ourselves bringing the kids in at 5pm from playing all day. (What a tantrum that caused....) Bella had a bunch of friends from Kindergarten, her old pre-school and her everyday friends that she's know for years.

Yes, the queen of photographing her children is lacking in her duties. I take very little pictures these days. Hmmm? I wonder why?? I have a ton of photos on my cell phone but they look like crap. I'll have to upload them one of these days. :) haha

Here's a cute photo of Brayden in the beginning of November. He's starting to smile and he's getting such a great personality. Not only is he still a very mellow baby, he wakes up smiling and giggles mostly at Lexie when she plays with him. If all the kids were like this - and most importantly - stayed like this.... we'd still be having more children.

Pumpkin Patch Field Trip

Sonshine Preschool went to the Pumpkin Patch today. Lexie and Mommy went with our friends Laura and Jordyn. While at the Joan's Pumpkin Patch and Farm we got to feed the goats and talk to the chickens.

Laura helps Lexie feed the Nanny goat while Jordyn watches.


When Lexie asked if she was having fun she answered with the smile above.


Jordyn and Lexie listen carefully to the story and learn the song "Dirt Made My Lunch."


Lexie can't decide which pumpkin to take.


Mommy's Little Pumpkin in the Pumpkin Patch.


Lexie and her favorite brother.


Lexie's "Sweetie Pie" class.


Lexie falls in love with the wolf statue while Jordyn contemplates taking a ride.



The end to a great day is knowing it was spent having time with great friends!

WELCOME TO THE FAMILY BRAYDEN!

Brayden Milenko Dugorepec is finally here.

Brayden arrived a little early too. His expected delivery was calculated for September 26th. He was born on Wedesday, September 12, 2007 at 12:39am. You can click on any picture (I believe) and it will enlarge the photo for you.Brayden weighed in at 7.5 lbs. and was 19-1/4 inches long.
He was born with a head of dark brown hair - just like Mommy.

Just as excited when Lexie and Lauren were born, Bella (above) is all smiles while she holds her little brother. She is very gentle with him and always asks to hold the baby.Lexie didn't quite warm up to Lauren when she was born. Probably because she was upset with the fact that Lauren was getting more attention to her. However, this time around she is very happy to be a big sister (above). Although she keeps calling the baby "Ryan" (my best friend Donna named her newborn son Ryan and Lexie keeps thinking that's our baby's name too), she's starting to refer to him as Mr. Brayden. She will even correct me if I call him something other than "Mr. Brayden." Very funny and cute.
Now Lauren (above) is very interested in this baby. She knows that she has to be gentle with Brayden and that she has to be a little quieter. That doesn't mean anything to an 18 month old though. Lauren loves to hold and kiss the baby. She will wake up in the morning and search for Brayden in hopes to kiss him and laugh at the fact that she just gave "Baby" a kiss. If another member of the family holds the baby, she must hold him too. Yes, she's also EXTREMELY jealous of the baby. She does like to hit the baby in the face and if we say NO, she'll kick the baby. Nothing serious yet but we're trying to nip it in the bud before it even starts.

Daddy is very proud to have his "SON." Although he has been catering to the girls and their every need, it's only a matter of time before he gets to finally sit down and enjoy one-on-one time with the newest member of the family.

Sorry there are no pictures of me in this blog. Take a wild guess who always had the camera. The few pictures of me that turned out were Milenko's "candid" shots of me making completely stupid faces or they were so blurry that you don't even know who is in the photo. He thinks that candid is better than just a nice smile. Thank Goodness he doesn't scrapbook with me! I'd never look at the albums!!

This is just the short version of Brayden's entry into the world. I'll post the WHOLE story and more pictures on the other Blog. Just click here: BABY NEWS or on the Baby News link on the upper right of this page. It will take you to our other blog.

LEXIE'S 1ST DAY AT PRESCHOOL

Okay, it may not be Lexie's first time in preschool, but it's her first day this year and she is just on Cloud 9. After watching Bella go to Kindergarten for the past 2 weeks, school is all that Lexie can think about.Daddy and Mommy both took Lexie to school today (of course with the assistance of Lauren too). Milenko was able to capture her morning on video tape while I tried to operate the regular camera. Lexie is in Mrs. Z and Mrs. Terry's class this year. It's very exciting for her since these were Bella's teachers when she was in the 3 year old class. The teachers always treated Lexie so well and she certainly remembers these teachers for that reason.
Each morning, the kids start off in a circle and have morning prayer. (It's a Luthern preschool.) On the first day of class, Daddy was able to sit in the circle with Lexie. After this though, it's kiss Mommy or Daddy good-bye and have circle time by yourself. She's used to this since she did it so well in her 2 year old class last year. Another bonus is that we say the same prayer at each mealtime that Lexie says each morning in school. She's one of the classmates who can say that prayer all by herself. :)
After things settled down, we were able to interview Lexie's little sister, Lauren. We asked her thoughts on what she thought of Lexie going to preschool. She replied "Blah ah oh ah blah." Although the smile is the best translation, it really means "Cool, I get Mommy all to myself and I don't have to share with anyone."

Needless to say, she doesn't understand that Baby is on the way. :)