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Here's a page I did today for Téa.

For credits, see my 2Peas Gallery.

Happy 3rd Birthday Elena!!!!

Man I can't believe this girl is three already. She's growing up so quickly. She's getting smarter every day. Right now she's totally in the princess phase. I swear she's my biggest tomboy (really, they all are, but she's the most), but she's a tomboy that has to be wearing a dress. And it has to be a pretty dress. Preferrably a princess one. We literally go through about 5 outfit changes a day. She's really wearing me out. So of course, for her birthday we had to get her a new princess dress. They had Ariel's wedding dress at Target, and I knew she would love it. She also got some money for her birthday, and she used that to buy another princess dress, the Barbie Rapunzel one. Then she got a little more, and I'm pretty sure we'll be adding another dress to the collection. Here's some pics of her on her big day.

Walking with my Girls

Here's a movie that I made for my technology class. Just thought I'd share it with you guys.

Happy 6th Birthday Amya!

Amya turned 6 on September 26. I can't believe she's that old already. She's growing up so fast. She was really excited to have her birthday. Here are some pics from that day.

She got a lot of fun presents from Gamma and Memmie. She got a digital camera that came with a printer from us and with the birthday money that was sent to her she bought X-Men 3 and some new clothes. We had a joint party for her and Elena. I'll post the pics from that later.

We had gotten her a cheapy little camera last year for her birthday and it never worked right. I had returned it and had store credit and wanted to get her a better camera for her birthday this year. She's always asking to take pictures with my camera and I knew she would love to have her own. I was at WalMart and saw that they were clearancing out this camera and printer combo. It was over half off the original price, so we really lucked out. So far she's taken a lot of pictures with it, and even printed out and scrapbooked a few. She's so excited to be able to do that.

Training Wheels

So on October 9, Amya had her first attempt at riding her bike without the training wheels. At first Keith was helping her. But he was keeping his hand on her back and kind of pushing her. She was barely even pedaling and was having a very hard time balancing. She was telling Keith to put them back on, she didn't want to do it. She had obviously not realized when she asked to take them off how much help they really gave her.

I asked her to get back on and try one more time with me. I have a very distinct memory of my Dad teaching me how to ride a bike. I can remember him running alongside me, holding the back of the seat and letting go. I wanted to try this way with Amya. After I assured her that I wouldn't let her fall, she decided to give it one more try. You can see the results for yourself.

I let go and she's totally riding by herself.

She realizes I've let go.

She starts to wobble and slow down.

She's way proud of herself.

Hopefully before it starts snowing we can get her out there a few more times so that she really gets used to it before the winter hits and she can't practice anymore. Also, maybe next time she should wear shoes and a helmet and stuff. That might help a little, don't ya think?

Um, excuse me?

Apparently, Maricela was not very pleased with me taking her picture.


She better not think she can get away with this when she gets older.

Does anyone else see a resemblance?

This is Maricela smiling yesterday.

Here's a picture of Elena, taken at about the same age.

I swear I'm making clones. :)

This is what happens...

when you go to sleep with a piece of gum in your mouth.

You get a new haircut.

She was not very happy with me. I really tried to get the gum out, but I was pulling her hair, it was gettin gstuck worse, and I was getting frustrated. So finally I cut out the chunk. And it was pretty big - it was a piece of Bubbalicious and those things are huge. So then I had to even the rest out. She was screaming "I don't want to look like a boy" and "My daddy's gonna spank you when he sees what you've done" and other things along those lines. But when it was all over and I blow dried it, she realized it wasn't that bad. I think it looks kinda cute, but I'm still sad that hte long hair is gone. I think I had to cut off about 6 inches. I'm really mad at myself that I didn't get her 6 year pictures taken already. I was going to take her yesterday, but she went with Keith to the farm, and now she'll have her short hair for her pictures. Oh well, there's nothing I can do about it now.

Here's a pic I took on her birthday, I don't know if you can tell there's that much of a difference, but there is. Keith was a little sad, he really likes long hair. Hopefully it won't take too long to grow back.

Taylor Marie

I put that Jenny's baby's name was Taylor Mae. When she was here the other day, she told me that they had changed it to Marie. Here are a couple of shots of Taylor, Taylor and Maricela (doesn't she look like a chunker compared to Taylor?) and me and Jenny with our babies. Next time she's over we're gonna try to take some cuter pics of the girls together. Taylor totally looks like she comes from our side of the family, which is good, cause none of my kids do. Here's a funny thing Amya said - She was leaning over the baby to look at her and said, "Hi Trailor, how are you?" We just started laughing and then she got embarassed and mad at us. :)

Please excuse how awful I look in this picture.

Long time no blog

Man I am such a slacker at this. I didn't even finish my whole Florida recap, and now there's a whole bunch of other stuff to recap about. Will I ever get caught up? ;P Let's see if I can do this really fast, so that I can feel a little better about my lazy self.

Jenny had her baby on Sep. 16. She named her Taylor Mae. They're in Idaho right now, but supposed to be moving down here tomorrow and living in PG until January. I'm pretty excited about that - it's always nice to have some of my family around.

Amya is in school and absolutely loving it! She started kindergarten, and two weeks later moved into 1st grade!! She was so excited, and obviously, we are so proud of her. She's in a dual immersion program, where they have a week of class in Spanish, then a week in English. She's doing great in both classes and it's so cool to see her learning just take off. Funny story about Amya in school - She was the star of the day today. She came home with a crown on and the paper that she had helped Mrs. Beck write about all of her favorite things. She put that she likes to watch Bratz on tv. She's not even allowed to watch that show! When I asked her why she said that, she said she thought it would be funny, and started laughing. She's crazy.

Amya also turned 6! Her birthday was the 26th. I can't believe how old she's getting. I've been looking at the pictures of her that I have up on the wall that are from a couple years ago, and it's amazing how fast she's growing up. It's exciting, but also sad at the same time. My first baby isn't a baby anymore.

Elena will be turning three next Tuesday. We're having a birthday party for her and Amya at the farm tomorrow. They're both pretty stoked about that. Amya says she gets to pick out the cake and Elena can pick out the pinata.

Elena said the cutest thing after getting into my makeup the other day. I've told her over and over not to get into my makeup. Keith is adamant about the girls not wearing makeup (or even nail polish). He thinks it will make them think that they need it to be pretty, and he wants them to be happy with who they are and know that they're beautiful without makeup. Noble idea, but it's gonna be a lot harder to enforce once they start getting older. Anyway, he's told Elena that she's a princess in her heart - it doesn't matter what she's wearing or if she has makeup on. Cause even though she's the most tomboy of them all, Elena is SO into wearing dresses everyday - especially the tinkerbell and snow white costume dresses. Anyway, I had asked her why she got into my makeup. Here was her reply "Mom, in my heart I'm a princess. But you can't see my heart. I need makeup on my face so that you'll know I'm a princess". How crazy.

Téa's getting bigger and bigger as well. I can't believe she's almost 2. She's really starting to talk a lot more now. She likes to copy what everyone else is saying, and she follows Elena around all day long. Whatever Elena's doing, good or bad, you better believe Téa is right there next to her, doing it too.

Maricela is 11 weeks old today. She's such a cutie. 2 weeks ago she started cooing at me when I would talk to her, but she wouldn't do it when I tried to show Keith. Now she's doing that more and more, and this past week she started smiling back at us. She's smiled since the day she was born, but now I think she's really smiling on purpose when we smile at her. Elena gets the best smiles out of her. You can tell those two are gonna be close. I was so scared that Téa was going to be a jealous booger and make it hard on me with Maricela, but she's the complete opposite. She just wants to look at her, smile at her, help burp her, and basically annoy me when I'm trying to take care of her (I mean that in a good way).

So that's about it. We're just chugging along here. I'm trying to survive school. Every time I come home with more homework, Keith says "I can't believe all the stuff they're making you do just to be a teacher". It's pretty hard, but hopefully it'll go by quickly. I'll try and get some recent pics posted this weekend.

Beach times

Here are some random beach pics.

Hannah


Our fam


The girls


Elena helping Téa into the water


Robert with the fish he caught


Keith with a crab he caught


The crab


Julia (doesn't she look like a model in this pic?)


Papa and Elena


Ellen and Elena


Elena (there sure are a lot of her. another thing - doesn't it look like after the picture was taken she popped that fish in her mouth for a little snack?)


Téa playing in the sand

Jenny's Wedding

Here are some pictures from Jenny and Travis' wedding. It was a very nice ceremony held at sunset on the beach in Naples. All of our family and our Grandma was there. Jenny and Travis' friends from Ft.Lauderdale were there, as well as some of our old friends from Naples. It was really nice for all of us to get to be there and we're all really happy for them.

Sea World

Sea World was, by far, my very favorite park. I don't know why but I absolutely loved it. I even teared up a little watching the killer whale show (don't ask me why, cause I couldn't tell ya). So here are our Sea World pictures. (Our friends Alvaro and Tiffanie came with us and so did my sister Ellen.)

The first thing we did was watch the sea lion show. Elena loved it, and as we were leaving, she asked if she could take her picture with the trainers. They were glad to oblige, and she was so excited!


I couldn't resist putting the captions. The looks on their faces are priceless.


We watched the killer whale show and it was awesome. This was taken before it started. Note that they are sitting in the soak zone. From right to left is Ellen, Keith with Téa on his lap, Amya, and Elena. You can't really see Alvaro and Tiffanie.


My favorite trick was when the killer whales came up out of the water with the trainers standing on their noses.


Now you can see why they call it the soak zone. Amya thought it was so cool!


Maricela turned 4 weeks old the day we went there. So many people would come up to us and ask us how old she was.


The girls loved this little water play place. Normally they hate it when Keith sprays the hose at them, but they sure thought this was fun.


We also saw a dolphin show, which was really cool. After that, we went to the Dolphin cove where you can pet the dolphins. We must have stood there for at least 15 minutes with our hands in the water, waiting for a dolphin to come by and let us pet him. Keith got bored with it pretty fast, and Amya was so disappointed when I finally told her we had to go.


Amya rode the water ride with Alvaro and Tiffanie.


A group shot. We were all so tired after our long day, but we had so much fun!