Birthday Fun!

My winter gets very busy around Christmas time because of all of our three winter birthdays within two weeks. I am so glad that we are done with most of it. It has been fun and rewarding, but it is a relief to have it over and done with. I will give a quick rundown of each event and then pictures.

Caio asked for a pirate cake for his birthday. So I made pirate cupcakes and invited four cousins and one friend over to eat them and watch a pirate movie (Muppets’ Treasure Island). I also made each kid a newspaper pirate sword and hat. They all LOVED it, and I was SUPER happy for my boy. He also wanted to see the lights at Temple Square because of how much he loves Christmas lights. It was fun for both of the kids. We didn’t take any pictures this year, but you can see some very beautiful panoramic shots here.

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Marcio wanted to visit the Hill Airforce Base Museum in Roy, Utah. He had never been before and if I ever did it was before I was old enough to remember it. We found out they have the most AWESOME kids area where the kids are allowed to dress in child-sized pilot uniforms and helmets/hats (Caio chose to sport a N.A.S.A. jumpsuit and a white helmet with an orange visor) and they can pose in front of a huge backdrop of a moon landing. They have flight simulators in realistic looking cockpits and tons of other kid friendly toys and activities. It was awesome just for the kids’ section, but the rest of the museum was great too. We told the kids that we are definitely going back soon (maybe between Christmas and New Year’s Eve ;-D).

 

Finally, we had family over Saturday night to celebrate all three birthdays with cake and ice cream. The kids had so much fun opening their presents and Caio and his cousin, Nani, were so cute posing in his new tool vest/belt getup that he got from his grandma that I wanted to share the pics.

 

Thanks for reading.

Merry Christmas!

Ginger

Merry Christmas From the North Pole

Just wanted to share a holiday smile from all of us. :-D

Watch our family video of us at the North Pole. ;-)

-Ginger

Every Vote Counts!

Okay, so I am entering a contest. I made this YouTube video entry and after the ten finalists are chosen the one with the most views will win (as calculated by YouTube). So please watch my video, share it with a friend, blog about it, twitter about it, facebook about it, or whatever. Thank you for any help you can give me! :-D

Lots of Love!!!

Visit my video on YouTube by clicking here!

-Ginger

Can’t Believe It’s ME!!!

It has already been a week. I can’t believe it! It doesn’t feel like it has been that long and yet it feels so surreal that I wonder if it really happened. If you are wondering what I am talking about, I just want to introduce everyone to my new BFF (Best Friend Forever for those out of the know).
Last Friday I was on my home with my kids from the doctor’s office when my husband called and told me to take the kids right then to my mom’s house and get over to his work to meet Jillian Michaels. I know I mentioned it in a previous post, but I think she is so awesome and amazing and I would have loved to meet her, but I really couldn’t think of a single thing to say. Well, when Marcio met her, I guess he told her about me and she said that I should be there and asked why I wasn’t. He told her about the doctor and the kids and then he went away and called and told me to get over there. He said, “You’ll regret it if you don’t.” I didn’t know if I would or not, but I knew that I would probably have very little to regret if I did, so I left the kids with my mom and drove the short ten minutes to meet Jillian.
Jillian had told the employees that she wanted to meet anyone who wanted to come up. I guess there had been a long line, but by the time I got there it wasn’t that bad. I made my way to the back of the line and waited. Someone stood at the microphone at one point and said she only had about five more minutes. I was still nervous and unsure of exactly why I was there so I thought about leaving. I told Marcio that she would be gone before we reached her anyway. He convinced me to hang on and see what happened.
When we reached her she immediately recognized Marcio. She turned and looked at me and asked, “Is this my girl? I’m so glad you came!” Then she grabbed me and hugged me and then waited for me to say something. I knew for over a month that I really had nothing to say, so I just said that, “Hi. I don’t have anything to say.” She laughed, “That’s okay! You don’t have to say anything.” I responded, “Yeah, but, I feel pretty stupid, cause I don’t know what to say. But I think you are great and you inspire me. Thank you for everything you do.” At that point she stopped smiling for a second, “Wow! That was really sweet. You don’t have to say those things.” “I know,” I said, “but it’s true, and I mean it.” Then she asked a question that started us into a ten minute conversation. She asked for my email address and said that she really had to go, but she wanted to contact me later. I am so grateful that I had the chance to meet her. I can’t believe how blessed I was. When we got done talking I turned around to get my picture taken with my own camera and the pro photographer that was hired for the event, but I couldn’t tell which lenses were which, because all of these people had been listening in and started cheering and taking pictures with their own cameras (something that hadn’t happened with anyone else the whole day, I guess). When it was all over, even Marcio’s boss was asking why Jillian talked to his wife for so long. What can I say other than ‘WOW!!!’?

Marcio telling Jillian all about me.

Jillian taking time to talk. (*wow*)

Posing for the crowds!

I will try and get a few more photos (not as good) taken with my own camera later.

-Ginger

Mirror, Mirror On The Wall…

So two nights ago we gave Jordan her bath first. Marcio pulled her out and gave her the comb to bring to me so I could do her hair. She hid the comb, but I saw her do it, which was pretty funny, actually. When she and I were finally seated on my bed with the comb she insisted that it was her turn to comb my hair. I didn’t mind since I let her do that from time to time and the routine is always pretty much the same:

she combs my hair, it hurts, I smile, she says over and over “pittie-pittie {pretty-pretty},” she says, “Ah Done!” and I say, “Thank you!”

This seems to pretty much please us both for the most part, but this time went a little differently. Instead of complimenting me endlessly about my “pittie-pittie” hair, she babbled semi-incoherently while doing the job—and the job took forever. At one point I finally asked, “Jordan, is Mommy’s hair pretty?” She stopped mid-sentence and scowled at me in disgust before responding, “No! My’s hair pittie!” She fingered a lock of wet hair hanging by her ear and repeated, “My’s hair pittie…” LOL.

Lesson Learned: I guess there is only room enough in this house for one pretty head of hair.

On to bigger and better news:

Last night we realized why our fridge has been smelling so bad for a couple of days: IT BROKE! LOL! Oh wells. We finished eating dinner and I ran the treats over to the church for pack meeting and made my excuse so I could make it to the store before it closed. We frantically dropped the kids off with my mom and grabbed my two manly and kind and strong and charitable and muscular and willing little brothers to come and help haul a fridge home. We got to Home Depot and rented the truck, bought the fridge, got it home and installed and returned the rental and got back and salvaged any foods we could and got the old fridge down to the garage to be dealt with later all by around midnight (whew)… Now it is laughable material…

Okay, so, back to a better story:

We got the kids home close to 1 AM. Caio was wide awake, but pretended to be asleep so that I would carry him to his room. I remembered doing this when I was about his age and my mom and dad were so sweet to play along that I had to accommodate his poor acting. He kept peeking to see what was going on and when I told Marcio that I was going to change his clothes he lifted his arms to help get his shirt off… LOL! My favorite part was when we were saying family prayer quietly in their room and we thanked Heavenly Father for helping us with the new fridge and I couldn’t help looking to see what his reaction was. He was craning his neck from his pillow to see down the hall and try to get a glimpse of the novelty, but when prayer was over his eyes were shut again.

That is all I am awake enough to talk about tonight. Stay tuned for my exciting news/events update from today {with pictures}. It was very long and very cool. It really feels like it had to be more like three days. WOW!

-Ginger

“Five More Minutes…”

Lately we have started some new routines in our home. Probably one of the bigger ones involves Caio starting pre-school. My sister runs a home-based preschool and offered free enrollment for CJ in exchange for me helping her kids learn some things that I can do. It has been interesting and fun, to say the least. He loves going and hanging out at his cousins’ house and never wants to come home when it is time to pick him up. There are seven kids in his class and two are cousins. The class is two days a week and lasts for two hours at a time. We have to get up earlier than he is used to so we can get Marcio to work on time and keep the car for the day. The funniest part is when I tried to wake him up the other day and told him it was time to get ready to go to school again. He held up his hand with his eyes shut tight and mumbled, “I am going to sleep for five more minutes, Mom!” and rolled over to go back to bed. Marcio had been over getting Jordan ready and he stopped to look at me and we both started laughing. Marcio responded, “I don’t know that he knows what one minute is, let alone five!”

We are starting a new Tuesday night tradition in our home (for now): Ginger will watch Biggest Loser at her sister’s house, and Marcio will stay home and read boring, three-thousand-page-long books about computer stuff. Believe it or not, we are BOTH excited about this. And we also feel like we are doing good by not taking away from the other person to do the things that we both want to do. (Speaking of Biggest Loser… I love watching it and I am SO EXCITED that tonight it starts a new season and I have watched all of the online pre-season premier episode stuff and I am SO HAPPY that Dan is coming back on and I think he is AWESOME and I can’t wait to see what kind of things go on this season except that I heard Jillian mention that there is someone who she thinks is “evil” {a lady} and I don’t want to see someone I think is bad because I just like being inspired by watching these people overcome really difficult stuff and become better and… WOW! I really am going on and on… Ok! Well… I should have put a TMI (too much info) alert. Let’s just say that this is my secret obsession lately and I love the show.)

Okay… Jordan is also getting so big and being so VERY cute. She really scares me because she watches me so closely and mimics so much of what I do. I worry that I am not a good enough roll model for her. I want so much more and better for her than what I am. The stuff that we catch her doing is so incredibly funny, though. She will take dolls and try to nurse them and change their diapers and wrap them in blankets and give them kisses and she will tell us that they are sleeping and talk to them. It kills me… she is a riot. She also speaks so much and so well (way more than CJ did at her age) and she is the biggest tease and thinks she is so funny (hmm… who does that remind me of???). She also LoVeS to torment Caio for fun and attention (poor caio) and we are constantly trying to figure out how to dissuade this particular trait.

Anyway, time runs away from me and I need to go. (((HUGS)))

-Ginger

Just Feeling Good And Sharing It!

I have been sick for just over a week. It has been miserable, but I didn’t want to get on just to whine about it. Today I woke up and felt so much better that I wanted to make the whole world smile…

Enjoy:    :-D

“It all tastes good!”

-Ginger

Cousins From CA

Just over a week ago Marcio’s brother was visiting from California with his family. We went to lunch with them and Marcio’s mom and another brother and his wife. Afterward we decided to continue our visit at a local park to give the kids time to play together. We miss their family a lot and are so grateful for the time we got to spend with them. Here are just a few of the pictures that we just got from that afternoon. These were all taken with Fernando’s camera, and I believe he also snapped most of them. I should note that two of Marcio's brothers are missing from the pictures because of previous commitments. Also, Jordan fell the day before causing the big scar on the center of her forehead--poor girl.

At the restaurant with Grandma Tania.

Jordan and Gabe played a lot on the tallest slide. No Fear!

We got group shots of the brothers, the sisters-in-law, the sisters-in-law with Grandma Tania, the couples, Grandma and the kids, and three of the four grandkids.

I was grateful that Fernando was thoughtful enough to snap a few close-ups of my kids.

At the end of our stay, the kids kept running off into this field together. They seemed to have more fun in the grass than they had enjoyed in the playground. Jordan and Sam especially loved running around together. It was so cute that all of the adults couldn’t stop laughing at the pair of them.

I couldn’t tell which version of this picture I liked better, so I just included them both. You will have to vote for which one you like better so I know which one to get a print of.

-Ginger