Quotations, Balloons, Missionary, Asco, Get Away Car, Nacho

Still not caught up, but I'm trying to stay current (kind of). I'll list them by who is doing it/saying it.

Manny-
I recently found out Manny knows how to use quotations. We were talking the other night and when I said Abuela was coming over after he went to bed he said,
M-I hate it when Abuela comes over at night.
Me- Why? You're in bed.
(Bedtime Update-I put Marcel back in his pack n play so there was a distinction between Manny and Marcel, to try to reduce the amount of ridiculousness that went on at night. I had medium-good sleep for a couple of weeks until he remembered he could climb out of it).
Manny-She always takes me out of Marcel's bed because she thinks it's "gonna" "break" (but he had to focus really hard on making his fingers move with each word).
Apparently he had been climbing in the tiny pack n play.... But funny with the quotations

Papi was trying to eat some food but it was too hot, so Manny came over with a balloon that had a hole in it and tried to cool it off with the balloon air. How helpful.

I had the sister missionaries over the other night. Manny was being crazy and they asked him if he liked weapons, like swords, and stuff. Of course yes. They had us read Alma 31:5 where it says the word of God was more powerful than the sword (something MORE powerful than a sword? that's crazy), and explained that if there was an enemy, rather than fighting them, we could share with them the word of God and it would change their hearts. Great message. Later that night as he was playing on the communal playground behind our house he comes rushing in, "Where's my Book of Mormon?!" It's right there, why? "Someone is being mean on the playground so I'm going to show him it and change his heart!" Cute that he paid attention and applied what he learned. Although he just walked up to him (it was a big kid, maybe 10-12) and showed him (and the kid didn't even look at him). Manny is so shy. We talked later and I said maybe we need to have the friend/enemy read it and THEN it might change his heart.

Marcel-
One of my favorite things Marcel says is, "Asco"-meaning disgusting. Marcel uses it a lot. If he doesn't like the taste of something, if the table is messy (he'll say asco and brush it off before he can sit there), if something smells bad. He'll also come up to me and say, "Asco. Iz (nariz)," meaning he has boogers in his nose and he wants me to get them out. It's just really funny the words he picks up. I am impressed that he is picking up a lot of Spanish though.

I thought we were making great progress with the potty training. Earlier in the summer Marcel loved to "go potty." He pooped in it twice and peed outside the toilet (while sitting on it-those blasted things are hard to aim you know). Then we went a month where he wanted nothing to do with it. Now he likes to sit on the toilet and toot. And he thinks that is going potty. He'll ask a million times a day, get up there and squeeze a toot out. And he is very proud of himself. But we still have to change diapers, which neither of us really enjoy. Whenever I try to change his diaper he tries to jump on his little fire truck car and drive away really fast, like a get away car. Like he's going to get away from me. He is really fast, but not fast enough.

I sewed Marcel's Halloween costume. I feel really proud of myself. I haven't sewn anything in almost 20 yrs. And although it wasn't much, and took me a million hours to sew it, it's beautiful. To me.

Can you tell who he is? Nacho Libre! I thought-my baby has the perfect body for Jack Black. And I was right. This is what he's supposed to look like, but it's pretty close I think.

Here's an action shot

Isn't it amazing? Mind you, I only sewed the underpants and the patches on the knees, but still. 

I don't know if the cape inspired him into thinking he was amazingly fast or what, but he thought it was so funny to run away from me at this little Halloween get together we went to. What a cute little devil

Flashback June-July

Warning-this is a long one

Manny using some amazing soccer/dance skills

Marcel playing in the car. His favorite game is to push the automatic door button. I now have to make sure I disable them if he is on the loose

Sweet brothers reading

This is in our entertainment center (and obviously I don't clean the glass often enough). Marcel would stack the movies in a particular way, on the side, to leave just enough space for him to fit. And then he would close the door. We tried to discourage this, but it didn't work very well. He is very persistent. Below you can see one failed attempt to tie the door closed. he somehow managed to unwrap/tie it enough for him to squeeze through the door

This is after we went to another carnival/festival. Manny and I got our face painted. He chose spiderman (of course). I told her to choose whatever she wanted. This is what I ended up with-a seahorse/dragon? Weird

More super heroes

4th of July!

Nice photo bomb-courtesy of Kai

Luis grew a ponytail. Okay, not really. I had this really great idea to donate my hair to locks of love. 4 years ago. I just found this hair in a box that I had apparently been carrying around through 4 moves. Interesting.

We moved to a new apartment with no carpet in the dining room! Yay! And we still like to dress up

Coloring at the table. Marcel is actually a great colorer. He colors in the faces, circles the feet, etc. Manny's great, too, but can't be bothered to stay inside the lines. He's too artistic.

I'm pretty sure this is a pirate face. From inside a pirate ship

And we still love to ride this firetruck car

We went to the beach! And had the most amazing donuts. I will go back just for them

Our beach friends-Brad and Emily

And handsome baby Thomas

Marcel and Thomas fighting over who will sit in Thomas' chair

Although Thomas was winning in the previous picture Marcel somehow won and now just looks bored with life

Marcel eating sand. Somehow I didn't get very good pictures at the beach this year. It was probably the donuts. Very distracting.

My handsome boys ready for church. We were ready early (for the one time in our lives).

Marcel-my little guitar player

Super hero adventures

Marcel thought swinging this tennis racket was just hilarious (until I took it away because it was too dangerous)

I walked into the living room to find this

Marcel was just chilling reading books, in a chair on the couch, with one shoe on

I also walked into the kitchen to find this...He is very independent. It doesn't help that the cupboard doesn't have a door on it yet. Don't worry-he doesn't know how to use the opener, he just tries REALLY hard. 

Flashback April-May 2013

So here are a bunch of random pictures starting from April. 

We went to a spring festival. There is always something going on around here and we try to go to some of them.

For some reason Manny likes to pretend to be a dancing dead guy. Here is his impression.

These were some fun singers/musicians that were traveling around the festival. Manny was so excited to get his picture taken with them. Can you tell?

Riding around the apartment

Manny packed a backpacks for his brother and himself to "save time when it's time to go to Iowa. So I'll be ready"   It was May and we were leaving in August. But way to be prepared.

Superheroes.

Spiderman impressions

This is after he just jumped off the arm of the couch. Pretty good impression though huh?

Pretending to sleep.

Playing hide and seek

And chase

Manny took swimming lessons. Which was not as successful as I thought it would be. Lots of crying, no face putting in the water, and after all of it he tells me he already knows how to swim and he never wants to take swim lessons again. All of our real swimming success has come from going to the pool as much as we can and hanging out with other kids who know how to swim.

We went strawberry picking

Manny graduated from preschool! And he's going back to the same school next year. He barely makes the cutoff for kindergarten, but we decided another year of preschool won't hurt him.