Catch up-Iowa Christmas!

We had a great time in Iowa, but now that I am looking at the pictures-they are pretty random and do no show half of the people there. Whoops. I'll have to be better next time. And I can always look on Facebook on Jessie's account. She took lots of good ones.

The boys and I survived the flight to Iowa and were greeted by our cousins! Liam and Logan sure love babies. and they were really good to Marcel.

Lots of kisses.

Sometimes we were sad, maybe when things didn't go our way.

One of the best parts was that I finally got to try a Cheesy Blaster! (no thanks to Meggie or Sarah, who didn't think they were good ideas) Thanks Eric! If you don't know what one is (and even if you do)-watch this www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1W8R5TSNNk

Manny is super excited about his awesome presents ( and he is wearing his favorite pajamas).

Uncle Eric playing with the boys

Aunt Sarah helping open presents

Granny holding Marcel

And loving on him

Eric had the great idea to make a gingerbread house. And when he does something he is for serious. He practiced in Utah before he came here, made a pattern (he even made individual shingles out of gingerbread), and everything. Then they (funny that it was only Eric, Rusty, and Bennett who actually worked on it) used their creativity to bring it to life. I love Benny's face

Please notice the wishing well to the right, the dog house to the left, and I don't remember all the other things that were there

Wrestling with Uncle Joel (I think this is Joel, Bennett, Emerson, and Manny) which ended in tears after Joel tooted on Bennett's head

Uncle Rusty trying to prove men really can multi-task

And my baby is a balancing genius

Waiting for Meggie to bring the swim suits

Liam (I think) couldn't wait

And this was the result

Joel throwing kids into the pool

Addison throwing himself/doing a belly flop

Terrible pictures. For some reason my camera was acting super crazy in the humid pool room

This is what Granny did during pool time. I'm pretty sure Elliott had an ear infection

Manny is so lucky to have such great uncles to play with.

Pool time was a success!

This is what Marcel and I did. Try to take pictures of ourselves. Didn't turn out so well, but we tried

Uncle Eric with a baby Joey, I mean Elliott, in his pouch/jacket

Catch up-Decorating the Tree and Nativity

We decorated the tree the day after Thanksgiving because I was so excited. And we only had a few weeks before we left for Iowa Christmas. I let Manny decorate it. Notive only one corner of the tree has any ornaments. Every time an ornament would fall off (which happened surprisingly often) I would move it up a little higher. By the time we left for Iowa the whole tree was covered, not just a quarter of it.

Can you tell what this is? I was putting hooks on the ornaments and Manny would hang the ornaments up. Apparently Manny thought this was an ornament (a giant, tangled mess of hooks). Don't worry, Luis took it down because he thought it was a safety hazard.

Here we visited my cousin Rachel at her dental office. And we had Lucky (the class dog) again. We get him about once a month or so.

Next we had an activity at church where people from the community and from church gathered to celebrate Christ's birth. There were hundreds of nativities, lots of choirs and orchestras, etc. And a kid's nativity room with dress up clothes, nativity sets, and such. It was really neat

Wise man Manny bringing gifts for baby Jesus.

Mary and Joseph

Holding baby Jesus

And playing with one of the nativities.

Manny made this nativity at school. Isn't it so cute?

Catch up-First weeks and Thanksgivings

Sad this is what we woke up to one day (about a week after we came home). Gross. Turns out it was just a clogged tear duct, but yuck.

This is Marcel about 2wks old.

I kept trying to get a picture of him smiling. While in a milk coma he would often look like this.

(Please noice Manny watching a movie on the couch. Sadly he watched quite a bit of tv/computer while we worked on nursing. It took us a while to get the hang of it.)

Yay for family pictures! Too bad my baby is still kind of in the alien stage (about 2 wks).

We were lucky enough to have 2 Thanksgivings. Luis' parents worked that day so we got together with friends and then celebrated AGAIN the next day! Our friends have an awesome house with an awesome yard (and not a busy street). A small hill in the front of the yard with a giant pile of leaves at the bottom.

Riding a truck down the hill into the pile. Surprisingly (not really) Manny had never jumped in a pile of leaves. He was pretty hesitant-they were kind of scratchy.

Thanksgiving Take 2!

I love holidays and being with friends and family

Catch up-Moon Festival and Halloween

September and October of 2011
We had such a great time at a Moon Festival Night at the library. Apparently it was International Moon Observing Day or something like that and our library in Apex received a grant to host this event. I sadly didn't take a lot of pictures, but it was really neat. They had telescopes in the parking lot, a guy from NASA dong a presentation and aswering questions, a movie, face painting, story telling, games, crafts, etc. And they gave out moon pies (which Manny soon discovered are disgusting).

Story time


Manny didn't want his face painted, but the girl was nice enough to paint a moon on his hand

Informational (there was a chart you could make about the phases of the moon and why they looked like that) and fun crafts.

Look how proud Manny is

And this is me around the first week in October (a whole month left!).

A friend in the ward had a Halloween party on her street. Manny chose to be a bombero (fire fighter) for this party.

For his school party he wanted to be a skeleton.

This is part of the parade.

And standing around. He looks a bit like a midget.

Wouldn't really smile for the camera, but he had fun.

Teri-yucky chicken and Gruining

I keep foregetting to write things down.
We had wonderful friends bring meals over after Marcel was born. One friend brought over teriyaki chicken. When it was time to eat Manny cried and said he didn't want to eat. Why? Becasue he thought she said "teri-yucky" chicken. Ha! Ha!
And Manny says lots of fun things. One is instead of ruin he says "gruin." So many times a day I am told that I "gruined it!" I seem to "gruin" a lot of things of Manny's. It's possible he is a little more emotional at this time.