Sweethearts

Our house is usually full of hugs, kisses, and sleeping babies. We love the sweet spirit these tiny children bring into our home, and sometimes they just melt my heart!

Vince giving Mamãe kisses during the RS General Broadcast in September

We love the fact that our children are great sleepers. Even more than that, we love that they enjoy cuddling. It’s interesting how children change. Their personalities are so unique and continue to develop every day. We are so blessed to be able to watch their lives unfold. We are so grateful to Heavenly Father for blessing our home with such great kids! They are the best, sweetest, most loveable babies, and we can’t get enough of them! Good thing they’re ours for eternity!

  Vince with his arm around Joseline as they watch videos of whales and sharks with Papai. Joseline loves to be doing whatever Vince is doing, and thankfully, Vince is pretty tolerant of her, and sometimes just downright sweet to her!

Food-Foot Dance

When Joseline likes what she is eating, she kicks her feet.

Like this:

Out with the Old, In with the New

The New Year is upon us, and like many others I feel a need to reflect on 2009, and look forward to what 2010 holds for us.

Reflecting… 2009

This past year has been full of adventure and stability. The two rarely go hand in hand, but this has been the first full year that we have been in one place, doing one thing knowing that nothing was going to change from our plans.

We moved to Monterey, CA just before the first of 2009, and have been here ever since. In the same house, doing basically the same things. We have really been able to just get used to being a family and doing “family” things.

Our family has been studying the scriptures and praying as a family daily this year. That has probably been the biggest blessing in our family. We feel more united, and the spirit is a lot stronger in our home.

We added a fourth person to our family this year with Joseline, and she has been an amazing addition. We love having her to share our lives with.

We made friend with too many families to name. Thankfully, some of these families will be with us again in UT. Others will go off to their active duty posts, but we will never forget them, and we will always keep in touch.

I am back to my pre-pregnancy weight, Russ has been able to score high enough on the PT test to be PT exempt, and Vince has learned how to potty himself (almost all by himself now! – depending on what he’s wearing!).

We have read many good books, seen many good movies, celebrated many exciting birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, and people. We have traveled, stayed in town, visited the sites around the bay, been to Santa Cruz, went on a marriage retreat, and played on the beach.

Looking forward… 2010

2010 holds even more adventure and MUCH less stability for us.

In March I will apply for Utah’s Alternative Route to Licensure program. I shouldn’t have a problem getting accepted. I don’t think it’s very competitive or anything. Then I will try to find a school in AR to take a teaching class I will need for my math endorsement. Hopefully I won’t be too late to find a class somewhere.

Russ will graduate from DLI in April, then we will head back to UT (Russ may come with us, may not – and we may or may not take a detour through Washington state to visit my brother Ross who is battling cancer, and visit with my cousins who just visited us for New Years) Once in UT I will apply to every math teaching job available and try to get a job for the fall. In the meantime, my best friend Jessica will be getting married.

Once all that is sorted out, Russ will head down to Arizona for some more military training, and I will truck the kids out to Arkansas to spend the summer with my parents. While there I will run a half marathon (if I can find one in AR – otherwise it will wait for the fall when I’m in UT), take a math teaching class, help produce the Maumelle Children’s Community Theater’s summer production, help my mom in her gardens, and attend the wedding of my best friend from high school, Megann.

Then in the fall, we will be moving back to UT (probably around the 1st of August). Russ will still be in AZ, so it will just be me and the kids, and our live-in nanny! We’re going to hire a live-in nanny from Portugal (from Russ’ mission) we hope, if all goes well with immigration paperwork. We’re pretty excited. Our nanny will speak Portuguese to the kids while Russ and I are at work. Hopefully that will help with their Portuguese. And hopefully it will help me learn more as well.

Once the fall starts, life should go back to normal again. Of course, it will be a completely new normal, but I’m used to finding my new normal.

I think 2010 is going to be a lot of that.

Beach Babies Part I – Sand Sans Sun

As you probably gathered from the title, we went to the beach on a day when we thought it was going to be sunny (well, it was sunny when we left for the beach!) and then wasn’t. But we had fun anyway. Here are a bazillion pictures from that day. They were all so great I couldn’t pick!

This picture deserves some explanation… I told Vince that we were going to get into the water (I meant… wade in the water). I turn back to pick up pebbles, and the next thing I know, Vince is at my elbow, “Will you take off my shirt?” he’s asking me. What? I turn around to tell him “No” and realize that he has completely stripped down to only his shirt (the only thing he doesn’t ever take off by himself). So this picture is me frantically carrying him back to our blanket where he had left his underwear. There were people all around. Oh my goodness, how embarrassing. Well, he gets naked to get in the bath tub, I guess he figured it was the same thing!

 

This picture needs a comment as well – there is a little crab exoskeleton on that rock I am holding up. It was kind of cute… and creepy… and a little gross. 

Graduation

This is a pretty old picture of Vincente teaching Joseline how to really crawl. She did the army crawl for so long we thought she’d never learn how to do the all-fours crawl. Well, she did, and now she’s pulling herself up to stand, and crawling/climbing up anything she can. She’s not really interested in cruising much, but that’s okay, she’s only 9 months old.

It’s actually nice to have a baby who does everything at about average. Vince figured things out way too fast for me.

Announcements

I have a few announcements to make:

1.) I will be running a half marathon in 2010.

2.) I have moved my food blog, and I have posted the recipe of my Zebra popcorn thereon: A Word of Wisdom

3.) I have created a blog for my daily scripture study. I was just putting it in a word document, but I thought it would be neat to make it a little more public: My Soul Delighteth

4.) Well… I think that is all. Oh yes, I have discovered why I haven’t been able to post pictures, so give me a little while and I’ll have probably 100 posts with lots of pictures. I’ll give you a little index when I’m done :)

Christmas Part V – On Christmas Morning

I wake up bright and early… 

On Christmas morning, we did just that – woke up bright and early. Well, not exactly bright – but early! Joseline and I have matching ribbons for our hair now!!

We had friends over to spend Christmas morning opening presents – the Wildes. It was a fun time and we ate yummy scones and played with Christmas presents all morning.

 This is cute little baby Ethan wearing Joseline’s santa hat. Of course, his head is about twice the size of Joseline’s, so it didn’t fit very well! And Ethan loves Russ. Of course, most babies love Russ. But Ethan loves Russ, and Russ loves Ethan, so I guess the feeling is mutual. Look at that cute little chunk of a kid!

 

I guess we wore them out!

Christmas Part IV – Traditions

We’ve started a few family Christmas traditions this year, seeing as this has been our first Christmas completely alone. (That sounds sad, but really it was a happy thing! We enjoyed being able to do our own thing for the holidays).

Tradition #1 – gift giving – we give four gifts (and then a bunch of little stocking stuffers) – something they want, something they need, something to wear, and something to read. It worked really really well this year. It simplifies gift buying and helps us to focus on the real reason for the season – the Savior and His ultimate gift to us.

Tradition #2 – Caroling – our picture above was taken by our neighbors (our first stop caroling). We made up plates of cookies and took them to all the military families who were staying around town for Christmas. It was a lot of fun, and my personal favorite tradition.

Tradition #3 – scone breakfast – Russ came up with this one. In Isaiah there is a prophecy that Christ will eat butter and honey to learn to choose the good and refuse evil. So we made fried scones for breakfast on Christmas morning (I made the dough the night before) and ate them with butter and honey. They were absolutely delicious!

Tradition #4 – Nativity Play – we acted out the Nativity (in Portuguese, of course!) I played Mary, Joseline played baby Jesus (although she freaked out when we put her in the “manger” – aka, the toy box), Vince was Joseph, a shepherd, and a wise man, and Russ was the narrator, shepherd, and wise man. We plan to get more involved each year, as our kids get a little older. But it was lots of fun to start this year with our tiny kids!

Tradition #5 – music program – so we didn’t actually do this one this year, but we will start next year. We want to put on a music program each Christmas. I will play piano, violin and sing, Russ will play the trumpet, we will sing Christmas songs together and have a jolly time celebrating the season with music!

Tradition #6 – The Nativity Song – we also didn’t do this one this year, and we probably won’t start doing it until Vince is in Primary (so in two years). We are going to incorporate music into our Nativity play. We’ll make sure to take videos and post them :)

 

I think it is really important to have some holiday traditions with you family. What are some of your holiday traditions? Where did they come from? What traditions do you want to start next year?

My New Normal v 4.0

Stupid Live Writer isn’t letting me post pictures… AGAIN. Grr… I think I know what the problem is, but I don’t know how to fix it 8-o Posting pictures using the blogger “new post” thing just takes so much longer! I am thoroughly annoyed.

Anyway, back to my new normal!

I have started trying something new, and it has been really working.

I typed up a checklist of all the important things I need to do every day, listed in order of importance. I figured that having a routine is good, but most of the time, each day is different from the next, and if I don’t have some way of making sure I get the important things done, I feel like I’ve wasted a whole day, even if I have done most of the important things. I put the checklist in a page protector and I use a dry erase marker to check things off each day. That way I can just keep using the same list every day, because this list of things doesn’t change. I did leave room under “errands” and “budget/planning/misc” to write in specific things that need to be done, like grocery shopping, etc. Since I don’t grocery shop every day.

Some examples:

Scripture study

Exercise

Read scriptures to Vince at breakfast

1 load of laundry

So, during the day, I just go through and check off things as I get them done. It’s much more simple than having to write up a “to do” list every day, seeing as my to do list is about the same things all day long every day…

This also helps keep me motivated, since I don’t feel like I have to do any of the items in any particular order. Granted, I listed them in order from highest to lowest priority, just to give myself a little direction, but it’s okay if I have to (or want to) skip to something at the end. Maybe something that I haven’t been getting to for a few days.

Anyway, today is day 4 of the checklist, and so far it has been GREAT. I feel more motivated to get things done because I have a visual reminder of what still needs to be done that day. I also feel accomplished at the end of each day because I have a visual reminder of all the things I have done. So instead of feeling worthless because all day every day I just clean the house, do the dishes, do the laundry, feed the kids, and run errands, I can feel like I’ve actually been DOING things, because there they are, staring me in the face from the side of the fridge.

If trying to make up a daily routine isn’t working for you, maybe try prioritizing your life and writing it down in a checklist.

Maybe I’ll post my entire checklist later.

Normal is starting to feel a lot less lame. :)

Christmas Part III – D Co Christmas Party, and Santa

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the left, Joseline in my arm waiting to see Santa at the Delta Company Christmas party. On the right, I think Vince is telling Santa what’s up. He never really said anything coherent to Santa, but hey, it was his first Santa visit where he actually knew what was going on.

   Joseline wondering who the heck is behind that beard

Vincente “Aaaah, yeah – a present for me. This red suit guy is pretty awesome!”

Christmas Part II – The Light Of the World

When we got home from picking out the tree, Vince was exhausted and fell asleep on the couch. Joseline helped decorate. Okay, so mostly she just played in the decorations and stared at the Christmas lights.

A few weeks later we put up lights outside. Russ just climbed up on the roof (we have a pretty flat roof – no need for peaks in a place where it never snows) and stuck them to the gutter with these cool little clippy things we bought forever ago. We bought those our second Christmas and this is the first year we have ever put them on our house. This happens to be our 5th Christmas. Yeah, so we’ve been busy the last few years.

Vince loved that we put up lights outside (he was awake for that part, and even helped). We had to string the lights under the kitchen door and plug them in where the toaster oven is plugged in because there are no outlets outside (actually, I found out a few weeks after Christmas that there perhaps are outlets outside… but I guess it doesn’t matter now…). Well, one day Russ used the toaster oven and unplugged the outside lights, and didn’t plug them back in. No big deal, because we try to unplug them during the day anyway. We went out to run errands and got home after it started getting dark. Vince got out of the car and realized that the lights weren’t on outside and flipped out. Seriously, he had a total meltdown until we plugged the lights in. He was so excited to help put up the lights that he wanted to make sure they were turned on at night!

  

Christmas Part I – Tree Shopping

 

I watched a little boy for a friend this fall, and she paid me in gift cards. One of the gift cards was for Home Depot, so that’s where we got our Christmas tree. We decided on a shorter one so we could put it up on a stool to keep it out of reach of the little munchkin named Joseline. Unfortunately that didn’t work perfectly, but that’s okay, what are kids for anyway if not to demolish your perfectly decorated tree.

Russ brought fruit snacks for the drive over, and we found the perfect little noble fir for about $20. We’ve talked about getting an artificial tree next year. Probably after Christmas when everything is marked down. We’ll see. We keep going back and forth. We love the real tree, but… hmm. Although I did see someone write that they have lots of land so they buy a Christmas tree with the roots still intact, use that for their tree during Christmas, and then plant it on their property after Christmas! I really like that idea. When we buy land we will surely do that!