Christmas 2008 - Part 1

I have way too many pictures to post, so I'll have to separate them.

We had a wonderful Christmas this year. As I've already mentioned, Diego really enjoyed the season, which made it a million times more fun for Marcelo and me. We tried to do lots of fun things with him, but we didn't make it to half the stuff we wanted to make it to. But December isn't over yet, so we'll see what else we can squeeze in next week.

I'll post these in chronological order.

On the Sunday before Christmas, we have a tradition of taking pictures outside the church, of all the grandkids on Marcelo's side of the family. We also take a big family picture. The sun was really bright, so they aren't the greatest pictures. Oh well.

So here are all the cousins. That's Danielle holding Celo, then Diego in front of who else? Angela. Of course. He's so attached to her. Then there's Isabella, Leilani holding Gabriella, and Reagan on the end.

The four of us.

The whole gang, minus Mario. Marcelo, Me, Mike, Michelle, Mike holding Celo, Karen holding Gabriella, Mikey holding Leilani. In front it's Diego holding hands with Angela (see? I told you), Maria (Necha), Danielle holding Gabriella, and Reagan.

On "Christmas Adam" as my brother and I call it, (the 23rd) we went with my parents, my aunt Ruth, and my brother David, to this little Disney place. It's kind of a tradition for us. We go, maybe see a street show, drink some Godiva hot chocolate, and look at the Christmas lights. David isn't in any of the pictures, because he was busy recording everything on his HD camera. He's become quite the videographer. I'm excited to see the Christmas video he's going to make for us.

Here's my mom and Diego riding the little train:
My dad and Celo on the train:
And lastly, our little family in front of the big Christmas tree.
Up next: Pictures from Christmas Eve.

Christmas 2008 - Part 2

Every year, we spend Christmas Eve with my family, and Christmas Day with Marcelo's family. It makes things a whole lot easier, and we get to enjoy each family without being in a rush.

On Christmas Eve, we went to my parents' house to have dinner with them, Tia Ruth, and David. We had a yummy Raclette dinner, which is great for adults, but not so much fun for the kids. It just takes too long for the food to cook, and the kids get impatient pretty quickly. All the big people enjoyed it, though! So good.

After dinner, my mom had planned to talk about the true meaning of Christmas and sing some Christmas carols. BUT, we made the mistake of trying to do all this right in front of the tree and the millions of presents, so it didn't quite work out. Those presents were just too tempting for Diego and due to a very short nap and a refusal to eat much dinner, he was a little on the cranky side. So he won, and we just opened presents. We did manage to take a couple of pictures first:

Here he is opening his first present from Tato and Tata: A drill just like Daddy's.

Here's Celo opening his first gift: A McQueen race car. Diego quickly snatched it up. We had issues all night with Diego trying to take poor Marcelito's toys. I had a hard time wearing my best Christmas smile. It's hard to keep smiling after the 38th time of saying, "That's not yours! That's Marcelo's! Don't take his presents away. Be a good listener. Blah blah blah."

Diego's little friend Max gave Diego this purple boat. He wrapped it himself and everything. (He's 5.) It was so sweet! Here's Diego getting the hang of this present thing:

The last present was the big one. I'll have to put the pictures in a whole separate post because it was just that BIG.

So this post will end with a couple pictures from the next party we went to after my parents' house. It was with my extended family. When my extended family is together, there is bound to be dancing involved. And Diego LOVES to dance. He got out there in the middle of everyone and just shook his little booty. The boy has rhythm. He's right on beat, and you can tell that he's trying to copy the merengue or salsa moves that he sees everyone else doing. He even claps his little hands to the beat as he shakes his little hips. The best is when he just busts out with his own made up moves. It's HILARIOUS. I bet the video I got of it is pretty shaky because I couldn't stop laughing.

His favorite dance partner is my mom. But if she's not around, he'll dance with whoever is willing. Here he is with Kaitlyn.

If he doesn't find a partner, he's not afraid to go it alone:

I wish I knew how to get the video off my camera so I could post it! It was great.

Christmas 2008 - Part 3

My parents and David went in a giant present for Diego and Celo. We were all so excited for him to open it. After the rest of the presents were opened, my dad showed Diego a ribbon on the floor by the tree, and asked him to follow it. The ribbon led to the backyard. Here are the events that followed:

Diego following the ribbon outside. He has no idea what's going on.

You can kind of see a little smile as he spots wheels under that sweet looking blanket.We got no "Wow!" no "It's a truck!", nothing. The first words out of his mouth were a very calm and understated, "Can I drive it?" as he climbed in.Here he is behind the wheel of his very own F150 truck. Marcelo's family is a Ford family, so Diego will fit right in.See the glee in his face? He was soo happy.Marcelito on the other hand, was not impressed. He was pretty scared. The people responsible for making Diego's life complete: Tato, Tata, and Tio David. THANK YOU!!!!!!

Christmas 2008 - Part 4

We knew the boys would be spoiled rotten by all of their extended family, so we passed the message along to Santa that it wouldn't be necessary to give many presents this year. Therefore, our Christmas morning was very low key. There were a few presents from aunts and uncles to open, and then a couple of gifts from Santa. Diego woke up at about 8am, but Celo was still sleeping. We didn't want him to miss out on the fun, so we went ahead and woke him up.

Tio Mauricio, my mom's brother, gave each of the boys a present. We had no idea what they were, so we let them open those presents first. To our surprise, and Diego's sheer joy, it was a remote control red Mustang with white stripes. It looks just like Grandpa's except that Grandpa's has black stripes. Diego absolutely loved it. Here he is looking at me saying, "Can I open it???"
Next Marcelo opened his present from Tio Mauricio: a big plastic dump truck. He loves it, but Diego keeps trying to take it away from him. It's been a little difficult. I love this picture because Celo has bedhead and he's just looking at me like, "Can I go back to bed?"Santa brought Celo a new puppy. He sleeps with a puppy that he just adores, so we thought he might like another one. Here is Diego, all up in his business, trying to open the present for Celo so he can see if it's something he wants to steal. Luckily Celo is pretty patient with his brother.Celo liked the puppy, but then Diego ran and got his old one and Celo tossed the new one so he could give the old one a big hug. I could almost hear him saying, "Don't worry, Puppy. I'll never replace you." Hopefully the new one grows on him.We were hoping we'd have a little more luck with Diego. Every time we asked him what he wanted Santa to bring him, he would say, "A red rocketship." So the last present he opened on Christmas morning was a red Little Einsteins Rocketship. He looked at it long enough for me to take this picture and said, "I like it." Then, he jumped up and went back to the Mustang and said, "Can I open this???"

Maybe we'll have better luck next year!

Christmas 2008 - Part 5

Last post! Don't worry, I don't expect anyone to read all 5 Christmas posts. I just wanted to document it for our family's sake.

On Christmas Day, Marcelo's dad stopped by to drop off the presents that he and my mother-in-law had bought for the boys. So Christmas continued! Here they are with their spoils:

Diego's pajama shirt in the other posts is true: What Santa won't bring me, Grandma will.

In the evening, we were invited to have dinner at my in-laws' house. I was in charge of making a salad, and a sweet potato casserole. We almost had everything loaded up in the car, and were all ready to go. Marcelo was holding the sweet potatoes and turned to go back inside to grab one more thing. I was outside on the front porch when I just heard glass shatter everywhere and heard Marcelo say, "Nooooo!" I ran to the door and saw the sweet potato casserole all over the carpet, with pieces of glass from the baking dish it was in scattered all over the floor. I just stared at it in disbelief, trying to figure out how on earth it happened. I later found out that it slipped out of Marcelo's hand, hit the piano on it's way down, and shattered everywhere. But in that moment I couldn't ask questions. I couldn't speak. Marcelo just looked at me and said, "Take the kids to my mom's and I'll stay and clean up." I did as I was told.

While I was in the car, Marcelo called me and said, "I'm sorry. I know you spent a lot of time on that." I said, "It's okay. I'm not going to cry over spilled sweet potatoes. But you are going to have to make me a new one to make it up to me because I was SO looking forward to eating that!" (It was the Candied Coconut Sweet Potatoes from ourbestbites.com and it is so so good.)

He scrubbed and scrubbed the carpet, but the stain wouldn't budge. The next day, we rented a rug doctor, which got the stain out, but not the smell. We've since steam cleaned it, lifted up the carpet and replaced the padding under it, and the smell is still there!!! We called a carpet cleaning company and asked them about it. When they asked what spilled, Marcelo was like, "It was a sweet potato casserole. It had eggs in it, and condensed milk, and butter...". The guy was like, "Mmmm, sounds good!" Marcelo said, "Yeah, to eat, but not on your carpet." Sooooooo, since our carpet now smells like straight up vomit (not even exaggerating), we're going to have to replace it. YAY. Totally excited about spending a ton of money on that. Especially since we've had this carpet for like a year.

ANYWAY, after dinner with Marcelo's family, my mother-in-law took the kids outside to the manger that she's got set up. She has a tradition of making a big birthday cake and having the kids sing happy birthday to Jesus. Here are all the kids gathered around the manger.

And that was our Christmas! We hope yours was great, too!

Feliz Navidad a Todos!

We hope you all have a wonderful Christmas, spending time with loved ones and remembering our Savior Jesus Christ.

Esperamos que todos tengan una feliz navidad, compartiendo con seres queridos y recordando a nuestro salvador, Jesucristo.

God Made Dirt

...and my boys are very grateful.

Getting a fence is one of the top 5 best things that have ever happened to me. No joke. It has changed my life. Usually, with two sick boys, a sick mommy, and an even sicker daddy, life would be miserable. But it's not. Because my little sick boys don't have to stay cooped up in the house. They can breathe fresh air and play outside. I'm not going to lie....at first, happy as I was, I was a little hesitant about letting them get super super dirty in the two big piles of dirt we still have from putting up the fence. But once I saw how much fun they were having and realized that having to take a bath every day right before lunch isn't really that big of a deal, I just gave in and let them get utterly and completely filthy. They. Are. Loving. It. And, as a bonus, I get to take pictures of them without driving them crazy.

Here are Diego's dirty dirty hands. He loves to grab the dirt and slowly let it drop all over his legs.

Does this crazy face not say, "I love dirt"? Indeed it does. I love this boy.

Okay, these next few pictures give a glimpse of Celo's personality. Not only is he 100% boy with his love of all things dirty and his daredevil antics, he's also very very stubborn and defiant. Don't know where he gets it. Okay, I do know. Anyway, so the story of these pictures is that he wanted to eat the sidewalk chalk, and I kept telling him no. I kept saying, "Not in your mouth," and taking it away. Then I'd say, "I'll give it back, but don't put it in your mouth." And here's what he did.

In his own words...er...thoughts.

"Okay, Mommy. It's not in my mouth. Just on my face."

"It's not IN my mouth. Just right next to it."

"I'm seriously considering putting it in my mouth."

"Yeah...I think I'm going to bite it."

"Sooooo, what are you going to do if I just take one little bite? You know you can't say no to these eyes."

"Bit it. What are you going to do about it?"

Very pleased with himself.

Sigh. He's a little monster. A cute monster with crazy little curls that fall over his ears.

December Happenings

This week's TTA topic goes with what I was going to post today anyway. The question is:
How do you bring the spirit of Christmas into your home?

I know I've said this already, but we are having SO much fun with Christmas this year. I was just telling Marcelo last night that I'm sad it's almost over. I only have a few more days to do all the things I wanted to do! There's still two sleigh rides at two different parks, one more trip to see Santa, a trip to a place where they make real snow for the kids to play in, a trip to Sea World, a trip to the house with a thousand lights....so much fum stuff left to do!! So the spirit of Christmas is in our home this year because of all the things we're going and doing, plus the Christmas movies we're watching, plus the yummy things we're eating. More importantly, to get Diego to understand the true meaning of Christmas, we're going to be talking about the little nativity we have up in the house this week, to see if maybe I can get him to stop thinking Christmas is Santa's birthday. I'm also going to have him help me pack up some of his toys for someone we know who doesn't have any. We'll see how he feels about giving his toys away.

We knocked two items off our "to do" list this weekend. We went to this cute little Disney place and walked around looking at lights, a giant Christmas tree, and listened to some really good carolers. I don't know if you can actually call them that. But they were signing Christmas songs, and one of them was beat boxing. It was pretty amazing. Diego started dancing. Here are some pictures from that night:

Diego waving at Daddy from the train.

The second Christmassy thing we did this weekend was go to this town where they have the most beautiful houses. They shut down a street and fake snow (foam) falls from the sky, and the kids play with it. We went with all the cousins. Diego loved it. He had so much fun. We rode on a little train, saw Santa, ate funnel cake, and drank hot chocolate. Diego loved seeing Santa. He sat on his lap for like 10 minutes, lol. Okay, it was probably five, but it felt really long. The pictures were super expensive, so we just put all 11 kids in the picture so we would only have to buy one. So Diego sat there on Santa's lap while we got everyone situated for the picture. The guy took 3 pictures, and out of the 3, Diego only stopped smiling in one. So guess which one the guy chose to print. Yup. The one where Diego looks like he's mad. I was so sad because he had this cheesy little smile in the other two. Oh well. He had so much fun, so we're going to take him to see Santa again. I was so not planning on being one of those moms that pushes the Santa thing, but he LOVES it. So there you go. The other night, I told him that he needed to be good because Santa was watching. He said, "Santa's here? But I don't hear his bell." Too cute.

Here's his cousin Angela holding him up so he can see the fake snow. She's 3 years older than him and as much as he loves all his cousins, she's his favorite, haha. He loves her! He wanted her to hold his hand all night. He was glued to her hip, just like he was on Halloween.Guess who's hand he's holding? Angela's.

Celo didn't care much for the snow falling in his eyes.

On Saturday, we went to Tio Andres and Angelita's house. Diego had fun with Sofi, and had his first round of opening Christmas presents. He loved the truck they got for him. Thank you again! Celo really didn't care about opening presents. That was to be expected.

I just love this time of year.

B Scraps

Just a shameless plug for my new scrapbooking blog! I'm joining my friend Sabrina on a blog called B Scraps. We both love designing, but it really isn't as much fun if you don't get to share your stuff with anyone. So we decided to make kits to give away. So if anyone you know likes digital scrapbooking, send them over to B Scraps for some cute freebies!

Tuesday Tell All Catch up

I'm sick with some kind of sinus infection or something equally miserable, so my mom took the boys today. Well, she had been planning on doing that anyway, and then I got sick, so it worked out perfectly. I've been alone for the past 3 hours. As much as I wanted to just curl up in bed and go to sleep, I felt like I needed to take advantage of my time, so I cleaned and cleaned until I couldn't take the runny nose and pressure in my face anymore. My sinus headache is coming back now, so I'm taking a little break. The boys should be home soon anyway.

So here's a little Tuesday Tell All catch up.

Topic for Tuesday, December 2: Christmas Cards
Do you make your cards? Do you buy your cards? Do you even send cards?

Ever since having Diego, I've made my own Christmas cards. I usually mail out a few, and personally hand out the rest. But this year, I may be doing e-cards. We'll see. Here are our cards from years past:

This was last year -

And the year before -


Topic for Tuesday, December 9: Christmas Carols
What is your favorite Christmas carol and why do you like it?

There are so many beautiful Christmas songs. I always get excited to sing the Christmas hymns at church. But for some reason, the people who choose the hymns haven't gotten the memo that it's time to start singing those hymns yet.

I can't pick just one song, so here are a few favorites:
1. O Holy Night - especially the Josh Groban version. Actually there are a lot of really good versions.
2. Carol of the Bells - Version by the Trans Siberian Orchestra with Metallica.
3. Believe - Josh Groban
4. Who doesn't love a little All I Want for Christmas is You by Mariah Carey?
5. Christas Canon - Trans Siberian Orchestra
6. Where are you Christmas - Faith Hill
7. Jingle Bells - Sung by my very own Diego. So cute!!

There are so many more, but those were the first that came to mind. Some really beautiful ones and just some fun ones. Okay, now I'm off to listen to Christmas songs.