Christmas 2009 - Part 4

La noche del 24, antes de irnos a dormir, le dejamos galletas y leche con chocolate a papá noél.

En el jardín de Diego, hicieron "comida para reno" (reindeer), que consistía de semillas y unas cositas brillantes. Lo dejamos afuera para que se lo comieran. Diego estaba feliz!
Por la mañana Diego se despertó a las 7. Marcelo y yo estabamos muy cansados porque llegamos a la casa muy tarde la noche anterior. Aquí está Diego abriendo su primer regalo del papá noel. Se ve feliz pero también se nota que estaba cansadito.

Marcelito estaba enfermito entonces no lo despertamos para abrir regalos. Lo dejamos dormir hasta casi las 10 de la mañana!! El pobre niño no se sentía bien y necesitaba descansar. Le dió una toz muy fea y casi se le fue la voz. Hoy sigue muy malito. Aquí está abriendo sus regalos pero con muy poco ánimo.

Unas horas después, los padres de Marcelo llegaron con más regalos. Diego estaba feliz! Les regalaron bicicleta a los dos.
Fue una navidad muy linda! La pasamos muy felices. La parte no tan feliz fue que Marcelito se enfermó. Ahora estamos descansado hoy y consintiendo a Marcelito.

Espero que hayan disfrutado todas las fotos! Les mando muchos besos y abrazos y espero que también hayan tenído una navidad muy especial. Ahora necesitamos que Marcelito se mejore para rumbiar el año nuevo!

Christmas 2009 - Part 3

Esta navidad se nos olvidó tomar muchas fotos. Sólo tenemos una de nuestra pequeña familia, pero no tomamos con mi mamá y mi papá y Sergio y David.

Aquí estamos el la casa de mis suegros antes de ir a comer con mi familia.Marcelito y Dieguito tenían la pinta que la Tata les compró. Se veían divinos!Comimos una cena deliciosísima de seviche y comida del mar. Muy rico!!Aquí están los niños abriendo su primer regalo con la Tata.Diego abría uno, lo miraba por un segundo, y decía, "Quiero abrir otro!"En cambio Marcelito abría cada regalo y lo disfrutaba. Aquí está diciendo, "Wow! Un cepillo de dientes!!"

"Mira mami, trenes!"Aquí están los niños con los regalos de "papá noél". Una bicicleta cheverísima para Diego y un carrito de manejar para Marcelito. A Dieguito le dieron celos porque le fascinan los carros que tienen motor y le fascina manejar. Pero este carrito es muy chiquito para él. Además, Diego ya tiene una camioneta grande para manejar!

Y esto sólo fue la primera ronda de regalos! El 25 abrimos más y más regalos. Que concentidos estos niños!

Christmas 2009 - Part 2

Una noche salimos a cantar con la familia de mi Tio Carlos y con amigos de la iglesia. Todos nos pusimos gorritos de navidad. No tenía uno para Marcelito entonces le puse cuernos de reno. No se si se llaman asi! En ingles es reindeer antlers. Aquí se está comiendo una galleta que se ganó por ir al baño. Estamos tratando de enseñarle a ir al baño como niño grande. Como le fascina el dulce, las galletas, y especialmente el chocolate (como la mamá), ha sido facil convencerlo! No se si lo pueden ver en la foto, pero cada uno tiene un carro en la mano. SIEMPRE tienen un carro en la mano. Cuando les digo que es hora de salir, corren y traen un carro para llevar. Nunca sueltan esos carritos! Es una obsesión.Les dije que hicieran una cara chistosa y esto es lo que hicieron. Diego nos tomó esta foto. Le gusta la fotografía como a la mamá!

Christmas 2009 - Part 1

We had a great Christmas this year! My brothers were here and we were all together as a family for Christmas for the first time in 4 years. Diego and Celo have loved spending time with their uncles. I'm going to re-cap Christmas, but I'm going to do it in Spanish because my grandparents are going to be reading this later today. So those of you who don't speak Spanish will just have to make up your own captions for my pictures. :)

La navidad fue muy linda este año. Fue muy rico estar juntos como familia por primera vez en cuatro años! Los niños disfrutaron mucho de estar con sus tios. Voy a compartir fotos de todo lo que hicimos.

Fuimos una noche a un lugar que se llama Celebration. Todas las noches en Diciembre cae "nieve". La nieve es una espuma y a los niños les fascina. Aquí está Diego disfrutando la nieve.

Aquí está tratando de comerse la nieve con el Tato.

Aquí está Marcelito con el papá tratando de tocar la nieve.

Le pareció cheverísimo! Mírenlo con ese gorro!Aquí estamos todos en la nieve.También tienen un tren que uno puede montar. A Diego y a Marcelito les fascinan los trenes. Aquí estamos en el tren. Sergio estaba haciendo cara de payaso.

Fue una noche muy divertida!

Merry Christmas!

"Wishing you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, with love: Marcelo, Nathaly, Diego, Marcelito, and Baby #3"

We hope you are all having a wonderful holiday!

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!