Neighbor Friends! May 13, 2011

These four are together so often, that they start interacting like siblings, which cracks me up! They have such a great time together, how fun to be right across the street!

Silly pose!

Snack time!

Playing with Jakey! May 12, 2011

These two are such sweet buds! Love them!

Side Trip in CA - May 8-9 2011

So I got to spend a couple of days in San Jose before the shower, which was nice to hang out with Lindsay and family. I actually got to stay for Mother's Day breakfast on Sunday morning before I drove up to my mom's house in the East bay area. Lindsay's husband Javad made all of us Mother's (Lindsay, her Mom, her Mother in Law and myself) a gourmet and delicious breakfast!
On another subject, back in June, Julio and I started considering a possible move to back to California because Julio had recently started working for a new boss who wants her team based on the west coast. Julio saw this as an opportunity to get back to family and friends. We had not looked into the details of the financials, but wanted to start mentally and logistically preparing ourselves, so I took a side trip to the east bay from San Jose where the shower was to actually check out some areas that we were considering moving to and see what the housing looked like. So, I asked my mom if I could pick her up and drive up to Sacramento to look around. We liked the few areas that we looked in, but didn't have enough time to thoroughly look into each area. Then, we drove back down to my sister's house to have dinner with them and spend the night and go home the next day. So, luckily I got to spend a couple of hours with my four adorable nephews! The first and seconds photos are of my sister, Marcie's oldest and youngest boys, Sam and Joe, who are 9 and 1 year old respectively. These two are look alikes and then her middle two are look alikes. These two look more like Julius, my brother in law and the middle two loko more like my sister.

This is my sister's life pretty much everyday! :)

Jake and Benji - the two middle cuties!

So, Joe had recently learned how to walk at around 16 months or so and we video taped him walking across the room as he was building more confidence with his new found skill!

Benji is only 12 months (to the day, Dec.19th) older than Joe - crazy, huh?!

6 year old Jacob!

9 year old Samuel! The few hours spent were short, but sweet! :)

Lindsay's Baby Shower! May 7, 2011

My good friend, Lindsay, whom I've known since college was gearing up to have her two precious twins! After lots of trials with in-vitro the second time around (they have a four year old), Lindsay thankfully carried her babies through a healthy pregnancy and was due in early July. So, I got together with Lindsay's good childhood friend, Laura and helped to plan her baby shower! It felt like deja vu because at this almost exact time last year, I was planning another twin baby shower for my other good college roomy friend, Kristin, also who became pregnant via in-vitro! Crazy world! Anyhow...I had SO MUCH FUN planning this baby shower as I had the previous year for Kristin! Since Lindsay's colors for her babies room were pink and blue (she had a girl and a boy), Laura and I decided to go with a simple theme of the two colors. I made the invitations and added the cars and butterflies since both items were in the bedding.

This was the welcome table with welcome sign, name tags, gorgeous sweet peas from their neighbor's garden and game instruction card along with photo album and advice/wishes cards for Lindsay and family to remember the event (not pictured). Lindsay's friend Laura's lovely Mom offered to host the shower down in the San Jose, CA area where most of her friends live.

The party banner!

Cupcake table with tissue paper pom-pom decorations.

I couldn't resist making these cupcakes for the shower even though Laura and her mom thought I was crazy! We made the cupcakes themselves the night before and then I made the frosting and colored it and piped it on them the morning of. I had a vision for these and had been wanting to try some for a while and was happy with the way they turned out!

Pretty drink area!

Yummy quiches that Laura's Mom made!

More gorgeous flowers including some prestine calla lillies from the garden! Below the flowers are the fun sugar skin scrub party favors that Laura made and we dyed in party colors and decorated with ribbon!

Name tags!

Lindsay and Laura!

Lindsay and her mom, Carol!

Lindsay and I!

Lindsay, Laura and Laura's Mom.

Easter Time! April 20, 2011

So, we were debating what to do for the Easter weekend. First, we thought we could host a little block party with an Easter Egg Hunt and brunch or lunch, but not too many of our neighbors planned to be in town. So, then we thought we could go out to the beach for the weekend. That idea sounded great, but Julio managed to pick up some bug and was not well enough to travel, so I think that I took the kids on Easter Sunday to church and sat in church by myself. :( It was a great service though and I was very happy that we all went! These photos were take a few days prior to Easter during the week when we were trying to keep busy while Daddy was out of the country on business. Ayden made his own bunny ears out of paper and skewer sticks for support and I made Gabriel's bunny ears out of felt, the skewer sticks and a headband. We also sent these cute cards to our family that had two little bunnies made of Ayden and Gabriel's thumb prints that read, "Thumb bunnies love you! Can you guess who?" On the inside was this photo above and it said, "These bunnies do!" I found the idea on a cute crafty blog and had to copy it! :) It was a good week even though we were missing Daddy!

More Hilton Head fun!

These three crack me up in this sequence, I had to post them all! Sorry about the first one, I can't seem to fix it - tried twice!

Half Marathon Weekend! - April 16th, 2011

My amazing friend Bonnie and I used to run a lot to keep in shape while our hubbies were off earning their MBA's. Bonnie always wanted to run a race to see what it was like. She attempted to run a half marathon I believe back when we were at Stanford, but she couldn't make it to the race when the day actually came because her Grandfather passed away and she had to go home for the funeral. Well, two more children later, she got back into running and decided that she was going to run that half marathon! That was last year in the Fall of 2010. She told me then that I was going to run the next one with her! I was hesitant, but thought that I would most likely regret not doing it with her! So, we signed ourselves up to run a half marathon in Charlotte, NC in April. The training began in December/January. I trained all by myself at my own pace. I think I got to a 9 or 10 minute mile and worked my way up to a long run of 11 miles 2 weeks prior to the race. Bonnie and her oldest, Elijah, flew out to Charlotte from Northwest Arkansas (where they now live) the Friday afternoon prior to the race on Saturday am. Julio flew in from India just to be there to take care of our kids (while I was running) and watch us do the race! He had to fly back out somewhere on Sunday night from Raleigh! The photo above was taken not long after the race was complete! Bonnie and I got times not far from eachother in the range of 2 hours, 6 minutes. Bonnie could have run faster, but she decide to run the race with me! It was great to run with her, to have my best friend there to motivate me and keep me going! Overall, our time was about a 9:45 minute mile. I have to say that it was an amazing experience that I will never forget! Thank you Bonnie, I love you!!

I am the runner in the black capri's with a white shirt tied around my waist with a white hat on. I am pretty much in the middle of the group of runners in this photo. This was a few paces behind the finish line!

Bonnie and Elijah out to brunch with us after the race!

Ayden and Elijah! These two six year olds became friends at 9 months old! :)

We all headed over to the Nascar museum to keep ourselves busy with the kids after brunch! Gabriel found a race car that looked like "The King" from Disney's "Cars" movie, which was his obsession at the time (April, 2011)! :)

Cheeeeese!

The whole group outside of our hotel before headed to the airport on Sunday! Bonnie and I also went out for a fun night of dinner and drinks on Saturday night (and Friday night!) but we neglected to take any photos. It was such an AWESOME weekend!!!