December 20, 2008
Seasons Greetings to all of our family and friends! After seeing so many of your wonderful letters each year we finally decided to start doing a family Christmas letter as well.
At the beginning of this year we were preparing for the birth of Gabriel. We attended a birth preparation class and were the only ones in attendance that were having our second child, so we were looked to as the “experts!” Yeah right! J On April 4th, we welcomed Gabriel into our family! He has fit right in and is completely taken with his older brother! He watches whatever it is that Ayden is doing with complete focus. It has really been a joy to watch them interact and be able to start playing together in recent months. Gabriel turned 8 months on Dec. 4th and has taken off physically in the last month! He sat up in the his 6th month and then last month right before turning 7 months, he started crawling after a couple of weeks of practicing on all fours! It seemed like only 2 weeks after the crawling began that he started pulling up on objects. He liked to stand from the get go just like Ayden! Now he has been practicing his balance by standing in one place with no hands holding on, over and over. It is his favorite activity, aside from playing peek-a-boo. He will lift just about anything over his face (his bib, blanket, etc.) so that we will play this favorite game!
Ayden has done a lot this year as well! He of course became a big brother, which is a very important job to him. He always tells us how much he loves “baby” as Gabriel is called often times. He already wants him to play with his toys and act like a big boy with him. I even found Ayden trying to sword fight with Gabriel using tinker toys! Ayden is in the 3 ½-4 year old preschool classroom and will move up to the next room in the new year. Ayden has spent a lot of time this year progressing at letters/word sounds. He loves to guess what letter is at the beginning of all kinds of words. Ayden is also particularly interested in geography. He said today when talking about a flashcard of a place in Israel, “It is not in the United States, but it is still on the earth!”
It was about the early spring time that our “still very new” neighborhood started taking off with more families moving in, which means more neighborhood friends for Ayden!! He now spends many evenings and weekends playing outside with his many new friends or in one of their houses. We have had several gatherings in the neighborhood including an early Summer block party, several girls nights, a Halloween BBQ party and most recently we hosted a Christmas gathering! The neighborhood men even have a regular poker game. It is amazing to see how the neighborhood has progressed from the time we moved in August, 2007!
Julio finished up his training at Davita not long after Gabriel was born. He took on his role as regional operations director for our area in the beginning of May. Though he spends a lot of time in the car and on the phone, he loves his job. Working in healthcare seems to keep him motivated. He is doing his best to stay in shape and spends a lot of evenings watching the kids outside and tossing the football with the other neighborhood dads.
I started attending a women’s bible study in February. I found out about it through a friend from Mops (Mother’s of Preschoolers) who invited me to join. We attend a non denominational church called Crosspointe Church and both the women’s bible study group and Mops are affiliated with Crosspointe. I currently serve a couple Sunday’s a month in the 2 year old Sunday school classroom. I’ve also been participating in a fun neighborhood womens group called Amberly Angels who get together socially on a monthly basis. Of course my main job is taking care of the boys and if any free time happens upon me, I spend it scrap booking, blogging or doing my crafty projects!
We wish all of you a very Merry Christmas and many blessings in 2009!
With love,
Cindy, Julio, Ayden and Gabriel Quinones
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