Christmas Photo Shoot and Letter!

The Quinones Family - 2009 in Review!

It was a more relaxed year in 2009, thank God! :) Ayden turned four on the first day of the year and we celebrated a little later in the month wit a robot birthday party with friends! We enjoyed playing in the snow a couple of times during the winter with all the neighbors right in our own front yard! This sure is one of the perks of living on the east coast!

We celebrated Gabriel's big first birthday in April with the help of Grandma Gayle and all the neighbors and friends! Ayden started playing in his first big boy soccer league in the Spring, which he continued on in the Fall with his Dad as assistant coach!

The Summer brought an awesome trip with Granny and Papi down to Florida to visit NASA's Kennedy Space Center and then a relaxing week out at Hilton Head Island off the coast of South Carolina! Ayden's love of all things outer space prompted the visit. He loved every minute of it!

Later in the Summer, Gabriel learned how to practice American Sign Language. He took to it right away with fun video demonstrations and help from Momma and Daddy. This was a big deal and sort of took the limelight over verbal first words since he didn't have much of an interest in speaking. At the end of the year now, his verbal vocabulary is probably less than 15 words, but his sign vocabulary is probably more than 50 words!

In late Summer time, we went out to visit the family in CA and celebrated Gabriel's baptism. He was 16 months old, the same exact age that Ayden was when he was baptized! And so he of course had to wear the same outfit! :) We waited to arrange both of their baptisms since we have lived far away from all the family we wanted to celebrate with. Cindy stayed busy towards the end of the Summer planning and preparing for Fall baby showers, event planning still seems to be her thing!

In the Fall, we began hosting a church life group at our home with six families, including nine children under the age of five every Sunday afternoon! Julio took on leadership of the group, guiding us through bible study and such. Gabriel started his first two classes this Fall, Art Beginnings and Stretch and Grow. He loves them both! Ayden surprised us by wanting to try out his bike with no training wheels! He had it in about an hour. Don't know why I was surprised by this! This is Ayden were talking about! :)

Julio has progressed well in his job at DaVita with ten clinics now in his region and two hospital programs. He seems to enjoy his work and coworkers and he definitely stays busy!

We spent a bit of the late Fall at home with illness, but had a great Christmas time this month getting ready for the big visit from Santa that we will be sharing with the family out in CA! We couldn't stay away from all of the new babies that were born into the family this year!!

Merry Christmas and best wishes for a blessed New Year in 2010!