Fall 2009

Here's a video of this fall, but make sure to look at the blog entry below to see our new family pictures! Also pause the awesome music you are listening to now on the media player which is located on the right-hand side of the screen so you don't hear to songs at once. Thanks!

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Family Pictures in the freezing cold!

We had a wonderful last two weeks with Joel's family visiting. Joel's parents and his brother Christian flew in the day before Thanksgiving, I picked them up and we headed straight for Wyoming to spend Thanksgiving with all of my family. We had a wonderful time and surprisingly the 8 hour drive went by super fast! Thank goodness that I had extra help entertaining the kids, otherwise I would never had made it. Poor Joel was on the rig. I really missed having him there with us. Thanksgiving is a big deal for my family. We ate and ate and I'm sure had our whole weeks worth of caloric intake in two days, but I loved being with my family. I was also very happy to see where my sister Kim and her husband Syd live. It was a really fun town. On the way home we took the wrong road and ended up in Montana instead of going south! So that added two hours to our drive home, but it went by fast and we saw some amazing sights in the Wind River area.

We got home with Joel anxiously waiting and had a lot of fun just hanging out and spending time with Joel's cousins. We also took some freezing cold family pictures here in Daybreak. Thanks to my friend Kjersten who sacrificed her time and body to the cold weather! It was like 25 degrees not including the wind chill. She did great! So the pictures were not shall we say perfect, but it's a memory and there were several good moments captured, like when we were joking that Norby (my father-in-law who is really named Norberto) looked like Michael Jackson because he was wearing white socks with his dark slacks. We also enjoyed the lights at Temple Square that same night. Overall, we've had a lot of fun and have gone non-stop! Needless to say, I'M EXHAUSTED!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Witchapalooza!

 

One of the benefits of living in Utah are all of the fun family activities that are around. In West Jordan there is a shopping center called Gardner Village. There are many quaint little shops that you don't ever want to take your kids into, especially the candy shop! But it is an absolute blast. We've gone a few times this month. They have a big Witch celebration. There are tons of adorable witch statues all over the area that are so funny. There is also a petting zoo, hay maze, and pony rides. Of course, Halloween being one of my favorite holidays, I have thoroughly enjoyed going. One of the times I went with some girlfriends for Witches Night Out. You would not believe the amount of women totally decked out in their witch gear. You could hardly make it in or out of any store you entered. My friends and I were super under dressed, but it was a blast! Happy Halloween!

One Crazy Summer!

Allegra's first day of preschool.



She goes to Precious Moments with her friends Allie, Ella, and Luke out of a woman's home and loves it.



Notice the backpack is half her size!!!



Sometimes they love each other!



Gianluca's first day at kindergarten. He's sad he can't ride the bus!



Isn't he handsome!

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My 30th B-Day. More updates about that later. The kids helped decorate the cake!



Joel's 32 b-day cake that the kids help make.


Joel's b-day present in bed. The kids couldn't wait to give him his present!
(I realize I don't have Allegra's b-day pictures in here, but I currently can't find the file!!!!)
Well, I feel like I did in high school where I wouldn't write in my journal for months and then have a 10 page entry to cover all I missed. But I will spare you the gory details of this summer. I'll let the pictures do the talking. To sum it up, we had Joel's, Allegra's and my b-day. We went to Florida, then the kids and I went to Texas as an early b-day present from Joel, and we also had my family reunion at the cabin in Idaho. After all of that we got back and had a visit from Abu Maggie, Allegra broke her leg and got potty trained all in two weeks! Gianluca started kindergarten which is basically glorified preschool, and Allegra began preschool. I know you all may think she is too young, but in Texas this is completely normal. People put their kids in when they are two!!! And pay twice the price if not more!!! She loves it. Gianluca quite Tae Kwon Doe and just started a hip hop dance class and Allegra started a ballet class. Other than that... It's been one crazy summer. Sorry I've been a loser and haven't posted nor looked at any other blogs. I'll be better!!!

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Flordia Trip May 2009 Part One

Well, I know I'm a huge slacker. I have about a trillion posts to update, and I don't really feel like explaining all of them. I'm just being honest! It's the summer!!! For now, I hope this tides you over until I get motivated! :)

By the way, the beach we were at is called Indian Rocks Beach. We stayed there in a beach house with Joel's parents and brother Christian. We had an amazing trip!!! These are the pictures off of Joel's mom's camera, so I'll probably add a few later. We love the Florida beach and visiting Joel's family!

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The Case of the Missing RIng

Last Thursday is the last day I was seen with my wedding ring! Here I am with it after I took Gianluca to meet his kindergarten teacher.

I may have taken my ring off to wash Allegra's hair. I usually do when I'm taking a shower, bathing the kids, washing dishes, or putting on lotion.... or exercising... is it a wonder I've lost it again!

Allegra broke her leg going down the slide two weeks ago this Saturday. So she has to have sponge baths.

Here is proof that I took off my ring as you can see I don't have it on. I am super bumbed out! This is probably the 6th time I've lost it, but I think it might be really gone!!!! I'm waiting for inspiration!!!

Murphy's Law

Hello fellow bloggers, so I've been without camera and pictures for awhile since the move. So Lara, this ones for you, as it is her pet peeve to put old updates up, that is exactly what I'm going to do!!! I had the pleasure of watching my brothers 4 kids last month for a week while Ryan and Shauna went to Jamaica. They hadn't been on vacation in 11 or 12 years!!! They deserved a break. So I had Reilly-9(big helper and super sweet!), Calvin-6(a spit-fire and Gianluca's buddy), Gianluca(crazy) and Connor-5 (Sweet Dude), Caiden-4(my little buddy), and Allegra-2 (little miss clingy and follower of Reilly!). Luckily I had Joel and Reilly to help me out! That is a lot of kids under the age of 6! I just can't comprehend how sane people would want this many kids!!! As much as I love each of them and their funny personalities, at the end of the day I was contemplating downing anxiety pills, or taking up drinking! I'm just thinking that the Octamom with 8 kids and being single is CRAZY!!!! I have two by myself half the time and they drive me crazy! So if you can handle a lot of kids more power to you! They were actually pretty dang good and mostly entertained themselves. We had fun going to the WT (white trash central) Leo's Pizza in I.F., and the Museum of Natural History in SLC for the Frog Exhibit. I must have been smoking crack when I thought it would be a good idea to take the 6 kids by myself on a field trip. Trying to keep them all together in the same place was like trying to heard monkeys! Thank Goodness for Reilly! She is the most amazing 9 yr old girl I know!

So anyways I have the funniest story to tell about our drive down to SLC w/ these guys. I think Murphy had it in for us that day. You know everything just went wrong that day! Joel and I had errands to run in IF so my Grandma Jody watched the kids for us for a few hours. We were going to leave as soon as I got back. So when we got there, Grandma Jody realized she locked her keys in her car, so we had to wait for 45 minutes for a cop to show up to unlock her car. Of course, he couldn't figure it out, so she had to have the dealership make her a new key and Joel had to go pick it up. In the mean time, Biscuit (Ryan's rat terrier) got loose and I had to chase him around the neighborhood. This little rat was surprisingly speedy! It took me a good 20 minutes, but I cornered him by a chicken coop and drug him back. So finally Joel comes back and Grandma leaves. We load all the kids in the car. By this time is past 6 and everyone is starving. We decided we'll stop at Sam's club to get the kids cheep hot dogs and some snacks for the road. While in route, Allegra starts screaming that her belly hurts and pukes all over herself and the car seat. All the kids immediately lurch over to the opposite side of the car yelling that "it stinks, it's gross!!!" Luckily no one followed suite as Ryan told me later that some of his kids are "sympathy barfers".

Once inside Sam's, Reilly, Allegra and I go to the bathroom and clean her up. Joel was w/ the boys getting them food. Then I go grab a t-shirt in the clothing section and put it on her. Poor thing. We get to the food area and I hand Allegra off to Joel then go to grab some snacks. When I come back I see Joel holding a crying Allegra, the boys running around like maniacs and everyone else in the food area staring at me funny. According to Joel; Allegra threw up on herself and him again. So he holds her over the garbage and the Caiden (the youngest boy) starts sympathy barfing into the garbage can while Allegra's puke is dripping on top of his head!!!! No wonder everyone was staring at me!!! Joel (who is himself a major sympathy puker) was a huge trooper through all of this and didn't even dry-heave once!!! So Joel went and grabbed t-shirt for him and another for Allegra, and we were on our way. We finally get on the interstate and notice the speedometer wasn't working and found out later their was a glitch in the system. So we had to guess how fast we were going the whole way. Poor Allegra threw up two more times, and that was it thankfully! I was dreading the possibility of everyone getting the stomach flu! But luckily we made it safe and no one else got sick!!! Ryan and Shauna made it back a couple days later and had had a blast! We sure had a crazy fun time with those kids!!!!

P.S. Sorry for the long story. It had to be documented!!!
P.S.S. Here is a montage of our week together to the musical talents of They Might Be Giants, Here Come the 123's. We listened to these guys anytime we were in the car.

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I'm just putting this out here...

Why is it that when I finally have free time, meaning no kids wanting me to entertain their every minute, no temper tantrums to control, no teasing to stop, no fights to break up, no kids to feed, no messes to clean up.... the list goes on, that I don't want to do anything except lay on the couch and watch T.V., as the clothes that have been unfolded in my laundry basket continue to pile up and there are still boxes to unpack!!! Life is crazy! There is never enough time to do everything! I'm exhausted!

So that's it. I don't have any cute pictures because I can't find my camera's battery charger, so there. This was boring, but I will put up this random cartoon clip that pretty much sums up my life right now, or at least how I feel!!!!!!! (Carol I stole this from your blog!)

Feliz Cumple Abu Maggie!

Well we just wanted to give a special birthday shout out to my very special mother-in-law! She is an amazing woman who will do anything for anyone. She is very selfless and always sacrifices her time and money to help those in need! She has helped us a million times in a million different ways and we will always be indebted to her! The kids wanted to send a special birthday wish to you today! We woke up to a winter wonderland AGAIN today, so the kids put on their snowsuits and went out. In fact, they are still out there! I apologize in advanced for the horrible camera work, the sun was in my eyes!!! Happy birthday and we love you!!!

P.S. Push pause on the music on the right hand side of the page so you can here the kids' birthday message.
P.S.S. I know I need to update my music!!!

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

2 months later!

Well, since I haven't had my own computer since December, I finally have had a chance to download Gianluca's birthday party pictures, taken by my good friend Betsy. Anyways, As a last big get together for him (and since we had no place to give him a birthday party) we decided to have it at Pump It UP. He invited a ton of friends to come and go crazy. I wish I had one of these in my back yard, or even in our basement. It is such a good energy drainer. Anyways, his theme was BEN 10. He is so into this cartoon it is a little crazy. But I must say that I actually enjoy watching this with him. His best friend Aidan got him hooked on it. Anyways, it was so fun and it makes me really homesick for my amazing friends in Houston! Gianluca really misses his friends! So here are the pictures from his party.

We just moved to South Jordan two weeks ago. Joel's mom flew in on the 17th of March and watched the kids for us while my parents and I flew out to Houston. We had one last dinner with some of our friends and then took off the very next morning in the U-haul while my parents drove our van (lucky dogs!) It was a crazy two days. We drove 11 hours the first day, and then we had a 14 hour day on Friday. We got into SLC @ 11 PM. It was actually really fun just chatting w/ Joel and seeing all of the pretty scenery. Although some parts of New Mexico are definitely the armpit of the world! We had so much help in getting here and then my sister Darci and her family helped move us in, along w/ Joel's brother and aunt. We are really blessed!

It has been crazy weather and constantly snowing, so we haven't gotten to meet too many people, although I know when it gets warm the neighborhood will be swarming w/ children. So until then, Gianluca is completely bored. I just signed him up for Karate and swim lessons. Alley is also signed up for swim lessons, but can't take dance until she is potty trained. It is a work in progress.

Speaking of Allegra, my aunt Karen is a very talented photographer and she just took some incredible pictures of Allegra. Here's a link to her blog... http://www.karenaphotography.blogspot.com/ Thanks Karen!



She refused to wear the hat at this point!

Gypsy Woman

Hey, I just wanted to state that I am alive and somewhat breathing. At any rate our lives consist of living in and out of a hotel that is the size of my old bathroom, staying at my all to generous friends house, and I'm seriously considering taking up drinking coffee at this point. Okay now, don't be apauled.... I said I'm considering it. Not that my caffine addiction to Coke is much better. Anyways, we are holding up considerably well, besides the fact that I almost cry...or do... everytime we drive by the old house. I wonder what the new owner would think if he came home to us just hanging out on the couch. Allegra is always telling me she wants to go home. It's sad.
Joel's class is very time consuming and hard. But I am proud to say that he is getting high A's on all of his tests this far. He'll be done March 13th. We can hardly wait to be done!!!! And get back to a normal life style!!!!

Gianluca's birthday is this coming Sunday. Super Bowl Sunday again! That is when he was born. The Super Bowl where Janet Jackson exposed herself on national TV. Awesome. I was sitting in the hospital room recovering thinking "Did I just see that??" Good Times, good times.

So this post is very Random and no I don't have any pictures to post right now as my camera is at the hotel. But that will come soon enough! This is random, I know... I'm sleep deprived!!!!