Fishing

Emalyn loves water and when she found that there was 4-5" of rain water in our recycle bin, she kept herself quite busy (unknown to me). Gabriela was outside playing with her, so I should have been more diligent checking in on them. I was pretty grossed out when I found Ema dripping wet. I think Gabriela might have given her the idea to dunk her head in, because I heard some screaming a few minutes earlier :)

{the picture on the right was me teaching her to say "yucky water"}

So, I stripped her down and she bolted right back outside while I was getting new clothes. Thought I'd let her have 15 more minutes to play before her bath and nap time; she was having so much fun!

Here she is fishing. She was pretty excited when Gabriela suggested that she should catch her, and she did!

Family Pictures

All 23 of us!!

Henry & Karen Montaño

Lonny-37, Elena-31, David-29, Cajsa-27, Stephanie-24, Patricia-21, Cristina-18, Lissa-15

Sisters!!

Top: Elena, Tricia, Cajsa

Bottom: Cris, Lissa, Steph

Lonny & Richelle King

Shayna-15, Bryanna-12, Jynna-8, Aliya-5

Danny & Elena Rock
Brendan-11, Isa-9, Gabriela-4, Emalyn-2

Brad & Cajsa Taylor
Adison-1

Chris & Stephanie Sowards

Emalyn turns 2

Another year has flown by and our baby is no longer a baby. Emalyn (pronounced emma-leen, just as a reminder :) is a healthy, happy, blue-eyed toddler who loves to be outside and always wants to do things on her own terms. [remember she didn't start walking until 17 mo!] We are so glad she's a part of our family!! ♥

Ema saw her presents and had a hard time waiting for everyone to show up; we made her cry. Guess we should have waited a little longer to pull them out :) She loved all the puzzles and later was found sitting on top of the table trying to put together 3 different puzzles. After cake, her favorite thing to play with ended up being the gift bags (notice the leftover Christmas bags) and tissue paper, and kept saying, "happy birthday to me, MY presents!"

Ema could hardly wait for cupcakes while we were making them, frosting them, and arranging them. She was so excited to get her hands on it! She's a pretty tidy eater, which makes me pretty happy :) In the last 2 photos, we told her to smile and this is what we get from her [you'll want to enlarge it to see her cRaZy eyes in the last one-too funny!]. She's definitely NOT into impromptu smiles for the camera (or for anyone, for that matter).

Last, but not least, a fun game of chicken. Actually Tricia wanted to just see how much weight she could squat. It was quite amusing, but Emalyn wasn't too sure... Oh, and speaking of "actually", Ema came up to me as everyone was getting pajamas on and brought me Gabriela's dress. She said "my dress, on (meaning she wanted me to put it on her). actually, Ela's dress." I was surprised and impressed at the same time, because she absolutely knew what she was saying, with the appropriate tone and everything! [as a side note, Isa did the exact same thing when she was 2 1/2 and it blew me away, but her sentence was "actually mom, no" with hands on her hips and head cocked to the side] Girls.

Out with the old, In with the new...

Last night's/this morning's latest project. I made a boy newborn outfit. Come to find out, among all my assortment of fabric, I really only have 1-2 that classify as "boy" fabric! Time to refocus my buying/stashing :)

I got this pink travel lite pack 'n play for the girls because it was 20% smaller and great for traveling. When I started going through things in the garage, I realized that I didn't really want to put my baby boy in an all pink thing. So, I began watching craigslist for something similar and last month found the brown/blue one!! Someone had used it only a handful of times and then it was packed away (no smoke, no pets, and she's a clean freak like me!). I was able to buy it for exactly what I sold the pink one for, yay!

Our swing & full sized pack 'n play that we have is part of the Graco Cherry Blossom collection, which of course is all brown/pink and flowery. They both were such good deals at the time of purchase, that it didn't even cross my mind to find something gender neutral. We needed something then, and that was it. So, I called Graco and I was able to order replacement pads and covers for the swing for $20! The mobile toys are another $15, so I figured I wouldn't get those and could make or rig something up myself and save the money. Love the new stuff!

This, however, perplexes me. It is a fantastic PNP, but now has a small hole thanks to a pirate named Gabriela. I thought about doing the same thing as the bassinet and selling it all and looking for a gender neutral/boy PNP, but with that little hole, I don't know how much I'd get for it?? Ug. Anyone know how to repair netting/mesh? Hmmm, I have a few months to figure this one out...

Ringing in the New Year

New Year's Eve was pretty low-key since we were all suffering from colds and the plan was to just stay at home. We were still trying to recover from lack of sleep from Christmas and our Polar Express trip! My sister & her family were in town, and since they had already been exposed to all our germs all week, asked for us to still come over to my parent's house to celebrate. The plan was to play games 'til midnight, but since we were all so tired, we all plopped ourselves in front of the tv's! Half of us watched Harry Potter 6, and the other half, the Discovery Health Channel. The babies went to bed by 8pm :) We all gathered in the kitchen at 11:55pm, and filled our glasses with sparkling grape juice and cider. We watched the ball drop on tv, cheered, toasted, and then went home! Everyone went straight to bed :)

On New Year's Day, we all went to the Sonoran Desert Museum (the majority of us hadn't been there in years!) and had fun seeing all the animals and exploring.

Everyone enjoyed trying the bat ears on :)

The girls had fun at the tortoise exhibit, despite the fact that there wasn't a live tortoise to see!

These were the highlights that the little ones kept talking about: digging for dinosaur bones, seeing javelinas, a "coon", and a coati. There were several other animals that were pretty cool, but these are the ones they talked about all the way home :)