More Birthday

So, back to Diego's birthday. He has been SO excited for his birthday for months now. He kept changing his mind about the theme of the party so last week my mom and I took him to Party City and told him he could pick whatever decorations/favors/games/etc he wanted. He chose dinosaurs! He had been saying for months that he wanted a Nemo cake, but that quickly changed to a dinosaur cake when the theme was decided.
Ricardo, my mom and I stayed up very late Monday night decorating the house and getting everything ready. Diego was thrilled when he woke up Tuesday morning to a "party house" as he called it. Ricardo and Alexia went to La Madeline to buy croissants and muffins for breakfast (Diego chose to stay behind to admire his decorations). We had a yummy breakfast and then finished getting things ready for the guests to arrive at 11:00.
I let Diego make his guest list and he invited his 14 dearest friends (I know, that is A LOT for a four year old!) 9 of his friends came and 6 of those friends have little siblings so we had 17 people 4 and under and 9 moms. It was a full house! Diego was giddy with excitement to see his friends everywhere and Alexia was equally thrilled to have her little buddies over. We had an art project, played a game, had play time and then had lunch. We served pizza, salad and fruit and it was a big hit, for moms and kids alike. I am so bummed that we do not have a picture of his awesome cake. I ordered a simple dinosaur sheet cake from Publix, but when my mom went to pick it up they had made the wrong cake. They ended up making a deluxe cake which we got to keep for the price of the other one. Diego was thrilled! It even had a battery-powered dinosaur on it that roared. All of the kids were thrilled with cake time and Diego took an especially long time devouring his cake. After cake time, everyone bundled up and headed out to the front yard for the pinata. All the children got several turns whacking the pinata and loved it. Ricardo had to finally give it one final slam for it to go flying.
After everyone left, we let Diego tear into his presents which was a blast. He received so many great gifts! Quiet time was a breeze that day since he had a ton of new stuff to play with - he was in there for a long time and never asked what time he could come out. As soon as Alexia woke up from her nap, we got ourselves together and headed to the pet store to buy Diego his present from Ricardo and I. We bought him his first fish and he loves it! He decided to name him Suni. Explanation: Diego and Alexia like to call things funny names and one of the funny words they say is "Suni Nuni." Not sure where they got it from, but we thought Suni was a fun name for a fish. We picked out the very fish he wanted and insisted on getting the colored rocks for the bowl - it was his birthday, he got what he wanted! :)

After welcoming Suni to the family, we headed to La Fonda Latina for dinner. This is where we went for his birthday dinner last year so it was a fun time. We brought along birthday cake so after Diego devoured a green salad w/ cucumbers (his favorite meal), we had his second piece of cake for the day.

Diego went around the house and took pictures of all the decorations. He took several pictures and it was fun to see things from his perspective. The pictures above are two of them.

The kids doing their arts & crafts project. We had them place colored tissue paper on dinosaur-shaped contact paper to make mosaic window art. They were very pretty!

The family room all decorated

Getting ready to play the game "Stick the face on the dinosaur"

I love how every child is doing their own thing here

The kids getting settled for lunch time. We had them all stand around tables in the upstairs living room

Diego enjoying his cake!

Pinata time!!

Bennett's mom dropped him off for the party (and he was an angel!) so he was excited to help Diego open his presents.

Here's Diego at the pet store, proudly holding the rocks for his fish bowl

Silly kids and mami at La Fonda Latina

Sweet Brother

I am working on a continuation of Diego's birthday post, but wanted to share these pictures as well. Diego and Alexia headed outside last week to look for worms. He had been a little annoyed with her so he was keeping his distance from her. She suddenly started to run to the back of the yard and there were crows making loud noises back there. Diego's protective, big brother instinct immediately kicked in and he went racing after her and grabbed her hand to bring her closer to the house. They continued exploring the yard, but Diego would not let go of her hand. She was as happy as can be to have her little hand in the protective grip of her big brother. They walked around like this for about 10 minutes, chatting away. It was priceless!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DIEGO!!!!

Today our amazing boy turns FOUR YEARS OLD! We had an awesome party this morning with his buddies (15 kids, including siblings!) and we are going to do some special things as a family this afternoon. I will upload more pictures and share more stories later, but just wanted to leave two quick pictures of the party...


Diego was a champ with the pinata!


The whole gang!

Sunny afternoon!

Yesterday was gorgeous so we spent all afternoon outside, playing. We ended the evening playing with the ride-on toys and coloring with chalk.


Here is a shot of Alexia's adorable short hair!


She insisted on wearing Diego's knee pads and elbow pads. Here she is with just the knee pads. She is wearing Diego's sweater as well so is looking like a total tomboy!



Diego took a chalk out of the bucket and said, "Mami, mira que puedo hacer!" (Look what I can do!) He proceeded to write every letter of the alphabet, which amazed me! He has never written all the letters at once, with no help or prompting. It's hard to make them out in the picture, but above is a portion of his alphabet.

He was on his own and I came over to see what he was up to and he said, "Look, I wrote CAT."

We bought this tent at Ikea last week and it has provided endless hours of playtime. Hartley spent the night last Thursday and the three of them had a blast inside the tent!

Alexia's first haircut!!

Ricardo has been telling me to get Alexia's haircut for a few weeks now so we decided today was the day. Diego needed a haircut as well so Ricardo took the kids on a daddy/kids outing to the salon. I went to a friend's baby shower and had a wonderful time and met them at the salon afterwards. I wasn't sure how Alexia would do, but she was outstanding. She was so happy to be in the big chair and wearing the cape. She did everything the lady told her ("Look in the mirror, Look down, Put your head up") and was as still as can be. She looks absolutely adorable! We want to grow her hair out, but it had gotten so uneven and messy looking that we just wanted to have it cleaned up a bit.
Here she is!

Rejoice with me!

You may remember almost a year ago I pleaded for prayer for our dear friends Scott and Paige while their baby boy was in the hospital. Baby Cayden passed away several days later and it has now almost been a year since his birth. Just a few days shy of what would have been Cayden's 1st birthday, Scott and Paige are holding their 2nd born son!

I am praising God as I share the news that Severin Cayden Hirsch was born in San Francisco today and weighed a wopping 8lb 14oz!!! I spoke with Paige a few hours ago and she reported that Sev is perfect, healthy and breathing on his own. A true blessing!

Here is a picture of the gorgeous baby boy! We love you guys and cannot wait to meet Sev!

Snow and Ice

Last Thursday it snowed here in Atlanta. It did not snow nearly as much as last year, but it was still fun. The hard part about the snow has been the ice and the freezing temperatures. All schools and even Ricardo's entire office were closed on Friday because the roads were so icy and dangerous. He worked from home all day, so it was fun to have him around. The kids and I stayed inside the entire day and when Ricardo finished his work Diego was dying to go outside with him. I'm a wimp with the cold so I told Diego that he had to wait for Papi!
On Saturday we decided to slide down the driveway since it still had a layer of ice on it. We tried several different objects for Diego to slide down on and the most successful was my turkey roasting pan. It was hilarious! He absolutely loved and wanted to go down again and again and again. Alexia would have nothing to do with an offer to slide down and kept saying that the cold was hurting her. After a fun time on the driveway we decided we could all use an outing (since the kids had not been out since Tuesday) so we headed to Mellow Mushroom for lunch. We had an enjoyable family lunch and then headed home for naps for all four of us. In the evening I went out to dinner to celebrate my friend Ruth's birthday and had a fabulous time!
We went to early service at church on Sunday and it felt like an adventure to head out to the below freezing temperatures. After church we took a meal to a family from Ricardo's work and then headed to our favorite brunch spot. Ricardo and I used to go all the time before the kids were born and then only went a few times with Diego. Alexia has never even been so it was special for her to go for her first time. She ate two HUGE pancakes, while Diego barely finished one.
Speaking of that sweet little girl, I thought it would be fun to share some of her latest happenings. She can now sing many songs, including: "Jesus Loves Me", "Twinkle, Twinkle", "Good night sweetie" (a bedtime song I made up for her) and a few others that aren't' coming to mind right now. She can usually count to 10 in both Spanish and English. She knows all of her colors (including hard ones like grey and white) in Spanish and is working on them in English. She is working hard on singing her ABC's and does a super job, but doesn't quite have them mastered. She is a talking machine and daily amazes me with the things that come out of her mouth. She loves to build legos and will spend long stretches of time on her own, building away. She also loves to do puzzles I will try to get some videos of her uploaded this week!


The boys heading out to the cold on Friday afternoon

Our Saturday arts and crafts project was gluing pom poms on fish shapes. They were both really into it and did a great job.

There goes Diego in the roasting pan!

Of course Ricardo being a former surfer, had to give it a try standing up! He got some real speed a few times.


Here is our third baby on the way at 18 weeks! I am feeling great and am at that stage where I really love being pregnant. Diego loves seeing how my belly is growing. Alexia says she has a baby in her belly as well. We will find out the gender in two weeks and I CANNOT wait!!!

New Years week

Ricardo dropped the last of the family off early Monday morning (the 28th) and all was quiet and calm. We really missed everyone and it was hard to get back into the reality of being on our own, in a house that needed hours of cleaning. Diego and Alexia were huge helpers and truly lightened the work load for me. Diego sprayed cleaner in all the sinks and toilets, cleaned the glass tops, carried dirty laundry downstairs and put away things in his room. Alexia did a great job at cleaning up random things around the house and was very cooperative, which just in itself, is a big help!
Diego came down with a bad cold and pink eye on Tuesday afternoon, I got sick on Thursday and Alexia got sick on Friday. So, we had a very relaxing week which is just what we needed. Ricardo left work early on Wednesday and was then home the rest of the week. Our day times were spent playing games, building fires, napping and just hanging out. Ricardo and I had plans every evening which helped relieve us of a bit of cabin fever. On Wednesday we hired a babysitter and went to the house of an older couple from church for dinner and had a wonderful time. We thought we would be home by 9:30 since the invitation was for 6:30, but when we got in the car it was 10:50! For New Years Eve, we had a really fun celebration. Since we were having friends over for dinner, Ricardo and I sat down with the kids and we had a coffee and pastry while they had their dinner. Then we headed outside to do some fireworks which they LOVED! Our friends came over for dinner at 8pm so the kids were in bed and it was a grown up evening. We had way too much food and ate and ate and ate! We did tapas so we made lots of goodies including, tortilla espanola (potato, onion and egg dish), prosciutto, bruscetta, cheeses and meats, olives and pickles and on. It was all delicious! We then played a game called Like Minds which was a lot of fun. We were all rolling with laughter. Brooke is also pregnant so we sipped our ice water while the guys enjoyed champagne. We had a fabulous dessert and then headed outside to set off fireworks at midnight. It was a really fun night of celebration and they headed home close to 1:00am!
On Friday and Saturday we stayed inside ALL DAY long. Ricardo and I went out to dinner with some friends on Friday and then we all had one outing on Saturday. We all loaded into the car and drove to Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks for treats for kids and mommy and then we went to a friend's apartment to water their plants. The kids and I didn't even get out of the car because it was SO COLD!

I messed up the order of the pictures when I uploaded them, but will just leave them as they are...



We are having an "arts and crafts" time every afternoon and yesterday was gluing macaroni. Diego preferred painting with the glitter glue.


Alexia loved gluing the macaroni!

The kids sitting on the trunk of the car, waiting for Papi's firework show

Alexia was a little scared by the loud one so she preferred to be in Papi's arms


Christian, Brooke and us wearing the crowns that came out of the holiday crackers on New Years Eve

The kids on the school bus, headed to school!