Painting with Tio Roby

We continued our tradition of painting with Tio Roby while he was here and it was such a blast this time. Diego and Alexia's art skills improve each time so they were really into it and were able to contribute a lot to their paintings. Marco had an absolute blast painting and focused on it for much longer than we thought he would.


Here they are in the planning stage. Alexia requested a castle, Diego requested a race car and we chose hot air balloons for Marco.


Starting strokes

The finished products! Notice Alexia has pink mountains!

Where do I begin?

With the start of the new year, I would love to get back to regular blogging. Ever since my phone episode, I have not been able to text blog posts to the blog so that is why the photos have been lacking lately. So, today I will give a little update on where we are as a family and an initial glimpse into our trip to El Salvador :)
Diego, Alexia and Marco are wonderful. They are full of energy, spunk and bring a wonderful joy to our lives. Ricardo had the last 18 days off of work so we were so spoiled to have him with us every day and we really took advantage of special family time. Roberto (Ricardo's brother) flew home with us from El Salvador and stayed with us until this past Sunday so the kids had an absolute blast with their Tio Roby here.
I am really torn about what to write about and what pictures to upload because we have so many fabulous pictures from our 8 days in El Salvador. I think I will need to do a day by day recap because every day was a treat and has unique stories of it's own.

So to start, here are some pics of our trio:

Would you believe me if I tell you that Marco is almost 19 months and still isn't walking? Yep, that's right. I am not one to worry about these things and do not stress over it, but do think that he would be a happier babe if he could keep up with his siblings. He loves to push things to walk and the above picture is him pushing the nativity scene figurines around in Alexia's baby doll high chair. Every time a figurine would fall over, he'd stop, stand it up and continue on his way.


Dogpile!!! They love this game!

Sword fight!

Heading up the play set ladder for a ride down the slide together.

Here we are on our way to El Salvador! Marco is sitting on Diego's lap.

This was the view from our hotel room. We got very spoiled with hotel living for 8 nights!

Ricardo's father and grandfather. This is the day we arrived and they were beyond excited to have their grandchildren in their arms!

This is the pool at the hotel with a gorgeous view of the San Salvador volcano. Yes, it was paradise! :)

We're back!

We had a wonderful trip to El Salvador, a wonderful Christmas and I am slowly getting back into the swing of things. I am uploading pictures from our trip, but don't want to skip a post about our special outing to the Nutcracker with Diego and Alexia the Saturday before we departed for El Salvador. We took them out to lunch at Circle Sushi and then on to a really special afternoon at the Fox Theater. They LOVED it!

Test

Video

I found this video on my computer from August and had to post it. A fun glance at life with 3! :)

Christmas Tree!

The Sunday after Thanksgiving is always our day to decorate the Christmas tree. The kids were so excited this year and we had a lot of fun!


The tradition always includes hot chocolate (made from scratch) and some kind of treat, this year it was brownies.


Marco was napping when we started, but joined in about half way through and was not as much of a problem as I thought he'd be :)

We enjoyed remembering where each ornament has come from and telling stories of past Christmases.

We ended the night with pizza on the floor, watching Rudolph videos.

We're so excited for Christmas! We leave for El Salvador in 2 weeks so there is a lot to do to get ready before then! We will return on the 22nd, just in time for Christmas here at home with Ricardo's mom, step dad, brother, sister and her sister's boyfriend.

I'm sorry for the lack of posts the past week. It's a long story, but suffice to say that we are great and have been super busy. My mom and Ricardo's mom were here for a long weekend to attend Grandparent's Day at Heritage and we had a fabulous weekend with them. I lost everything on my phone last week, including all of the pictures we had taken over the weekend which I was so bummed about because we had some beautiful memories captured. Ricardo's mom departed on Sunday and my mom stayed through Tuesday. Ricardo took Wednesday-Friday off of work (Thanksgiving holiday) so we had a wonderful week!


My mom and I went out to dinner on Monday night which was such a treat. We went to Seasons 52 and had a wonderful meal.


Such a happy girl with her daddy!


They were on a long mission to find walking sticks and here they are proud of their finds.

On Tuesday night we had the Grahams and Harvey's over for dinner. This is the kids table in the kitchen. They all behaved really well and allowed the adults a nice meal in the dining room.

Late Wednesday morning, we headed up to Dahlonega for a fabulous outing. We had a great lunch at an adorable cafe where we used to go when I was pregnant with Diego. The 5 of us barely fit around one of the tables, but it was so quaint and cozy.

After lunch, we strolled around the town and truly enjoyed every moment. It was such a treat to be right there, with no rush. The following pictures are from the afternoon there:

Lil' man still isn't walking, but he sure did enjoy walking the town, holding on to daddy's fingers.

We hung at at this ledge for at least 4o minutes. The children had a delightful time running back and forth, jumping off, laughing, singing and just being kids. It was great!

Marco crawled up and down the ledge and had just as great of a time.

We passed a fountain and garden on our way to the car and once again just hung out there for about 20 minutes and let the kids run and play. These sweet moments foster precious cuddles like the one above.

And on to Thanksgiving...

It was a gorgeous day so the kids could not get outside soon enough. Here they are playing in the dirt/mud in their pajamas. Yeah, we're fine with that :)

My turkey helpers! Here they are rubbing the raw bird with olive oil and salt before sticking it in the oven.

OK, so that is the extent of my Thanksgiving pictures :(

I had my kind of day of cooking all.day.long, with the kitchen windows open, praise music playing, daddy and children gleefully playing in the yard...it was wonderful. We invited people from Ricardo's work over for dinner and they arrived at 4pm. I cooked a feast and everyone was thoroughly satisfied with everything! :)

On Friday, Ricardo let me sleep in until 10:00!! Yes, that's right!! Wow, I felt new! We had a lovely day at home, just hanging out, playing board games, playing outside, eating yummy leftovers and enjoying each other. We had babysitter come in the evening and Ricardo and I went out for a sushi date and had a blast!

On Saturday, we headed out for a beautiful hike, then to picnic lunch at a great park, then to frozen yogurt, home for a bbq dinner and 6:30 bedtime for all people under 6.

All showered and happy after a full day on Saturday.

Diego showing off his first loose tooth! The adult tooth is already growing in behind so he is super excited!

3 kids lined up, reading books makes a mama happy! :)

This pictures is from this morning. Marco likes to sit on the bed with the kids now while I take my shower. When I came out of the shower, this is how I found Alexia and Marco today. How precious is this!? Yes, there Marco is with the same book. That book has been like his lovey today. He insisted on napping with it and threw a fit when I took it away from him at bedtime. He can crawl up the whole staircase with it in his hand and takes it everywhere he goes. So sweet!

Are you still reading? If so, thank you! I know it's been awhile since I've actually written out a blog post and I hope you've enjoyed reading it as much as I've enjoyed writing it :)