Christmas Presents 2011

Eli with a new camera. It is a real digital camera and he has taken a lot of pictures already. He took pictures of most of the people that were here Christmas night. He told everyone to say cheese and to smile and then he clicked!

Eli with Buzz Lightyear- a gift from Cesar.
Cesar after opening our gifts. He got some cologne and pants.

me with my new boots from Cesar. I also got a new camera!

Diego with his Elmo backpack. Diego also got a new car track toy. I bought it for $2! The boys also got new bath towels.

Christmas snowman

On Christmas Eve Cesar built a snowman. Eli wasn't that interested until the next day when they added the eyes, hat, nose, etc.

The snow wasn't cooperating very well, so Cesar had to use water to make it hard and stay in balls.

When I walk down the stairs I can see the snowman out the window and it makes me happy. Two days later it is still standing strong, I'm not sure when it will melt.

Neighbors

I really miss our neighbors from Chamber Ridge Townhouses.

We moved in with my parents the last weekend of October. We plan on buying a house in Stapleton in April or May and in the meantime we are staying in Parker with my parents. We rented our townhouse out.

The weekend before Christmas we took some cookies to our old neighbors and Eli sang "We wish you a Merry Christmas". They all really appreciated it and it was nice to be back in the old neighborhood.

I missed having my annual Neighbor Dessert Party, but this was our substitute for this year. Hopefully I can have another party next December in Stapleton.

Diego at 21 months

Diego is 21 months now and talks more and more each day. Here are some of the words he knows:
car, truck, bus, boat, mommy, papi, po-po (for a dirty diaper), pee-pee, milk, more, please, bowl, cereal, juice, apple, honey, pop-up (for toast or waffle that pops up from the toaster), candy, cookie, Greta, Ivaras, no, yes, ka (for thank you), ball, book, Melmo (for Elmo from Sesame Street), cho-cho (for train), bird, moon...
I'm sure there are more, but these are the ones that come to mind at the moment.

Diego has done really well in nursery in our new ward. He doesn't cry much and is happy to go have his snack and play with toys.

He cries, or rather complains, a lot. He knows what he wants and lets me know when he is unhappy. It is quite annoying and taxing day after day, but I try to have patience.

He is still a good napper and sleeps around 2-3 hours in the afternoon. He goes to sleep at 7 p.m. (same time as Eli) and they both sleep until 7 a.m. He likes to take baths and doesn't not like to get his diaper changed. He likes to brush his own teeth and doesn't like it as much when we try to help him.

He loves Thomas the train books. Each time we go to the library he picks a couple of them out to take home. He also likes watching Elmo and go Diego go on TV.

Diego loves playing with cars.

Halloween

On Halloween night we went trick or treating with my sister and her kids. It was a nice night and not too cold. Eli and Diego had a nice time and even Diego enjoyed saying Trick-or Treat and thank you in his own little way. We did miss trick-or-treating in our old townhouse complex though and seeing all our neighbors.

Playing in the Leaves

Autumn this year has been really nice. The leaves are so pretty and colorful. The boys have enjoyed taking walks and crunching the leaves with their feet. Eli likes to make leaf angels (like snow angels). It seems kinds of uncomfortable to me, but he likes it. The other day some neighbor girls raked a big pile of leaves and invited Eli and Diego to play with them.

Eli's Friend Birthday Party

Eli had a Nick's birthday party this year. We live right across the street from Nick's Garden Center and each October they have a fall festival all month long. His friends came over and then we all walked across the street to Nick's. It was a really warm day- hot actually. It was super busy at Nick's so it was a challenge to keep all the kids together and not loose any. Thank goodness my sister and mom were there to help Cesar and I. My dad was a big help too because he stayed at home with Diego while he napped. Eli invited four friends.
They loved the train ride.

We all had fun playing the games they had there.

I made Eli a big chocolate chip cookie cake.

Eli's Family Birthday Celebration

Cesar made another amazing cake this year! He has done such a great job with Eli's cakes.

Eli smiled so big when the family all sang happy birthday to him. He was so happy!

Eli's Birthday

Eli turned 4 on October 10th. Cesar took the day off from work and we all went to Monkey Bizness. We went once in March for Diego's birthday and Eli has been talking about it ever since. They give free admission on birthdays.

Eli is such a sweet, funny, handsome, smart, cute, nice boy! I love that he is my son. He likes playing games on pbskids.org and the friend magazine website. He likes riding his bike outside on the sidewalk. He loves saying hi to our neighbors especially Bill because he always gives the boys Popsicles or candy. Eli likes playing with friends and he really enjoyed preschool. Eli is a nice brother to Diego. He out of the blue tells me and Cesar that he loves us so much. He says nice prayers all by himself. He loves looking and "reading" books and can spend over an hour just sitting down looking at books. He knows most of the letters and can write some too. He has been waking up at exactly 7:30 in the morning lately. He comes into our room and climbs into bed with me. I ask him to look at the clock and tell me the time. He always tells me the time backwards. If it is 7:32 he will say, "It is 2, 3, 7."

Three one year olds

Today I'm taking care of three one year olds. It's been fun and reminds me of working at SLICC and MAC.

Eli went to the zoo with my mom and Ivaras.

The last week

Last weekend we went to Evan's birthday party in the park. Evan is Cesar's sister's son- Eli and Diego's cousin. It was a nice party. Here is Eli hitting the pinata. We had fun together playing at the park and eating.
Diego at Evan's party. He likes dogs- more than I do anyways.

Monday night we went to the Botanic Gardens. The boys and I had a good time playing in the children's garden and then Cesar met us after work for a picnic dinner. It was fun to see all my boys running and playing in the nice green grass. We also met some friends there. After dinner and playing we walked around a little bit in the gardens.

Saturday and Sunday was General Conference. The boys did pretty good and Cesar and I got to pay attention pretty well. Here they are playing in the laundry basket.

Saturday we also went to the circus! It was fun. We went with LaResa and her kids. Eli had fun sitting next to Ivaras. Diego actually fell asleep while sitting on my lap for about 20 minutes- he rarely does that so he must have been pretty comfortable. We had free kids tickets from the library so it was an okay deal.

Reading

We checked out a Thomas the train book from the library a few weeks ago and Diego loved it! I've never seen him like a particular book so much. When we went to turn it in at the library he cried. We did check out another Thomas book though. The one he is reading in the picture is actually one of our books, but the library ones are always preferred :).
We started getting the Sunday newspaper so I can start using coupons. Eli really enjoyed reading the comics yesterday. He would look at the pictures and make up his own words. Both Cesar and I read some of the comics to him, but none of us thought they were funny at all! Eli definitely did a better job at making up his own words. This morning he looked through the Toys R Us ad and liked pointing out all the characters he knows.

Delaney Farm

This morning we went to Delaney Farm to work for an hour and get free food. It was cool to see the big farm and all the produce. We picked green beans the whole time. Eli and Diego helped too. Eli had a good time and Diego was good for about half the time and then just whined and wanted to be held. We got to take home a lot of pretty and colorful vegetables and fruits. Now we just have to figure out how to use and eat them all.

My Boys

Eli and Diego are such cute boys and brothers. We love them so much. These pictures were taken when Diego turned a year and a half and Eli is almost four.

Eli started preschool!

My Eli started preschool today. He is such a silly boy and laughed a lot when I showed him this picture! He loves his funny face. He will be going to school twice a week for 2 1/2 hours. He liked it today and told me all about it! His teacher is Jen and there are 5 other three year olds. He is the oldest since he will be four in only a month! He learned about the letter A and animals today. He told me he choose the right and was trying to set a good example today to the other friends. I'm so proud of him and love him so much.

Watermelon