Happy Pi Day!

Happy Pi Day, everyone!

Out of Order!

So in order to finally get some stuff posted on here, I am going to be adding stuff way out of order. I am SO behind organizing pics and videos these days. Here are a few recent videos to get me started...

Rachel pulling up for the first time...happened to get it on camera!

Rachel "army" crawling. This has been going on for a few weeks now, and just this past week she has started to get up on her knees. I'm sure I'll be posting pics of her crawling for real soon! She also can feed herself snacks/cheerios, use a sippy cup and she already has two teeth (they're hard to see, but the teeth are in the pic below). I can't believe she's already 7 months old!

Caleb is so grown up to me these days. For example, he goes up and down the stairs by himself now. Crazy! But he is still a kid for sure (he's totally silly sometimes) and he always makes us laugh like below!

A Quick Christmas Re-cap

In my continued attempts to "catch-up" on missed posts over the last few months, here is a quick snap shot of what our Christmas vacation looked like:

On Christmas Eve we celebrated as a family and did gifts with our kids since we were going to be traveling on Christmas day to FL. Rachel wore the same outfit I wore on my 1st Christmas!

A couple of gift highlights below...Caleb got his first trike! And Rachel got some fun toys too; her fav was probably the crawling ball and the doll baby from Uncle Matt. It totally looks like her too!

Then on Christmas day, we flew down to Miami, and then drove the rest of the way to Islamorada to meet up with Jason's Dad, Stepmom, and siblings for a vacation in the Keys.

This was Rachel's first time on a plane! Here she is waiting at the airport.

And most significantly on this trip, the kids got to meet Uncle Andrew (Jason's bro) for the first time. He had just finished a tour in Iraq this past October. He was the sweetest with the kids!


Here is a pic of Betty (Nana) with Rachel (she took Rachel into the ocean for the first time on the first day too)!


And a pic of Rachel and Grandpa as well!

Caleb certainly took the time to relax.


It was a beautiful place and a wonderful trip with family.


Then for the second half of our vacation, we flew to Minneapolis to visit Jason's Mom (Grandma). Here was a pic taken at Red Lobster. Notice Caleb's poor little face...he came down with quite a cold on the MN part of the trip. I guess that's what will happen when you go from 75 degree weather to like 10 degree weather in a few days!

Hanging at Grandma's place!

Finally, this picture was taken when we got home. Caleb was so sick and was in total cuddle mode, and Rachel knew just how to comfort him, by staying right by his side. They are so sweet together!

Blog dump!

I can't believe it's been over 2 months since I posted something on here...my cousin Alexandra warned me of this, that now that I'm on FB, it's easy to just post pics on there and get lax on the blog. My apologies to those who check this often (especially Grandma, Meme and Pepe and my Aunts) for the long delay. So I am officially going to start "blog dumping" as Alexandra and John call it. These are some pics and videos from October and November (and a few from early December when Rachel started rice cereal). I promise to post pics from Christmas and beyond sometime soon!

A pic of Rachel at about 4 months old...she will be 6 months old this Sunday!

The classic moments of trying cereal for the first time (these are the most recent things on here, taken about a month ago).

I feel like she is growing up so fast!

These were all taken Thanksgiving Day. We put up the tree and had a yummy dinner of course. Above is Caleb's first slice of pumpkin pie and him enjoying it below!

I just like this picture above, he seems so grown up eating his eggs, sausage and toast. :)

And of course I had to put the rolling videos of Rachel on here! Here was the first time I got each direction on video.

And over the course of a few months, here are a few throwing and catching videos of Caleb. This is his absolute favorite thing to do...he loves balls and playing sports already!

Finally, this video was taken a few months ago, but it is kind of cute to hear Caleb practice counting/say his ABC's. He was actually pretty un-cooperative in this video, but I haven't gotten around to getting him saying these on camera since, so maybe I'll do that soon so you all can see how he's progressed!

Halloween 2009

This was Caleb's first year trick or treating, last year we took him out on Halloween night, but just saw some neighbors and checked out the sites around town. This year we actually took him out to try out the whole trick or treat experience. He went (as you can see) as a Celtics basketball player (which was a total hit I might add...Boston fans are die hard with their teams so people loved it!) and Rachel was a pumpkin of course. You have to do the baby pumpkin you know? We went to a Halloween party a week or so before too, so Caleb was able to wear shorts and no shirt making him look more authentic that day. On Halloween night of course though, we bundled him up...don't worry! He had a blast, and got to eat his first piece of candy ever, which he was thrilled about as you will see!

The kids at the party!

It was impossible to get all of the kids to look at the camera, so this was the best we could do!

I didn't take any pics of Rachel on Halloween night for some reason, so this is a cute one of her at the party above.

Here is Jason taking Caleb to the houses on Halloween night.

We only did one street total, but I think he was pooped by the end.

So as you all know from before, Caleb has a peanut allergy, so his choices for his first piece of candy were all non-chocolate...but he didn't seem to mind. He picked Mike and Ike's.

And then he did his candy dance...

Finally, Caleb got some tattoo's from someone, and he and Daddy decided to show off their "guns" another evening with their tats. Ha ha! :) All in all, it was a fun time!

A Last Minute Trip to the Poconos

So as I posted earlier, I (Val) took a trip to the Poconos with the kids to see the family a few weeks ago in the middle of October. Mom, Dad and Matt were already planning on going, but since I had just recently gotten back from the trip to York, I hadn't planned on it. But the night before the family was leaving to go up to Lake Naomi, I decided at the last minute to join them. Unfortunately Jason couldn't go on this trip either because of work, but he did get some more seminary done in our absence. We had a great time seeing everyone again!

Here is the house we stayed in.

It was definitely cold in the Poconos. I had to bring out some of the kid's fleece outfits for the first time. It actually snowed like 5 inches or something like that the first few days we were there. It was crazy, but seriously beautiful!

Rachel hanging out with Roxy and Rowdy.

The first night we went to the country club of the Lake Naomi property and had a fun dinner overlooking the lake. It was the most gorgeous background for dinner with all of the new fallen snow.

Over the time that we were there, we took Caleb swimming in the indoor pool a few times. He had a blast!

Rachel came to the pool too, but she didn't go into the water just yet!

A group shot another night out for dinner.

After dinner out, we had a movie night, and Caleb and Pops didn't make it very long before falling asleep on the couch together. Caleb was so cute...he looked a little bit deceased actually (not to be morbid)! Ha ha!

Nora came to visit on the last day the kids and I were there (she lives like 20 minutes from where we were). We had a great time catching up and it was great that she got to meet Rachel!

One last pic with Grammy and Pops before heading to bed on the last night.

Mom and Dad snapped this one...we always have to take a picture of a deer while in the Poconos of course! :)