The kiddos

I love these two.

Sydney's 4th Birthday

Sydney had a fantastic 4th birthday! We decided to go small this year and just had a few friends over for a birthday party. Her birthday fell on Labor day so we had bbq'd some burgers. Fun times.

Sydney woke up to her big present from us, her very own bouncy house! Sydney LOVES bouncy houses, like really loves them. We have it set up in our living room since we rarely use the room anyway. She was super excited and loved her gift.

I made Sydney's birthday cake this year. I took a cake decorating class through Wilton to prepare for it, and it was great! Sydney LOVED her Barbie cake and it turned out perfectly. I also made the cupcakes, and Sydney decided we needed Cars cupcakes too since the boys would prefer Lightening McQueen and Mater over Cinderella....maybe. ;) Oh yes, and the colored M and M's were a must. The only candy Sydney eats.

Me and my big girl


The bouncy house was a hit!


All decked out for the main event...


Blowing out the candles!
Opening presents!

The Princess castle pinata was a hit!
The kiddos!
Papa and Alex

And that is all she wrote-it's tough work hosting and taking pictures at the same time. :)

"We're twins!"

Things have been pretty busy around the O house. Anthony is enjoying his stay at home dad gig, and the kids are loving having him at home. I am enjoying my job and as much as I miss my kiddos, I am happy to be at work and am blessed with a great job.

I have so many pictures to add...hopefully this week I will finally add Sydney's birthday party, rollerskating pictures and our trip to the ocean with our friends.
For now here are some pictures of my four year old and nine month old!

Oh, and stats for the kids-Sydney is 28 1/4 oz and 37 inches tall at her 4 year appointment. That puts her just under the 5th percentile for weight and 5th for height. Alex weighs in at 20 lbs 1 oz, putting him in the 40th percentile. I forget his height at the moment, but he is a shorty in the 15th percentile. His large noggin is what makes him look bigger than he is-it's at the 70th percentile. Gotta have a big head for all those big brains I say! The kids are both doing great. Sydney is happy to be back at preschool and still loving her gymnastics. Alex is crawling all over, and even started pulling himself up to stand recently! He is much more mobile than Sydney was at this age. His new favorite food is banana bread.

A couple pics of my sweet kids:

Having fun in the bouncy house. Alex thinks it's fun to lick the walls....ahh, 9 month olds.

I think Alex will be holding Sydney on his lap soon...lol. My kids in their matching jammies, I have a thing for matching jammies now. Sydney keeps saying, "We're twins!" Can Alex look a little more like his daddy or what???? Especially now with his new buzz cut.

Good times with a good friend

A few weeks ago we had my dear friend Carli and her husband and daughter over. Carli and I have been friends for twenty six years now...wow, that makes me feel so old. As little girls we talked about how one day we'd have daughters and they'd grow up to be great friends. They would play together, call each other on the phone and write letters to each other. (Hey, we didn't have any idea about e-mail and text messaging back in the 80's!) It was definitely super exciting when Carli announced she was due just three months after me. I knew immediately she'd have a daughter too and she did!

Last time Gracie came over the girls fought-a lot. They fought over toys, and what was most upsetting to Sydney was Gracie wanted to name White Puppy "Coco." So they went back and forth about White Puppy's real name...which is White Puppy according to Sydney. It wasn't the best visit so I have to admit I was a bit nervous about this trip.

Well the girls got along perfectly. They were old chums within two minutes and disappeared into Sydney's room pretty quickly. They came out wearing Sydney's dress up costumes and just had a blast together. Phew. And Sydney later told me that White Puppy's new real name is White Puppy Coco. Haha, there's my problem solver for you.

Here are the girls:

First day of preschool

Sydney started preschool today! She is so excited to be back at school, she just loves it. Of course my little domestic goddess's favorite part is the dollhouse and the washer and dryer with attached iron. Wonder who she gets that from? :)

She looks like such a big girl and it happened overnight!

I just love this little face

Gymnastics

Sydney's been continuing with her gymnastics this summer and having a great time. She's been doing gymnastics for a year now and I am amazed at how quickly she catches on to new things, as well as how confident she is. She is still super shy when it comes to actually talking to the other kids in class, but she's not shy when she's walking on the beam or doing pullovers on the bars.

Alex loves going to gymnastics too. He always gets a lot of attention from the ladies, and he watches Sydney quite a bit. I have a feeling we'll be putting him in gymnastics next summer.

I love this picture-Alex watching his "sissy"
My little handsome guy-check out those top teeth! He's getting two more on top also, making it six total now!
Sydney doing what she loves most-the bars! And the trampolines of course

Silly faces

Birthdays

A couple weeks ago we celebrated both my dad's birthday and my birthday at El Gaucho. El Gaucho just opened up in Bellevue and it's super nice. My brother works close by and was excited to take us as our birthday gift. Okay, so he also got me a Coach purse, holy moly! If you know me well enough you know I love me some pretty Coach handbags. Good work bro.

We had an excellent dinner. We took the kids-I know, weird huh? Apparently not many kids go to El Gaucho since we had the only high chair and booster in the restaurant.

Let me just take this opportunity to mention how amazing both kids were. We were there for nearly four hours. Alex sat in his high chair for the first two hours and just played, and spent nearly the rest of the time being held by Nana. I think he cried for four seconds when he saw me making his bottle.

I completely forgot to bring something for Sydney to play with and she did great. She played with her napkin, spoon, daddy, and we took a couple trips to the bathroom because she liked to twirl around in the full length mirror. She sat in her seat the whole time and I swear-I have no idea what I have done in my life to get such amazing, well behaved kids, but man-I love that we can take them everywhere and not have to rush out when they start acting up. I keep telling Anthony that this isn't normal but he doesn't believe me.

Anyway, we had a fantastic meal and I highly recommend the lobster mashed potatoes. Sooo good. Oh, and the Bananas Foster. Also so good.

Oh yeah-and remember that guy Sanjaya from American Idol? The one who had no talent but people voted for him anyway? His sister is the hostess there. She was on the show briefly too.

Pics of the evening....

The kiddos all dressed up and ready to roll
Mychelle and Trevor Papa and Nana
Anthony and Sydney
Alex and mommy

Back to regularly scheduled programming...

Any day now.

So I used up all my allotted space for pictures on blogger, and although I have since paid the 20 bones for more space, I have not yet been allowed to upload more pictures. So I have many to add and much to talk about-will do so soon!

In the meantime, we are enjoying the remaining summer we have left. Sydney is thrilled about her upcoming birthday since she will be four here in a couple of weeks. Sadly she wants to dispose of all her clothes that say 2T and 3T since she will be four and all her clothes need to say 4 on them according to her. The problem is we finally made the switch up from 2T to 3T this past month. Bye bye clothes.

Kidding.

Alex has welcomed his top two teeth and is getting the other two on top also. He is pretty excited about this since he has been asking us nonstop when he can start eating steak, potatoes and pizza. The kid can pack it in and already eats more than his big sister. I give it six more months until he weighs more than her. Well maybe nine. I think she is only about eight pounds heavier.

And...I am going back to work! Some of you know that Anthony was laid off from his job at IBM this past spring. IBM chooses to outsource to India and a little place called Fishkill, New York where the employees make about 1/3 of what he was making. I had a great job opportunity presented to me and I couldn't pass it up. Anthony will be playing Mr. Mom for a while and working on some IT certifications, and I will be "bringing home the bacon" as Sydney calls it. I am pretty excited and looking forward to being back to work after three years of semi-retired life raising the kiddos. Although the 6am wake up time is going to be a toughie!

Stay tuned for a ton of summer pictures as soon as I can upload photos....

Fun in the Sun

We've had some pretty nice weather lately, although today we crossed the line from nice to ridiculous. It hit 105 at our home just outside of Seattle-seriously. We Washingtonians are ill-equipped to handle this type of heat and air conditioned homes are the minority. Our house is currently 93 degrees on the main level, and 99 in the kids rooms. We have air conditioning in our bedroom so we've all been camping out in there and even having dinner picnics on the bed while watching movies. Sydney thinks this is the coolest thing ever!

Here are some pictures of our fun in the sun the past few weeks....

This was actually from our trip to Eugene, Oregon for the wedding. I just love this one of the kids-it shows how much Sydney adores her little brother. And of course he feels the same for Sydney.

We headed down to the valley last month to pick the last bunch of strawberries. My goal is to make some jam, although the berries are still in the freezer at this point. Sydney loved picking strawberries, so of course I had to go into the story about how when I was 12, my parents made my brother and I pick raspberries one summer. Aww memories. And I totally felt like my dad, telling stories of how he walked up hill both ways to school-in the snow. I think with no shoes too.


My friend Jackie and her family were up visiting from California so we had them over for a bbq the first week of July. It's so much fun to get the kids together. Jackie and I have been friends for 21 years now! Wow, that makes me feel so old. Here are the cute kids...
Greg and Jessica recently added a new family member to their family-a Maltese puppy named Juno. Seriously, she is the cutest little dog ever. Sydney is always super shy around dogs but she fell in love with Juno and did great with her. She now talks about her daily, has a dog toy for next time we see them, and has named one of her stuffed puppies Juno.

Sydney and Juno
A very washed out picture of Greg and Alex-but cute nonetheless
Pretty girls!

Mr. Handsome

Watching the garbage man
This picture cracks me up-I promise Alex swinging is not as scary as it looks. But he does love it.
We had a playdate at our house a couple weeks ago. The little boys loved the baby pool!
The big kid's pool
Come here Brady, let me give you a big hug-or actually, chew on your head for a bit.
The little kids with the big kids


Alex and Brady
Sydney playing dress up
More pool time
Soaking the feet
Alex enjoying more pool time
Cuteness

Alex and Nana We had a great time at a local festival a couple weeks ago. Sydney LOVED the bouncy houses so we went back three times to bounce. Hands down the best part of the city's festival
Even better than the motorcycles...
Sydney decided to ditch the dream of being a doctor for now and wants to be a firefighter.
Me and my little bubba