How could I forget?

The girls went on their official first vacation. We all went on a red-eye flight (which was delayed both ways) to Nevada to see my dad and his wife. (KK and Tutu) For the most part, the girls did great on the plane. I can't say I want to rush back on a plane with them, but at least we know what to expect now. They were such good kids! Julia had a hard time sleeping there, but then again, she does everywhere but her own bed these days!



They each got to buy their very own pink fishing rod from Bass Pro Shops (KK's favorite place in the whole world!) They even got to test them out at Lake Mead. We rented a boat for the day (which was good seeing as though it was 105 degrees out that day). They also each got a pair of polarized sunglasses for fishing on the lake. We also fished off a dock another day. I think as soon as our trip was over, KK went and bought his own boat!! :)


We went to a community spray part (which was awesome and dad didn't waste any time holding me under the freezing water - until my kids started to cry because they thought he was hurting me). Even "Uncle" Jesse got in on the water action to cool off. We went to Circus Circus one day to see the sights and to go to their little amazement park in there.


One day, we drove to see the Hoover Dam and drove to the Arizona side, just to say we went to Arizona!! Julia was even able to catch up on some good reading! (I keep meaning to send that picture into the magazine!)


Julia got to spend her 2nd birthday there and KK set up the best little party!! Did I mention that Julia and KK are 2 peas in a pod? They are both instigators and love when people get mad/annoyed with them. Watch out world! On the last day, we took the girls to Mandalay Bay to go to their Shark Aquarium.

What a great vacation!!!

Time to catch up!

OK, well, thanks to Lisa and Kathy, here I am updating my blog!! Too many things to post on what has happened since the summer, but here's a try (in a nutshell). Gabrielle is in her 2nd year at Mrs. Alexander's School (she's now a Penguin). Julia is at Christine's for daycare for one last year - then she's off to Preschool too.

So on to what's happening now. We have begun our Christmaspallooza (as Chris likes to call it). We cut down our tree again this year and the girls had a blast picking it out. Even more fun was watching both of them decorate the tree. It ended up being more work for me because every ornament went to the same place! But, I loved every minute of it. We have celebrated Christmas with the Chirco/Rogers clan. Then we'll celebrate with the Prisco's on Christmas, my mom and Gram the day after and the Woodward's sometime in January. The first session was a success! So awesome to have all the little ones running around - there were 8 this year and will be 9 next year!! We might need to start renting a hall if everyone keeps having babies (well, Lisa and I are officially out, but who knows with the others)! :)

The girls are so amped up this year - and Gabrielle is now into wanting everything she sees on a commercial that we don't have already. Julia just goes along for the ride with it all. I'm glad that they still really want their original Santa toys (pillow pets). Thankfully, with much work, I have been able to find both pillow pets for the girls. It wasn't easy!

They are very excited because we are going to "Mickey's party" (Disney On Ice - 100th Anniversary). They don't know it yet, but they'll also go to the Princess Disney on Ice with Bee! Lucky girls....I wish I could get out half as much as they do! :)

We hope everyone has a happy and healthy holiday. Maybe I'll update this before next Christmas! You might have to stay on me about it, though - Lisa! :)

Camping and Thomas the Train

We had so much fun camping with GiGi, Grampy Kevin and Uncle Dylan. The girls LOVE their Uncle Dylan (especially Julia). We camped at Twin Mountain KOA in NH - GiGi was very proud that Gabrielle was a little fashion diva while camping!! :)

Saturday was Thomas the Train day in North Conway. Gabrielle was excited that Thomas "answered" me as to why he was so mad all the time and she said that he did, in fact, say that it was because he didn't like the other trains and the "mens".

Poor GiGi ended up in the Lancaster, NH emergency room that night with kidney stones. What a trooper she was! She came back all morphined up and still stayed out and hung out by the fire that night. She's still in a lot of pain because of it, and hopefully she'll be pain free after the procedure next Wednesday.

There were too many pictures to really post on this, so I'll put a couple of the good ones here and put the rest in a slideshow.

Off to Nevada today to see KK, TuTu and Uncle Jesse! The girls' first plane ride!!!

It's been a long time!

I see I haven't updated our family blog in quite some time. Too much has gone on (or not) to catch you way up, so we'll start with the immediate past. We've finally made it out of the rain! It only took all of June! The girls were fighting, I was ready to kill them and find a summer job. But, now that the weather is nicer, we can get out and be out of each other's way for a little each day. The girls have come to love the beach (good thing for them, because they'd be there anyways!). Even Julia went in the water on her own today. She goes in to "wash her hands" and goes back to the towel to eat one goldfish and comes back down to do this over and over again. At least she's burning energy! As always, Gabrielle is our little fearless fish and tried to chase after a sea gull that was wading in the water. She was up to her waist before I noticed (because I was watching Julia walk across half the beach to get one more goldfish!).

The immediate future is busy for us. Heading up to Twin Mountain this weekend with my mom and Kevin to camp and to go to North Conway to see Thomas the Train! Should be fun!!! Gabrielle is anxiously awaiting me to ask Thomas why he's always so angry. I think she really believes he'll answer me. Funny!

Then, we're off to Nevada to visit my dad and his wife (the first time we'll all be meeting her...can't wait!) on Thursday. Gabrielle will finally be able to get her pink fishing rod that my dad has promised her. Such a girly girl lately. Jules will turn 2 while we're there!!! I can't believe my baby's 2! Where does the time go. So, the day after we get back, we'll have her 2nd birthday party at Lynch. Nothing like packing for a camping trip to leave on another vacation 4 days later and host a party the day after we get back. Not good planning on my part. I've been very busy getting things organized before we leave for Nevada!

Almost forgot...

I forgot to show you the funniest video of Gabrielle. She's been experimenting with words she hears from daddy, and has found herself in quite a few time outs. She has taken her experience and used it on the person she's hearing all of her lovely words from - DADA!!! This video explains it all!

A litte slow.

(Ok, so I wasn't so good about posting the post-Disney On Ice pictures...sorry. I did warn you I wouldn't be good at keeping up with the goings on. Instead of blogging, I've decided to get myself back into shape with an intensive workout program. So, be patient with me until the end of June and I'll try to stay more on top of things after that.

With that being said...let me try to catch you up. Disney On Ice was amazing! Julia did very well. She made it to the intermission and then was a little fidgety after that...couldn't have asked for more. We learned that we need to go to an earlier show until the girls are a bit older. They were pooped by the time we got home! I've attached a short video of some of it (not the best clip, but oh well. If I have time to include another one...I will. Working on borrowed time here as I'm doing it while the girls are napping). Gabrielle was beside herself happy. She got to see all the princess dresses before and loved the whole thing!


KK's Visit:

KK came to visit us, too. We all took the day off from work/school and hung out. As usual, we ate our way through his visit. From Papa Gino's to Super Sub and Two Sister's...we ate and ate and ate! We had a little birthday party for him and the girls helped to make and decorate his cake. The girls loved having him here (myself included). We always miss him so much when he goes. Maybe next time we'll be able to meet Tutu (his wife, Julie....Tutu means grandma in Hawaiian).

ETC.....

I'm sure I'm missing so much that has happened, but here's what comes to the top of my head. Julia is talking up a storm and getting into lots of mischief. She can also tell on everyone. It's never a surprise if someone's done something to her - she always rats everyone out.

Gabrielle is getting to be such a big girl now. She no longer even resembles a toddler...she's all little girl now. While playing pretend ordering, she actually ordered herself a soy macchiato....uh oh! I think we have a diva in training on our hands! LOL.

We finally got our "navy seals training center" - our swing set. I think it's already paid for itself and we've only had it for 3 days. The girls absolutely love it! Once they're out there on it, it's almost impossible to get them back in. YAY!!! Even Chris has been enjoying it. Now we just have to teach Gabrielle how not to yank someone down off the stairs to get up first, and how not to push Julia down the slide face first because she wants to go down first!





We also went to the Marathon again this year. The girls had so much fun playing with the Jacomme twins, Maddie and Ellie. While we were there, they had the fly-over. The planes were the lowest we've ever seen them! The sound was incredible! I was yelling like a little kid, but Gabrielle started to cry and said she wanted to go home and Julia ran and wrapped herself around my legs like never before! Once the fright wore off...everyone had a good time again. So amazing! In a few years, we'll take the girls to watch it in Framingham instead of at the start line. Chris got a great shot of the elite women at the start line.




Well, until I can think of anything I missed...that's it. Hopefully it won't take me another 2 months to update you all!

Pre Disney On Ice

February vacation is coming to an end, and I can honestly say that I am so glad to be able to go back to work!! Don't get me wrong...I love my kids, but they've been tough this week. Julia's teething experience is quite different than Gabrielle's. We never knew Gabrielle was teething, and Julia...we'll she lets it be known she's uncomfortable. Needless to say, sleeping has been a thing of the past, and mama's exhausted! (I'm sure my own mood(s) have had NOTHING to do with all of the craziness. Ever feel like you're trying to stuff so much into a little amount of time, in addition to all the house stuff that needs to get done, too - all the while still trying to enjoy your time with your kids?)

We were also all across Massachusetts and parts of NH all week. April vacation is going to be a laid back, stay in Beverly so I can actually enjoy my kids (hopefully outside). I am praying that Julia will have all her teeth by then, and that Gabrielle will have been able to play outside a bit before then so she doesn't have so much pent up energy. It's been a tough, cold winter!

Tomorrow is one of the grand finale's of the vacation. All 4 of us are going to the Disney On Ice show. We haven't told the girls. We're just going to go to the train station and get it there to surprise them. I can't wait to see Gabrielle's face when she can see all the princess stuff and Cars things! Hopefully Julia will like it all, too! Such a fun time to be able to do things like this and have it really be enjoyed by the girls!

On a completely different note, I am so excited to say that I finally have a niece!!!! I love all of my nephews, but it's so nice to have another girl in the family that isn't mine!! :) Welcome baby Cora! Congrats Rob, Lisa, Caden and Cole. Lisa...you're my hero...I hear she was 10 lbs!!!!! I can't wait to hold her!

Hopefully we'll have some good pictures to post of the show after tomorrow.

Trip to the Manning's in NH

We went to Matt and Rebecca's for the weekend. Their son, Cameron, is Gabrielle's age and their other son, Liam, is Julia's age. We also met up with Joe, Kelly and Keira. The kids played so well together...no one fought the whole weekend! The ladies and the kids all piled into my van and went up to Littleton to a music class. The kids had a blast and every single one of them fell asleep on the way home!

The guys had lunch waiting and then we hit the slopes! (Well, a little one anyways.) We went to the sledding part of the hill and had a blast sledding. Gabrielle and Keira both tried skiing for the first time and Gabrielle LOVED it! Chris was going to have to stay on the top part, but Gabrielle told him to not to touch her and to let her go down the hill! What a little dare devil. We had a really fun time!

See more pictures to the side in a slide show!

Only bad thing is....Julia had her turn with a viral something or other Sunday. It was too good to be true that she didn't get an illness!

winter in New England

Well, not much to show in the way of pictures as our house has been one sick pod. We noticed Gabrielle had a fever a couple of Fridays ago (102), and it didn't end up going away until early Wednesday. We even ended up in the ER one night at 11:00 because her fever shot up to 104.5!! Ends up she had a viral infection that just needed to run it's course. Let's just say it ran it's course with me, too. So scary when they have a fever that high for that long.

We had a couple of days of a healthy lull, and Chris came down with a fever Saturday afternoon. He thought he had strep, but it was just a nasty bacterial infection! Today is the first day he's felt somewhat better and it's Wednesday! In the midst of barackading him in our bedroom so no one else would get it....we have yet another snow storm! Talk about salt on a wound...taking care of my poor sick husband (who I have never seen that ill), two kids, two dogs, and needing to shovel on top of it all. Why do we live here???

As if all of this is not enough, Julia woke up today and had a low-grade fever (99.7). Jeez, Louise!! Hopefully this one is just from teeth!

Well, wish us luck. Hopefully everyone will be healthy after this. Hope everyone else is doing well and feeling ok. This has not been a fun stretch and wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy! How many more weeks until summer??

Round #2

Soo..trying to figure out how to post pictures was fun. Still needs some work, but at least there are some on here. Pictures are either of playing the house (especially in the ball pit) or at Lynch Park sledding and playing in the snow.

Enjoy!

My first entry...

Not quite sure why I've decided to take on this task right now, but felt like I needed to catch up with rest of the world. No time like the present. Both girls are watching a show as we sit here with a "getting better" Gabrielle, who's had a fever for the last 3.5 days!

Please be patient with us, as I've not been too good about keeping things updated. I will try to f ind time as often as I can, and will post as many pictures as possible. I've been neglecting everyone of pictures of Jules and an older Gabrielle and I apologize. :)

Love,
Jen