Girls' Weekend

Enough Said.

Tennis brother

More December Fun

Have I mentioned lately how I much I love Alex. He is so eager to have fun, so easy to be around. He narrates his life as he goes and is such  compliment to Kate and Charlie.

New Year's Eve. My favorite night of the year. An 11 kid sleepover and total success

Winter break

I always worry when a break from school approaches. We exist fairly well with school and work and sports. The more we lead our separate and busy lives the less we know how to truly coexist. It is a true quandary. But every time we surprise ourselves. Sure we have a few rough mornings and moments. What appears to be a nice game of connect 4 (or 5 as Alex calls it) ends it yelling and hitting. But when we are given large lumps of time together as a family we always find our way back to harmonious happiness, sprinkled with intense arguing and teasing of course.

This break was special because Alex was really on the cusp of being a big. He had been out of diapers for 6 months, could charge through a day happy without a nap, and followed directions quite well. We ventured to the Oakland zoo and unlike last January it did not end in a barf-o-rama.

Alex was finally big enough to ride the big kids ride! I was smiling ear to ear. After years of holding the nursing Alex, then the toddler hobbling around, to finally the two year old who was old enough to communicate how much he wanted to go on the rides to finally the proud mother of three big kids able to ride the rides....I was elated.

Our annual crab fest was an success

And xmas morning was so fun. How cute is Alex!

Catching up on December

December is such a great time for kids, especially as they get older. The kids were so excited all month. We had our annual Siempre Verde potluck which was the best year yet. We had about 60 friends attend. It was a beautiful day and watching the kids run around independently while the parents socialized over great food was good for my soul.

We look forward to continuing this tradition yearly, but may have to cap it at 60! I am grateful the year ended as it did....healthy family, happy kids, and a true sense of community.

backtracking

The end of 2013 went pretty darn well. Our days . The sun was shining, the kids were happy, and the coastside was stunning. We spent many afternoons at beaches, parks, and in friends' yards.

The surf was pretty good too, which made for a happy Adam

This was the second time it's happened since President Lincoln established Thanksgiving in 1863 and it is also the last time it'll happen until the year 79,811. I'll say that again: after this year, Hanukkah and Thanksgiving Day won't overlap for another 77,798 years. So we lived it up. We lit our Menorah nightly. Followed by epic song and dance. It was awesome.

We took advantage of limited family time by racing down the street to our beach. Between work, school, sports, and social fun....having all 5 of us and only us is rare.

We got into the groove of school mornings. I started putting Kate to work in the kitchen. Here she is on pancake duty.

Alex enjoyed the reintroduction of green smoothies to our diet.

And I got to sneak Alex away to the discovery museum while the bigs were in school. This is a place I used to enjoyed almost weekly when Kate was under a year. 

So that was the rest of our November.