salsa you are 2!

happy 2nd birthday my sweet salsa!

these past 2 years have been some of the sweetest years of my life.  you are such a gift to our family and i almost can't remember what life was like before you.

thinking back to your birth, it all makes sense knowing who you are now.  you arrived 11 days after your due date.  you were completely content being with your momma and that has not changed.  you love your people and are happiest when we are all together.  you love to give me kisses and hugs and you get so excited when daddy gets home.  you call him "dadden" and you say "ga gaaa" when he gets home because that is you taunting him to get in the floor and wrestle.  you love your big brothers and do whatever they are doing, which is a blessing and a curse, ha!  you call burrito and noodle by the same name "ah" which is what you have always called noodle and you still refuse to even attempt saying burrito's name.  you're a stubborn one!  you three share a bedroom now and this has revolutionized your sleeping!  you still get up too early in the mornings but i am thankful that you are not waking up multiple times at night.  you just didn't like being by yourself and i think it is so sweet that you are all together at night.  since your brothers are so much older than you, i had hoped that one day you would share a room before they thought that was not cool....i just didn't realize we would do that at 21 months!

you like to pretend to cook in your play kitchen.  you insist on me tying on 2 aprons every time you cook and you like to pretend to cook bread and cookies.  you wear your oven mitts when you carry your little cookie sheet around.

you have discovered play-doh and we like to make little meatballs and shapes in the different colors.  you refuse to try to eat anything new but play-doh, no problem!  let's eat that!

you still enjoy playing trains with all your thomas trains and tracks but you have also developed a love for anything with wheels.  we pulled out all of burrito's and noodle's hotwheels and roads and all 3 of you play together with cars.  i am so thankful that we saved all of our favorite toys because it is so fun bringing those out and watching you play with them too.

perhaps your favorite toys right now are these little plastic animals that we've collected over time.  we have a little giraffe family and other african animals and you like to line them up in our window sill.  you even saw a picture of a rhino in a magazine the other day and went and found the plastic rhino to show me!

you love to run and your brothers have shown you how to lean down to touch your fingers to the ground and say 1, 2, 3 go!  you will do this over and over again!

you still love books, water, vacuum cleaners and balloons!

some of our favorite words that you say right now:
momma
dadden
cookie
honey
beep beep
river
bye bye
snaaaa=snack
graff=giraffe
baby
mamuu=hummus
meatball
ow
teeth
gway, gway=blanket
doctor
kitty cat
buddy=puppy
bippo=hippo

your favorite foods are chicken nuggets, meatballs, hummus, muffins and bread of any kind, bowtie pasta, burgers, cheese panini, crackers, chips, and of course, cookies!

happy 2nd birthday salsa!  we love you so much!

Summer 2015

summer 2015...you were so good to us and now you are gone.  i'm a little sad, like i am at the close of every summer.

this may have been my most favorite summer ever.   a close second was the summer that burrito was one and i was pregnant with noodle and we had some sort of fun afternoon snack every.single.day.  it was awesome.

we started the summer with a family workout.  i started running back in may and once everyone was home for the summer, we ran as a family.  i quickly learned that running early and by myself was a much better option, ha, ha!

at the end of our family run

thanks to some sweet friends at church, we were invited to "camp" on their property in oklahoma. i say "camp" in quotes because the dads and kids slept outside in tents while the moms and babies slept in the house.  this is my kind of camping!  the trip brought its own challenges, including a 2 hour traffic jam on the highway with no possible exit.  our 5 hour trip turned into 10 and we were so glad when we finally arrived that night!

the start of our trip BEFORE the horrid traffic jam on the highway

the weather was unseasonably cool and wet and the best decision we made was buying these rain boots before we left for the trip.  the boys LIVED in these the entire weekend because it was so swampy.  it was so funny and cute to see all the kids in their rain boots.  we had a total of 16 kids and 15 adults.  it was so fun!

we also took innumerable trips to the zoo this summer.  we had a membership so we took full advantage of going almost once a week.  the zoo is one of my most favorite places and i am so happy that all 3 of my boys love it as much as i do.  the advantage to having a membership is that we never feel pressured to see the entire zoo every visit.  we pick a certain part and go slow and enjoy all the animals.  and salsa LOVES the train so we always manage to ride that back to the entrance of the zoo when we are ready to leave.

a trip to the zoo with our cousin too!

at the zoo with our friend B.  no one would look at the camera!

and there was real life too mixed in with the fun.  leave it to these jokers to make grocery shopping an adventure!  they thought these HUGE packs of meat were equally funny and disgusting!

and who could resist this picture?

with the start of john's new position at school, we only had a couple of days to take a mini vacation.  because we love the beach so much, we decided to head to galveston for a few days.  this was salsa's first trip to the beach and i'm not sure he's a fan yet.  he did not like the sand on his feet and wasn't real sure about being in water with fish and moving objects.  the big boys of course loved every second and had a blast boogie boarding and being crazy.

you can tell he is not happy about his dirty feet!

every time we visit the beach, we talk about somehow moving there.  we could totally adopt the island lifestyle.  the boys all decided that a new pair of shades were in order for this trip.  i have a bunch of cool dudes!

we had a great time visiting old friends from our former church who now live in galveston and were gracious in lending us "their beach" and beach toys.  we had fun eating at new places.  we took a boat ride to see dolphins jumping in the water.  this was the first boat ride for all 3 boys.

we even took the ferry over to bolivar island and saw dolphins jumping in the water on that trip too. 

it was a great little vacation and even though salsa was a horrid sleeper in the hotel, we all managed to have lots of fun and want to go back soon!

july 4th was spent with some of our oldest friends and it was so super fun!  they have 3 girls and we have 3 boys.  sounds like a perfect match for arranged marriages, don't you think?  again, how on earth do you get this many people to look at the camera at the same time?  impossible!

 and a lot of our summer was spent at home relaxing and enjoying the lazy days of summer.  we took many trips to our local library and would come home and look at our books.  salsa thought this particular reading arrangement was awesome!

and believe it or not, this was salsa's first trip to the mall play area.  i remember spending many hours at these places when burrito and noodle were little but i've somehow managed to avoid this until now. and it was hard to tell who enjoyed it more....this guy or his big brothers!

 and here are more cute pics from the zoo...i told you when visited often!

on the choo choo train! salsa's favorite!

and i love these brother shots.  i have one of burrito and noodle in this same spot when they were little.

vbs! i volunteered to help co-teach kids ages 2 through 6 at our church's vacation bible school.  it was monday through thursday 9-12 and then a program friday night for the parents.  salsa was in my class for the first hour but then rotated through different activities the rest of the time.  i was really hoping he would enjoy a little independence and time away from mom but....no, that's not how it went.  in fact, the first day was so traumatic that his sweet helper figured out that water makes him happy so into the church's kitchen sink he went!  he was known the rest of the week as the "baby who likes to play in the sink." ha!  burrito was a helper this year since he was going into 6th grade so he rotated classes with the 3-4 year olds and enjoyed his chance to help.  it was a great week but we were all EXHAUSTED by the end of it.

salsa in the sink!

friday night before our program for the parents

john and i also tackled a major house project on our to-do list and screened in our deck area that is right off our kitchen.  we were so sick of being eaten alive by mosquitoes and this gives us an extra outdoor space to use almost year round.  we have a little kid table out there and the boys have enjoyed spending the morning time (before it gets blazing hot!) playing with play-doh.  salsa likes to roll it up into little balls and he calls them his meatballs. :)

the meatballs!

and perhaps the most consistent fun we've had all summer is many, many trips to hawaiian falls waterpark.  we tried to go mostly on fridays when john was off work during the summer but this past week as one last hurrah for the summer, i took all 3 boys by myself.  i'm happy to report that we all survived! :)  we usually last for about 3 hours, with lots of snack breaks and a lunch break thrown in but after about 3 hours, salsa is DONE.  i took this picture of him this past week, curled up on the picnic table ready for a nap!  

he swam his little heart out!

and then, just like that, summer was over and a new school year begins.  burrito is in 6th grade and noodle is in 4th grade.  when i look at this picture, my heart feels like it might explode.  i just love these two so much and am praying that God would shape them into mighty warriors for him. and because i take a picture of him on the first day of school every year because i love to make him crazy, i'll include this pic of the cutest man on campus!

 

 

and of course salsa had to get in on the picture taking action!  he has been SO SAD that his brothers have gone and left him. 

 

i know i've left lots of good details out but we were SO BUSY having fun that i just couldn't find the time to sit down and blog this any sooner.  i am so thankful for my little family and the ways the Lord has blessed us with each other, a great home, everything we could possibly need, dear friends and a great school.  while there are times that i feel like the maidservant in a frat house, most times i am thankful to be loved by FOUR men.  and i'm thankful for a great summer spent with them. :)