I love family visits!

We had my sister and her son, Zack, and my parents here for a few days, and it was a blast. We did all sorts of fun things. Yet again, I will refer you to my sister, Cristi's blog because she is amazing and posted a couple times even while they were here, but I will try to do a random sampler of some of the fun pictures! We did all sorts of fun things.
Here's a cute Daddy picture of Wes with Halley. We don't really let her go to sleep with us very much anymore because we want her to sleep in her own crib, but hey, we still love the snuggle time. And, it is so cute to watch her sleep.

Here are all the boy cousins playing at the park. Isn't sand great?

And here is Cristi playing at the park! Slides are awesome! Sidenote - Cristi is such an amazing mom and aunt and sister. I really love and admire her a lot. Having her here really made me miss all my siblings and siblings-in-law. Every one of my brothers and sisters (in- and outlaws) are such examples to me. I love and miss all of you sooooo much!! Ok, I am going to stop for now. It's late. I have quite a few more pictures to go through, but I wanted to get at least something done or else I won't do anything at all!! Plus, my mom is still here so I have to take advantage of it! She is working on my cool Halloween costume right now! I love my mommy!

Our Little Screamer

Here's a cute video of Halley screaming - that's her favorite way to talk, laugh, cry . . . She also loves to bang on things, and we are teaching her how to give us "5." As always, with videos of Halley, turn up the volume, Connor's in the background trying to get attention. :)

Hooray for Prop. 8

Living in California we have the opportunity to be way involved in all of this proposition 8 stuff. They talk about it pretty much every week in church, and last Sat. we got a call asking us to go "sign wave" at one of the busy intersections near our home.
I think Wes and I might go do that this Saturday with Bradley and Connor while Halley is taking her nap. (Don't worry, my mom will still be here so we're not abandoning Halley.)
Anyway, I just wanted to say that I totally support marriage between a man and woman! That is the way it is supposed to be, and I am excited to be able to vote in California and have an impact on the way marriage is viewed in our nation.

Diet vs. Exercise

I should probably call this another "Righteous Pride" post. I wanted to brag about myself this time though. :) Maybe that's bad, but I am proud of myself!
Apparently, for me, eating healthy food is much more effective than exercising. I haven't weighed myself since Halley was about 3 mos. old, and I got weighed the other day. I weigh 15 lbs. LESS than I did when I got pregnant with Halley! Hooray! The best part is that I weigh 5 lbs. less than I did before I got pregnant with Bradley! Cool, huh? Maybe it's because I cut my hair. :)
No really, I am pretty excited. It seemed like my jeans were fitting a little better, but I kept saying that it was probably because I had stretched them out while I was pregnant. Apparently not.
Anyway, I just had to brag. I haven't been doing so well at the exercise part of things. It's been really hard since Bradley started school because when I wake up early to exercise I end up waking up all the kids. I want to do it at night, but then it seems like I am always so tired by the time the kids are in bed. So, I am still trying to figure that whole thing out, but I am still doing pilates at least a few times a week.
The biggest thing has been that we have totally changed our diet. We eat out of the Zonya cookbook for 90% of our dinners. That in turn has us eating healthier for lunch because we usually eat leftovers. Breakfast has never been a problem for me because I always eat cereal. Anyway, I just wanted to brag! I am hoping to be able to continue to loose weight. It's easy for me to cook out of that cookbook because I love all the meals, and most of them are pretty easy.
Anyway, sorry to brag, but I'm excited! :)
We are anxiously awaiting some of my family coming to visit. They are currently on the road. The visit had to be prolonged a day because all our kids are sick with some horrible virus! We're praying we won't pass it on to my little nephew Zackary! Hopefully they will all tell me I look amazing! Ha ha ha . . .

Ouch!

Ok, this is the last one for tonight. For those of you who don't know this, we have wood floors throughout our entire house. Tonight, the boys told me they wanted to sleep on the floor. I didn't have the energy to argue so I said, "That's fine, but you'll probably be uncomfortable. Just get up on your beds and tuck yourselves in if it hurts." I was just assuming they would only be on the floor for a few minutes. I didn't even put a blanket or anything underneath them!
They came out a couple times to go to the bathroom/get some attention, and I just tucked them back in on the floor. Well, about 9:30 I went in to check on them, and this is what I found.

It's 11:00 now, and I just heard some noises in their room. I went to check again thinking one of them had climbed into their bed. Nope, I guess Bradley decided to make his "bed" a little softer by sleeping on top of his blanket and snuggling with Connor! Ha ha ha . . .

Now I just need to decide if I should put them back in their beds and risk waking them up . . . Hmmm . . .

Random Pictures

Wes is on duty tonight, AGAIN, so I am going to post a few more pictures.

Today I was trying to fold some laundry while holding Halley because she was kind of fussy. It was rather difficult so I thought maybe putting her in the laundry basket would distract her enough that I could finish folding a few more things.

She looked so cute I ended up grabbing the camera and taking a few pictures. She was pretty mad, and if you're wondering, I didn't finish folding the laundry until after they were all in bed. :)

After I finished Halley's photo session the boys obviously had to get some time in front of the camera. They were looking at a book together. They were being so cute, but I swear it is impossible to get them both looking cute in the same picture. This is the only one that looks even sort of ok. The rest Connor is moving or Bradley is smiling weird or something. One thing to notice - look at Connor's head compared to Bradley's. I cannot believe how fast he is growing. I'm sure he'll be bigger than Bradley pretty soon.

This is totally random, but it shows what life is like here. I also know some of our family members will appreciate the writing. While Luzmary and Jeremy and Ana were here on Sunday night the conversation obviously turned to learning languages, and we definitely had enough to talk about - Spanish, Portuguese, English, Chinese, and Arabic were all part of the conversation.

Wes and Jeremy both decided to show off their writing skills and wrote some stuff on the whiteboard. Just a side note - living here, there have been numerous gatherings where I am the only person present who speaks only English. It's crazy!

A Fun Guest!

The past couple weeks we had a foreign exchange student staying with us. Her name is Ana. We had her here because she needed a place to stay while her host "Mom" (my good friend, Luzmary) was visiting her family in Venezuela.
We had lots of fun with her here. She wanted to stay with us because she wants to learn more English. I actually think she speaks English really well already, but anyway, maybe she learned a little bit more. :) I have to say that I totally admire her for being brave enough to come out here knowing no one and not having ever really spoken English! She is my hero!

We went to the beach with her last Saturday. We saw a couple of jellyfish so we had to take a picture. Wes has seen these a few times on his beach runs, but this was the first one I had seen, and there were actually two!! The boys thought they were pretty interesting and would run away every time a wave would move them.
The boys had lots of fun with her. They really enjoyed playing the "How do you say _______ in Spanish, Ana?" They were also very concerned each morning when they woke up and she wasn't here. Bradley drew a picture of our family the other day and Connor got all upset because Ana wasn't in it. :)
Halley absolutely adored her, and she isn't used to other people. In fact, the other day at the park I had one of the other moms hold her, and she freaked out! She was totally fine with Ana though. It was cute! Here's an adorable picture of Halley at the beach.

Anyway, it was a lot of fun to have Ana here. It was awesome to talk to her about Paraguay (her home country) and all her friends and family. We also had a big Paraguayan meal on Sunday after Luzmary got back. We're hoping to see Ana a lot more now that we know her better.