A Visit with the Aramigans

We were so excited when the Aramigans told us that they were going to brave the awful heat and humidity to come and visit us in Texas. We try to warn people away during the summer since it's so hot and miserable but we were so happy that they decided not to listen to us and came anyways. One of my biggest regrets about moving to Texas is that we don't get to see our friends as often and our kids will not have the opportunity to grow up with each other. Thankfully even though we live so far apart it has not stopped Riley and Gabe from being the best of buddies. I can't wait for Maddie and Meara to do the same. Although if the two of them are like their brothers, we parents are going to be in for it. We managed to do quite a bit during their four day stay with us -- we went to the Space Center, Children's Museum, rode the train at the park, jumped around at Pump It Up, visited Ben's lab. The boys converted Maddie's room into their own personal wrestling arena and they had "battles" every night. The boys would warm up to "Eye of the Tiger" and then get down to business. I'm afraid to even post some of the video footage of the two of them (and their trainers/daddies!!). What is extremely disturbing is that the other night Riley randomly started singing Eye of the Tiger. No four-year-old should know the words to that song!!

Click here for a link to some pictures from their visit. Thank you for coming to visit us and we can't wait to do it again!!

Pictures

I started a blog post over 3 months ago but never got around to finishing it. Since people keep asking to see pictures of the kids I decided to forgo all the words and just post some pictures of them. Click here to see what we've been up to.

Two Months and other Random Posts

We took Maddie in for her 2 month checkup and her stats were:

Weight: 11 lbs 2 oz (59%)

Height: 22 inches (36%)

Head: 15 inches (33%)

As you can see she's growing like a champ. It's definitely nice this time around not to have to worry so much about whether or not she's growing and on track! She's an extremely mellow baby and only gets upset when she's hungry. She's a great eater and a good sleeper. A little before the 2 month mark she went from waking every 2-3 hours at night to sleeping most of the night. She consistently goes to bed between 7:30-8:30 pm and doesn't wake up until 4:30-5:30 am (she's even done quite a few nights where she sleeps all they way through until 7 in the morning) to eat and then goes back to sleep for another 4 hours. We definitely cannot complain about her sleeping! We're just hoping that she decides to keep doing this! She's not a great daytime napper (unless she's sleeping on one of us!). Ben's uncle and aunt were here for a visit and she pretty much stayed awake the whole day -- it was unbelievable since she wasn't really fussy or cranky.

Riley is doing well and loves his little sister. I bring Maddie with me when I go to pick Riley up from school and all the kids love to come over to us to see the baby. Riley is really protective of her and is always telling them not to touch his little sister. Too cute! Riley is really into Transformers (the original one) and Star Wars right now and Ben is in heaven!

As I mentioned, Ben's Aunt Irene and Uncle Ken came for a visit. We had a great time and Riley had a blast. Aunt Irene now knows what a Transformer is and probably now knows more than she ever wanted to about Autobots, Decepticons, and Dinobots. Riley loved playing Transformers with the both of them. During breakfast one morning, Riley said the cutest thing. Ben, Riley, Uncle Ken, and I were sitting around the table when Riley turned to Uncle Ken and said, "where's your girl?" It was so funny!

Here are some pics:

Riley's a great helper with Maddie!
The very first day there was nice weather after the freeze we headed outdoors for a picnic in downton Houston.

Love this picture. Only Riley would decide that he needed to wear his protective glasses while drawing!

Some cute pics of the two of them

Pretending to be a dinobot

Dressed up for Go Texan Day. I need to find him some cowboy boots!

One thing I love about not working is I have time to do fun things like make these cute valentine goodie bags for Riley's school party

Having a deep conversation with Aunt Irene over breakfast

Uncle Ken and Riley playing Dinobots

One Month

Madelyn turned one month old last week and I thought it would be a good time to post some more pictures.

It amazes Ben and I how much Madelyn looks like Riley when he was a baby. Here's a picture of Madelyn (in pink) and Riley (in blue) in similar positions.

When we took Madelyn in for her 2 week checkup she was up to 7 pounds 4 ounces -- a 7 ounce weight gain from her birthweight! She's a great eater and a good daytime sleeper. She's not horrible at night but she still insists on waking up every 2 hours for food. I think it's such a shock to Ben and I since we didn't go through this with Riley. By the time Riley came home from the hospital he was sleeping 4-5 hours between feedings at night so it wasn't that bad. She's a very happy baby and only ever cries when she's hungry.

So far she doesn't like her swing that much

Her hair is pretty much non-existent except for a tuff of hair at the back of her head. Reminds me of a duck's tailfeathers!!

Sleeps just like her big brother did

I never got a chance with Riley to do newborn photos for him so I wanted to make sure that I did them for Madelyn this time around. Unfortunately since it was the holidays our regular photographer was away on vacation but she referred us to one of her colleagues and we totally lucked out. As Ben said she was like a baby whisperer. It was amazing! Here's a link to her website with a couple of pictures from Madelyn's shoot.

Riley playing with Maddie in her playmat.

Next to her he looks like a giant!

Riley is adjusting to being a big brother. He loves his sister and tells her all the time and loves to give her hugs and kisses. What he doesn't like is not being the center of attention or having us busy with Madelyn when he wants someone to play with. We had some issues initially but things are getting back to normal.

Riley's idea of "fielding" during t-ball

Everyone's favorite time at t-ball -- snacktime!

A cute picture of daddy and Riley

A Valentine's Day craft project I just finished. Now that I'm at home for the next couple of months I can finally do some baking and other things that I hadn't had the time to work on. This craft project involved cutting hundreds of felt circles and if I hadn't been home there was no way I would have been able to do it. I think it turned out great and it looks fantastic on the wall for Valentine's Day.

An Early Christmas Present

All during the pregnancy my goal was to have the pregnancy go until after the holidays and have our baby girl some time in the new year. Everything was going to plan and in my head I still had plenty of time to get everything done for Christmas and work before the birth. Imagine my surprise when I showed up for my weekly doctor's appointment on December 9th and she told me that she wanted to schedule the birth for the week of December 20th. I never even considered that because of all the meds I was on for the pregnancy that we would have to plan the birth instead of just waiting for my water to break. So what should have been 4 weeks away was now less than 2 weeks away! To say I was a little shocked was an understatement. I couldn't figure out how I was going to get everything done for Christmas and things settled at work before that date. Thankfully my parents and sister were arriving in Houston on the 11th so we had some extra help around the house and I was able to stay late at work to get things done. We scheduled my inducement for December 21st and I worked until the day before to get things done. All the presents for Christmas were wrapped, shipped, and under the tree. Things at work were as settled as they could be. So the morning of December 21st we were as ready as we were going to be.

That morning we woke up, got Riley settled with breakfast and the grandparents and were at the hospital by 7:30 am. Got settled in the room and met our nurses (who were fantastic!!). It took 5 attempts and finally an anesthesiologist to get an IV in me. Finally, by 10:30 we were ready to start the pitocin. Since my OB had a clinic in a nearby city that morning she had me get a very low dose of pitocin - 1x1 which is very slow since most people who get induced get either 3x3 or 4x4. We were prepared for a very slow and long day. I was already having contractions that morning and according to the nurses they were pretty big contractions but I was so used to these that I really didn't feel any pain. By 1:00 pm my contractions were coming quite regularly but I was still pretty pain free and even fell asleep for a little while. At around 2 pm I was still only 4 cm dilated so the nurses thought I still had plenty of time and that we would deliver some time that evening. Little did they know that that was not how my body works! At 2:50 pm I knew things were changing. I had to use the restroom and when I came out I warned them that the baby was going to be here soon. My pain levels hadn't really increased even though I was having more contractions so the nurses didn't really think that I was fully dilated yet. Thankfully they had everything ready in the room. They checked me again and I was fully dilated. They paged my OB and she said she was on her way but they paged the in house doctor just in case. It's a good thing they did because in less than 15 minutes Madelyn Quinn was here. Apparently I didn't seem to be in enough pain because the doc thought I had had an epidural because I wasn't screaming during the contractions and pushing!! I know I have a really high tolerance for pain but I thought that was hilarous after Ben told me that later. My regular OB didn't quite make it in time for the delivery which is sad since this is the second time that I haven't been able to have my regular doc deliver me (especially since they both did all the work to get me to that point).

Madelyn's stats:
Born at 3:12 pm
Weight: 6 pounds 13 ounces
Length: 19 1/4 inches

Everything went smoothly until that point but once I delivered my blood pressure spiked (even though it has been normal during my whole pregnancy) and I was told I had to be put on magnesium sulfate (I had this with Riley too). If you have had this you know how lovely it feels going down your IV and through your system and how it totally makes you light headed and woozy. I was thrilled to have to be put on this again. What totally sucked about it though was that since the first four IV attempts failed in the normal places the anesthesiologist had to put the IV in the crease of my arm so I couldn't move my right arm anywhere without disturbing the IV and causing a whole lot of beeping and shutting off my IV. That made it really difficult to hold Madelyn and try to breast feed and made for a really uncomfortable night. Other than that my hospital stay was pretty uneventful and we left the hospital on the 23rd. Madelyn did have some jaundice though so we had to take her back to the hospital for blood draws on the 24th, 25th, and 26th which was not too fun. Luckily her levels stabilized and we didn't have to go back to the hospital for any phototherapy.

We had a great Christmas. Riley and Maddie were spoiled as usual. Click on the picture below for some pictures of Madelyn and our Christmas.

Happy New Year everyone!

It's been awhile...

...since our last blog post. Here's a quick update of what's been going on since this summer.

In August we flew back to California for the wedding of our friends, Jon and Cynthia. We won't be going back to Cali for awhile so it was nice to get to see everyone. We squeezed in a trip to see Ben's parents, Leah/Dan/Gabe, Bubba, all of my family, Quentin/DiDi, and of course Jon and Cynthia. We managed to do a lot of stuff in one short week. Click on the pic below for some pictures from our trip.

I originally started this post in October but never got around to finishing it. It's now December and I've realized that I haven't posted anything since August so I'm just going to post some more pics (click on the pic below) of some things we've been up to the past couple of months.

Quick Update

I started this post awhile ago but never got around to finishing it. I've given up! The past couple of months have been crazy busy. Here are some pictures of Nolan's train birthday party. If you click on the last picture of Riley in the wizard hat it will bring you to an album of pictures from all of Riley's birthday celebrations.

If the picture above doesn't bring you to the album....try HERE

In other news.......we're very excited to announce that Riley will soon be a big brother!!!

Like a sponge....

It amazes me every day how Riley develops from one day to the next. His language skills amaze me sometimes and we often forget that what we say can come back to haunt us if we aren't careful. Of course that being said that has not stopped his daddy and his aunties from teaching him silly and sometimes bizarre (usually from daddy!) things.

Some of the funny things he is often saying nowadays:

"Don't worry, I'll be right back"

"There's my lady" (usually this is shouted at the top of his voice when I am clear across the store)

"Jewelry Daaaawg" (unfortunately there is a weird jewelry store in a not so nice mall that we often pass when going to Chinatown called "Jewelry Dog" and once Ben told Riley that they were going to go there to pick out a Mother's Day gift for me...ever since Riley thinks it's hilarous to break out with that at random times)

"No thanks" (he is incrediably polite and whenever we ask him if he wants something or wants to go somewhere he often answers with that!)

"I'm too busy" (this is something else he always tells us when we ask him to do something)

"I'm freakin' out"

"Daddy, I'm going to sell you to the gypsies"

"See, it's not so bad"

There is so much more but it's so hard to remember everything that comes out of his mouth. Most of the time Ben and I just look at each other in shock and wonder where he comes up with these things.

Here are some pictures that I haven't gotten a chance to post 'til now (click on the picture).

A Trip to Orlando

Since it's been awhile since we've gone on a real vacation we thought it would be fun to take Riley to Disney World. My friends and I are horrible at planning and actually going on vacations together but this time we actually got our act together. Ben, Riley and I left here from Houston on Saturday and met up with Dan, Leah, and Gabe in Florida. It would take me forever to tell you everything we did (plus, I'm not even sure I could remember everything -- I'll leave that to Leah and Ben who seem to remember everything always!) so here are some highlights:

• Ben getting heckled by people as he tried to get out of the parking lot to go back to the hotel to pick up Dan.


• After swearing to never wear a poncho after being forced by my parents to wear one the first time we ever went to Disney World I had to breakdown and wear one on this trip. We would have drowned without one!


• Ben making up "uncle ray ray" to cover that we were going back to the Magic Kingdom so that Gabe wouldn't be upset that we were leaving. Not only does Uncle Ray Ray live in Orlando but he also makes fantastic lightsabers!!


• When we asked Riley what souvenir he wanted from the Magic Kingdom he pointed to the lightsabers that every kid had in the park. He made sure that we got Gabe one also....very sweet and thoughtful.


• Riley breaking his lightsaber and then spending the entire ferry ride telling the girl sitting next to us about it in the most heartbreaking voice and puppy eyes.


• Riley's favorite ride was the Jungle Cruise at the Magic Kingdom and the Animal Safari at the Animal Kingdom...big surprise there!!


• The boys having meltdowns when we made them eat lunch first before going to play on the beach.


• Watching the boys wrestle in the hotel room (see video below)

Of course I took a ton of pictures as usual.....click on the picture below for a slideshow summary of our trip!!

Once again....

....it's been forever since I've done a blog post. I wish I could be good like some of my friends that post every week. I'm going to have to work on that.

As I was deleting the pictures off my camera to get ready for our upcoming trip to Orlando I realized how long it's been since I've posted pictures on the blog and how many places we've visited during my blog hiatus. My sister, Cindy, was out for awhile recently and we visited a whole bunch of fun places while she was here (at least when it wasn't raining and freezing - although we did venture out to the zoo one day when it was in the 30s...not a smart idea!). It's always great when one of my sisters is here with us, especially since Riley loves being with them and they are always willing to go on the crazy rides or crawl through the weird little tunnels with him!!! Unfortunately Cindy left the day before the Houston Rodeo started so she missed out on that. The Rodeo is a huge thing here....it lasts for almost a whole month....the crowds are unbelievable (I think the attendance this year was 2.1 million people)....and the size of it is amazing. When Riley gets a little bit older it will be fun to take him to the actual rodeo rodeo to see the bull riding and other events. The way the rodeo works is that during the day they have the livestock area open (animals, shopping, exhibits, etc) and the carnival going. Then in the evening the events happen then after that there is a big concert (I'm always amazed at the line-up of artists they have -- from country (keith urban, rascal flatts, kenny chesney, etc) to teeny bopper pop (justin bieber, jonas brothers, etc) to more mainstream pop (black eyed peas, mary j blige, etc). I love country music and can't wait to see some of the concerts in the upcoming years.

Click on the picture below for some pictures of the past couple of months. I'm sure I'll have tons of our Orlando trip soon after we get back.

Whirlwind of a Vacation

This was our first Christmas that we would have to fly back to Cali and we had 12 short days. We already knew that it was going to be tough fitting everything into such a short time but we didn't realize how exhausting it was going to be. Here's a summary of our wild trip (this is really so I don't forget all of the stuff we did!)

We arrived in Fremont late on Wednesday. Riley was so excited to see his gong gong (grandpa), paw paw (grandma), and aunties that I couldn't get him to calm down to go to bed until after midnight (2 am Texas time!). He still managed to wake up early on Thursday though so he could go to my parents' favorite place for breakfast. Ben had to go to UCSF that day to meet with a collaborator and I had some christmas shopping to finish up so we both spent the day running around. Friday afternoon we headed over to Sac to meet up with Dan, Leah, and Gabe. The boys got along great and had such a good time together. Friday and Saturday was filled with wrestling, Ice Age, yummy food, christmas lights, the park, Leatherby's (yum yum!!), the Eco Station, more wrestling, and just a good time hanging out. This visits really make me miss living close to all of my friends. After Dan made us a yummy breakfast of beignets we had to head back to Fremont. We met up with Matt later that day and hung out. It still amazes me that he's all grown up. I still remember meeting him for the first time when I picked them up from a karate lesson. So long ago! On Monday morning we headed over to Rohnert Park to see Ben's dad. Unfortunately it was rainy and cold so we ended up staying inside all day. Last year when we were visiting for Christmas I had the best fish and chips for lunch and we decided to do it again this year. I was so excited!!! Riley had a lot of fun running around the house and Ben's dad made us a delicious tri tip dinner. The next morning we headed over to Ben's mom's house. We watched one of Riley's many Land Before Time movies and then walked across the street to a restaurant to have a nice cozy lunch. We had a good time hanging out and enjoyed a homemade dinner that Ben's mom made. Even though it was freezing outside we decided to brave the cold and drive down the street to get an ice cream cone for dessert. There's nothing like a little strawberry ice cream with sprinkles!! We left the next morning back to Fremont. I still had a whole bunch of last minute errands to run and we still hadn't figured out all of the snacks and desserts that we needed to make for Christmas. We spent the rest of Wednesday running all over town to get everything we needed. Thursday morning (Christmas Eve) we headed over to Stockton to visit with Dre, Suzy, Zen, and Langdon. It's been awhile since we've seen everyone and I am so amazed how big Zen and Langdon have gotten. Langdon is a little more than a year younger than Riley but he is already a little bigger than him. He is such a big boy with the most adorable grin! We hung out, the boys bbq'd, we opened presents, and just had a good time catching up. Can't wait to see everyone again this summer. We left that afternoon back to Fremont. Like every Christmas Eve, Shirley and Linda came over for dinner and we had our traditional Christmas Eve dinner......homemade eggrolls, crab, and whole bunch of other Chinese dishes. My mom always goes overboard and makes enough food for an army. Unfortunately, Jamie and Ben did not feel up to having the eggroll eating contest they both promised us last year. After dinner we had yummy pie for dessert -- Riley loved going from person to person getting a bite from everyone. Then it was time for presents!! Riley once again made out like a bandit. I swear if there is a dinosaur toy out there we probably own it. The boy got so much stuff. My parents decided to get him a bike for Christmas this year but thankfully only bought him a helmet so he would have a present to open and gave him a giftcard so that we could buy it when we got back to Texas. Packing a bicycle on the airplane would have been really interesting! I forgot to mention that Riley and Ben had been sick up to this point and I was really hoping that it would pass me somehow. Well, merry christmas to me.....I woke up Christmas day with the same cold that they had just gotten over. I felt horrible but since it was Christmas I had to get up and get to it! We spent the morning getting things ready before all of my family arrived. There was rousing game of Apples to Apples, lots of snack eating, a short nap, lots of Riley being crazy and dragging everyone into the hallway. I guess I should explain that a little. For some reason, Riley thought it would be a hoot to drag people one by one into the hallway and have them sit down. By the end he had most of the people in the hallway and if you looked down it looked like the back of some truck with a whole bunch of illegal refugees. My son is crazy!! Of course so is everyone else for letting him drag them into a dark hallway! Again, lots of presents and more food. We had prime rib, turkey, ham, and all the fixings for dinner. For dessert, we made crepes and we had a nice assembly line going!! By the end of the day I was so tired and really not feeling well. On Saturday, I was still feeling awful. However, my sisters and I wanted to go with my parents so that they could pick out the dryer we were going to buy them for Christmas. We went to Sears, picked out a dryer, and then spent over 30 minutes with a incompetent sales person as he tried to ring us up. I swear it was awful. Just as a comparison....when we got back to Texas we went to Sears to go and buy a new fridge for our garage. There is an old asian guy that works there that has helped us everytime we've gone. We literally walked into the store, picked out a fridge, paid and arranged for delivery and were out in less than 15 minutes. He was so efficient! Anyways, we picked out a dryer and then decided to go and get some lunch. Since none of us were starving and when we asked Riley what he wanted he said pizza we decided to take him to Chuck E Cheese. Had some okay pizza and spent a lot of time trying to win enough tickets to get a decent prize. He had a blast! On Sunday, we headed over to Concord to an indoor playground called the Jungle to meet up with Dan, Leah, Gabe, Jethro, Michelle, and Cambria. The Jungle is made up of all these twisty tunnels and slides and tubes that are perfect for little kids to climb and slide around in. Not so much for grown men as Dan and Ben found out. The guys were so exhausted after going around that thing with the boys. We decided to leave and go and have lunch after Cambria woke up from her nap. After lunch we weren't ready to leave yet so we decided to walk around the area in the freezing cold. After we all froze our tushies off we all headed off in different directions. We spent the rest of Sunday in Fremont. Then it was time for us to head back to Texas. We spent the morning packing and getting things ready to go. Cindy did an amazing job of fitting all of our gifts in one large bag and we managed to get everything home without breaking anything! Riley did so well on the plane ride home -- he slept for 2 1/2 hours of the trip and spent the rest watching some Kung Fu Panda.

Below are some videos and pics from our trip. If you click the last picture it will bring you to a very large album of pictures from the holidays.

Feeding the hungry elephant with Auntie Cindy and Gong Gong

Tumbling with Gabe

The infamous takedown that Ben is so proud of

Click on the picture below for pictures from our trip

Getting Ready for the Holidays

Once again we decided to forgo turkey for Thanksgiving and instead did the prime rib and all the trimmings. Two of Ben's buddies from UCLA (Steve and Rafe) came out to Texas to join us for Thanksgiving. We started off Thanksgiving by going to the tree lot and picking out our Christmas tree. It was great....there was no one around and we had the pick of the whole place. I think we may have started a new tradition!! We spent the rest of the day hanging around the house, relaxing, eating, and relaxing some more. Very nice!!

I spent the rest of that long weekend getting the house ready for Christmas. I was on a tight deadline since we were having Ben's lab party the following weekend (we were only going to be in Houston two weekends in December so we had to have the party earlier than later). Riley helped me decorate the tree. He loves to go up to the tree and point out all of the different ornaments and tell me their colors. His favorite is a red and green birdhouse. He keeps looking in the peephole for the bird!!

Ben's lab party was the following weekend and can I just say that our son is not shy at all. He had a blast running around the house and talking to people. At one point during the party everyone was sitting in the living room and chatting and Riley proceeded to jump up onto the couch and commanded everyone's attention. He had everyone saying "shark in the water" for the rest of the night. He is nuts!!

We're off to California tonight for the holidays. Can't wait to see everyone!!

Here are some pictures of Thanksgiving and getting our house ready for the holidays.......

Fun Things to Do Around Texas....

Now that the weather has started to cool down we've started to explore Texas and some of the fun things to do around here. The city is definately kid friendly and there are lots of fun places to go and explore. Hint hint to all of our friends with kids out there or those of you that are kids at heart! Here are a few (click on each of the pictures to see more pictures from our trip to these places):

Breakfast with the Elephants: The Houston Zoo recently had a fundraiser event where you could go and have breakfast with the elephants. Since Riley adores elephants we thought this would be a great chance to see them up close and personal. The thought of eating breakfast around a whole bunch of elephants was not too appealing but in the end we had a great time. We got to watch the trainers have the elephants do some exercise, play around in their sleeping quarters and see all of their toys and things they eat, give one of the elephants a bath, and make new friends with the zoo volunteers.

Natural History Museum: Riley has hit that age where he is fascinated with dinosaurs. We took him to the natural history museum on a Sunday morning and we literally had the whole place to ourselves. We let him run wild and crazy in the dinosaur room and he had a blast stomping and roaring!

Old MacDonald's Farm: I don't remember exactly how I found this place but I'm sure glad we did. You pay a flat rate to go into the farm and that rate includes unlimited pony rides and train rides which is a good thing because Riley ended up going on the pony ride at least 10 times. They had tons of animals that you could get up close and personal with. The only thing we didn't get to see that day were cows (they are usually there but were missing from their pen) which Riley would have loved since he loves cows!

Hermann Park: I've posted pictures of our trips to Hermann Park before but we visited a new area this time. Ben's mom was here for a visit and the weather was beautiful so we decided to head over to our old stomping grounds for a nice walk after breakfast. We took our time and walked by the fountain, played with some geese/ducks, and then headed over to the Japanese Gardens. There were lots of bridges everywhere and Riley loved standing on them and watching the Koi swim around.

Pumpkin Patch at Dewberry Farms: This place was fantastic. It kind of reminded me of the Roloff's farm from the show "Little People Big World". This farm had so much stuff to do and Riley had a blast going from one thing to another. By the time we left all three of us were exhausted!!

Halloween: This was Riley's first year of trick-or-treating and he had a great time! We went with our neighbors and it was a blast watching Riley and Nolan run up to each house. They both kept trying to go into people's houses but they were both very polite and great with their "thank yous"!! They only made it up and back one block but they still made out like bandits! It's hard to tell from these pictures but Riley was supposed to be a dinosaur. Not sure why the dinosaur has frog eyes!!

A Trip Back to Cali

After 9 long months away Riley and I made our first trip back to California since moving to Houston. We were so excited to have such a great excuse to go back - Rhys' first birthday party! It's always hard to get the whole gang together but we came close this time - we really missed Ben, Yolanda and Allan and their whole gang. I was a little worried at first making the trip by myself with Riley but he was a real trooper and did fantastic on the plane. We had a little incident when he decided that he wanted to run and play when we were in the security check line but other than that it was smooth sailing. Note to self: it is much easier for a little 2 year old to run around under all of the roping than for a grown person with a giant backpack! We took the last flight out of Houston so I thought he would be exhausted by the time we landed (it was almost 11:30 pm our time) but as soon as he saw his two aunties he was all smiles and full of energy. The rest of the trip was non-stop - we went to visit my grandparents in Stockton, went to dinner with my cousins to celebrate my dad's birthday, went to Rhys' first birthday party, hung out with everyone and had a great time at the playground, went to dinner with my sisters, went to the Oakland Zoo (where one of Riley's shoes now resides with the buffalo since he decided that it would be great fun to kick it off when we were on the sky ride -- warning that ride is a little too long and a little scary with a 2 year old), went to dinner again to celebrate my dad's birthday, and then came home. I swear Riley gained at least 5 pounds on this trip. Riley and my parents have a routine - every morning Riley gets up, goes to play in their bedroom and drinks his milk, then after getting dressed and ready they go to my parents' favorite restaurant for breakfast (a Hong Kong style cafe) and he pigs out. As if that wasn't enough he would then come home, play in the backyard or in the house and have some of the apple pears that my parents grow in the backyard. The boy ate and ate and ate. It was amazing!!

Riley was quite sad when we got back and kept looking for everyone. The morning after we got back he woke up and asked where his paw paw and gong gong were (he was ready for his morning ritual!). And that same day after I picked him up from daycare he kept asking for his Auntie Cindy and Auntie Mimi (this is what he calls Jamie!). To this day when we drive home each day he likes to tell me that Auntie Mimi is at work and Auntie Cindy is at school. He is too funny! We definitely miss California. We can't wait until our trip back during the holidays!! Click on the picture below for some pictures from our trip.

Baking with Mom

I found a recipe for S'more Cupcakes awhile ago that I have been dying to try - graham cracker crust, chocolate, chocolate cake, and a toasted marshmallow cream frosting - but haven't had a chance to make them. We recently went to a BBQ at one of our neighbor's house and I thought this would be a great opportunity to make them. They were a great success!! Riley decided that he didn't want to be left out when I was baking so he jumped up onto a chair to help! Everytime he sees a cupcake he thinks its a "Happy Day"!!