Christmas continued

Other highlights from the trip were a few home improvement chores. Mario shared his electric skills by replacing 7 light fixtures in my parents' house. My mom gave us permission to remove the wallpaper in the upstairs guest bathroom. But once that was down, we just had to finish the project by painting the walls and cabinets.

Also, we were sad to leave the feet of snow in Virginia, but managed to get snow after Christmas in St. Louis which turned out to be 2 great sledding days. We took the boys to sled on the old sledding hill I went to as a kid (my parents live in a neighborhood with a golf course...hole 2 has a nice big hill!) The second great snow-sledding day happened the day we planned to leave, but Mario let me take MJ out while he packed up the car. We still were able to leave by 11:30am and arrived at 3am in Ashburn, just when it started to sleet/snow there! So, we unpacked the car, and woke up to MORE snow (I'm in snow heaven this winter!)

And as a final note of fun, my parents bought us a Wii and sent it to our house (they did not seem happy with us doing renovations on their home for free). The boys' tried canoeing together. MJ got the nickname "strong-arm" and Joey "left-turner" as holding his oar in the water seemed to be his best move.

Merry Christmas!

This year we spent Christmas with the Keppel side of our family in St. Louis. The 15 hour drive is long but definitely worth it. We had a great time... poor Ceali had the chicken pox, but she may end up giving it to our family (I did not vaccinate Joey and Sheila in the hopes they would get it naturally and build up their own immunity to it). So we'll see how that goes. We had a delayed Christmas dinner b/c of the illness, but it worked out well b/c then Kathy was able to join us (she has been working in Japan and spent Christmas in Seattle with her boyfriend's family). Suzanne and Bobby hosted an AMAZING dinner and then we were able to exchange our family gifts.

Lots of Snow!

It has been snowing...wait, let me check...yes, it is still snowing. It has been snowing for 26 hours now (I can't say for sure if it snowed all night last night, but it started at 8:40pm Friday night and has been snowing since we woke up this morning). We really do love snow, and have had a lot of fun with it, but this is really a LOT of snow.

MJ loves to play in the snow. I think Joey wasn't very happy with snow being higher than his knees. Sheila is still trying to figure out how to walk well in her boots. After working so long on the driveway only to watch the pavement disappear before our eyes with continuing snow... we decided to stay in for the afternoon and keep warm. We wanted to decorate the trees (I just picked up our second one from freecycle...yay!) but we are going to work on that tomorrow. We are sad to be leaving all this snow as we are heading to St. Louis on Tuesday...maybe it will snow a *little* there.

I guess we need to move the ladder

Sheila is quite the climber and can already make it up and down the slide in our basement by herself. She decided to raise the bar however by trying to climb ladders. Last night we managed to get a video of this. She had PJs on at first, but the feet were slippery. I thought I shouldn't post a diapered baby on the blog, but after Mary's post I guess naked babies are okay.




And this is not at all realated to the ladder, but a month ago during their K4J class, the boys made these churches. K4J is a really cute religious ed. program and last month their virtue and mission was to "love the church" I was pretty impressed with MJ's stained glass noodle window which he did entirely by himself (a teacher wrote the words on the bottom)

Sheila's birthday

Sorry for the delay in posting this. I really love snow, and if there is any on the ground, I make sure my family spends as much time in it as possible, and that usually means neglecting any chores that must take place inside the home.

Sheila woke up on her first birthday and I think she realized she was a big kid. First, she helped herself to some cheerios. We relaxed most of the day (except for my crazy idea to go to the post office to renew my passport which lasted from 12:30-2pm and everyone was going crazy). We finally had a late dinner and birthday celebration. I think she enjoyed her dinner and cake. Her brothers were desperate to try to help her unwrap her presents but we insisted on letter her try it herself. I think she got the hang of it near the end and was particularly interested in trying to rescue this furry thing from the red box.


Of course the day after her birthday we all got such a great gift...it SNOWED! We all played outside a little, but then I realized Sheila had a fever. I think it's just a cold and fever, but she's been hanging in there (and is cutting her 2 top front teeth).

Remembering last year

As I was rushing around yesterday, I remembered how Dec. 3rd 2008, I was out putting up Christmas lights knowing that I'd be too busy pretty soon to get them up. This time last year, we had just gone to the hospital and were getting closer to meeting our little girl. Finally at 7:38pm last year, Sheila Mercedes was born. We were pretty happy.

Halloween 2009

This Halloween shall be especially remembered, because it was the day we put up our hammock. A 6 year anniversary gift that was a little late in arriving, but very worth it. Because of this, we spent half of the day playing around outside in the leaves. As usual, it started getting dark, I could see our neighbors gathering for the party in the cul de sac, and we were very late getting out the door. This year one family put a lot of time into making a haunted forest in their backyard. I'm not really into spooky stuff, but their efforts were neat. And despite on and off drizzling rain the neighbors pulled off the cul de sac block party this time complete with a grill and tent. At 6pm we began our pumpkin carving and by 6:45 were dressed and out the door! We got an extra pumpkin b/c Mario decided to make his office fun by having a pumpkin carving contest on Friday afternoon. Which of course, he won. I suppose it's bad that I'm just used to him winning everything, it's just the way he is. (He thinks it was the pumpkin carving knife in between his pumpkins eyes that made him win).

As for our costumes... Joey initially picked Blue Lightning McQueen. I had a feeling he would go for that idea, but then once he got the box on would not like it. It was so fun creating this car the perfect shade for Blue Lightning McQueen (*which is Joey's favorite car and is almost as important to him as his blanket). Before I put the final paint job on the box, I had him try it on. He said he didn't want it anymore and wanted to be a boy. Apparently this isn't the first time a Suarez has wanted to be a car but then changed his mind. After explaining to him that he had to dress up as something, and recaping his Halloween costumes from the previous 2 years, he decided on Luigi. Which is funny, b/c after seeing MJ excited about being a Jedi on Halloween night, Joey decided he would be one too. I think it confused a few people when he said he was Star Wars (clearly looking like Luigi). If he had told me before we were heading out the door, I probably could have changed his costume, but he did this so secretly, I don't think it bothered him.

Our cute cat.

Luigi (well, clearly with this light saber he made out a k'nex he is a character from Star Wars)

A Jedi (no one in particular)

The police officers who are trying to keep the above characters in line.