May 2009: My Yoga Kids

I am very grateful for the influence Yoga has been in my life, really it has been life changing. Having always been such a go-go-go person, yoga created a vehicle for much need relaxation in my life. My relationshop with Yoga has grown so much since my initial reasoning for exercising: rehabilitation for an injury and desire for relaxation. If you've never tried it, do your body a favor and give it a chance for a month or two. I promise you your body will start to crave it.

So I am guessing my children's interest in it stems from my love for it. It is a joy watching them do their yoga DVDs, a series put on by YogaKids . Their favorites are Yoga ABCs and Silly to Calm. They each want their "own" mat and do poses such as alligator, pedal laughing, grasshopper and wheel. Owen is really good at it and Eyan & Tate are along for the ride:-) I love that my kids are active despite it being exhausting for me many times. I love that they ask me to do their yoga after they see me doing mine. I am doing my best to raise healthy kids. One day I would love to teach yoga to children as well as prenatal yoga. Maybe later on in life:-)

May 2009: Footie in the Backyard

Any of you that know Mike know that he LOVES soccer, know mostly as football or footie at our house since mainly he watches English Premier League Games- his favorite team being Arsenal. Having heard, watched plenty of matches on TV, and even attending one in England - an experience like nothing else; absolutely incredible -I have learned all sorts of new words: kit=uniform, pitch=field, boots=cleats, and Mike's favorite "Bang goes the nil nil draw" which is yelled after the first goal is scored.

Getting the boys outside to play a little footie is great. All of them, including Mike, are left footed. They definitely have some practicing to do, but its great fun to watch them. Eyan is awesome with his little hand raise when he kicks. It cracks me up:-) We are grateful for our great backyard.

Playing Catch Up - April 2009

I'm getting closer, bare with me here. Here are the posts from April 2009:

April 2009: New Family Photos

April 2009: More Family Photos

April 2009: My baby is 2! Happy Birthday Tate:-)

April 2009: George Washington, John Adams...

April 2009: Owen, Butterflies, and Lorikeets

April 2009: Summer Vacation in April

April 2009: Summer Vacation Family Photo Shoot

April 2009: Summer Vacation Family Photo Shoot

Here are the photos from our Summer Vacation in April Family Photo Shoot! You can read about our vacation and see photos in the previous post. The photos turned out so great. My favorite is of all of us striking a pose, mine being tree:-). This is us, this is my family. Got to love them:-)

April 2009: Summer Vacation in April

This year our family took our annual Summer Vacation in April:-) Trying to organize a time when five siblings -3 married with children, 2 college students with jobs - an ultra-busy Dad with pressing job and church duties, and SuperMom who does more things and goes more places than we can keep track of - can all get together is a little tricky. This year it fell to one week in April. We were very excited to get an amazing beach home in Oceanside with oceanviews, a jacuzzi on the deck, and a small side yard for the kids to play. We had such a great time. Those, including Mike, who had to work during the week were able to come when they could since Oceanside is 15-45 minutes from their various jobs.

The kids were in heaven. I do have to say that I am finally getting the hang of being a Mom to 3. I was able to take the boys down to the beach by myself and have a fun and relaxing time. My boys generally play so well together and I loved seeing them build castles, dig holes, and run in and out of the ocean following the pattern of the waves. One evening we had a corn roast in the fire pit on the beach-the yummiest corn I've ever had! -corn cooked in the husk in salt water-mmm mm. Thanks Cheryl for bringing the gear. She also took some family photos of us. They turned out so great. I'll show them in a separate post - click here:-).

One day we rode the Coaster down to Old Town San Diego. The boys absolutely loved their first ride on a train. We walked to a candy shop and then to my great times 5 grandfather's grave, Santiago Arguello, the first governor of California. Yes, I am California Royalty:-) We then grabbed lunch at a Mexican restaurant and headed back home.

We had a great time together - playing games, squishing too many adults in an over-flowing jacuzzi, bike rides along the beach watching tractors expand the shoreline, walks on the pier watching the birdies, strolling the Farmer's Market, and watching silly YouTube videos whose vocabulary has now become adopted into our family vernacular, such as : the Alabama leprechaun "who all see a leprechaun say yeah" - weeks later all my boys including Tate were repeating this since they heard us saying it - my favorite is the amateur sketch:-) and the Grape lady "uuu uuu stop stop I can't breath" - my favorite is the little dance she does before she eats it, okay so we're not nice, but you've got to admit that these are funny!

April 2009: Owen, Butterflies, and Lorikeets

If you ever want to be grateful for the children God has sent you, be a chaperone on a 1st grade field trip ... seriously! Although Owen did have his moments at the Wild Animal Park in which I may have disagreed with this initial statement - like when I thought he was missing at the lion exhibit, heart attack - we had a fun time together.

My favorite was the fairy tale-like Butterfly Jungle in which you could walk amidst these graceful floating creatures. The electric-blue butterfly was by far the most incredible and elusive to photograph. Owen liked feeding the Lorikeets, I however was not quite a fan. Holding out gooey food for a bird to land on me to slirp up was not my idea of fun, just a great perk of being a chaperone. At least the bird didn't lick my arm like it did Owen's teacher who spilled some on herself. I did love that Owen has so excited to have me with him. I will hold on to that as long as I can.

Owen enjoyed feeding the deer. He opted to not get some of the food that the WAP provides to feed the deer, but thought the deer would enjoy a nice green leaf instead.

The bus driver was not much better than last year's field trip. You can read all about how much I loved that bus ride here. This is what I don't understand. If you are a bus driver by profession isn't it at the top of your job description to know how to get to and from the destination. Both times I have gone as a chaperone the bus driver has gone the wrong way and had to back track. Just a thought:-)

April 2009: George Washington, John Adams ...

How many of you can name all of the American Presidents? In order? I can say that Owen and Eyan can! Growing up we learned our Presidents by a song called "The President's Club" on the CD "Singin' Smart". Our country and its history are top priorities with my Mom and consequently we learn about all sorts of things I am guessing most families didn't.

This past year Owen has become fascinated with learning all the states, their capitals, and where they are located in on the map. His favorite game is a board game called "The States Game". To tell you the truth I'm not sure what the actual name of the game is. Anytime my Mom tried to get us to play it growing up there was a lot of moaning and groaning. Owen LOVES it, he is fantastic at it. From there he loves learning about the Presidents through books, little games given out in the Wendy's Kids Meal, and his lamintated meal placemat I bought at Wal-Mart which tells gives details about each President. President Obama along with all of the other Presidents join us at the kitchen table for each meal:-)

When my mom gave Owen the "Singin' Smart" CD it was a huge hit! How many times have I heard the song I'm not sure. Eyan, amazing with songs as mentioned in my previous post, joined right along in memorizing all of the United States Presidents (most of them with recognizable versions of their actual name:-) ). So when Talent Show time came around for our church my mom volunteered herself and O and E to sing their song. I thought, yeah right you're going to get them to sing in front of all those people. After bribing them with ice cream, my mom convinced them to do it. I couldn't believe it, I was such a proud Mommy, the boys did a phenomenal job. Another lady recorded it so I'm trying to get a copy.

Here are some cute photos of them: practicing in a room beforehand, my Mom announcing their song, and their darling performance on stage in the spotlight!

April 2009: My baby is 2! - Happy Birthday Tate:-)

I can't believe my little baby is 2. Tate is growing so fast, trying his best to keep up with his older brothers. He says fun, new things all the time. Our favorite thing he says is "Awesome that!" or "Awesome this!". He is hilarious when he yells this when he gets really excited about something - like a car-carrying semi on the freeway, an enormous bug, yummy treats in my purse, etc. It makes me laugh everytime I hear him. Liz, Kelli, and I named our Rockband Band "Awesome That!" as a tribute.

He loved his cake we had for him on his actual birthday eventhough we had already celebrated it at our Birthday Bash. Tate loves Pompa. My Dad honks each time he passes our house on his way home from work or other various times (not on the way to work however-my Dad has left for work to LA at 4 AM for over 15 years!) So now anytime Tate hears honking he says "Pompa" so matter of factly. Here he is in his beloved boots again. I love watching him eat when I'm not scared to death he's going to choke. He is a shover - rarely is food eatten in bites, its all shoved in his mouth by the palm of his hand. I was actually proud of him for attempting to use his fork for his piece of cake eventhough his bite was the whole piece:-).

Anyone who has been around Tate knows he is a real character, quite the personality. And he is so darn cute. He has now decided that since he can climb out of his crib he would like to be out of it at 5:45 AM!!!. In my groggy in between sleep and awake I hear a little voice about an inch away from my face, "Mommy up", "I wake up Mommy", "Beckfest Mommy", "Mommy up" and pulls the covers off of me and yanks on my arm. Its a good thing he's so cute!

June 2009: We Are the World

Well today Owen asked me, "Who is Michael Jackson?" so I felt it was my duty as a child of the 80s to show my boys who Michael Jackson was. I have had such a fun time watching some of those music videos and listening to some songs that remind me so much of growing up. My favorite Michael Jackson song has to be "Billie Jean". I loved this little clip. It just made me think of many family room dances sessions featuring my brother Luke!



Another song that I just loved as a young girl was "We Are the World". I recorded it from the radio, probably KIIS FM, to a cassette tape and listened to it over and over on my little boombox with 2 speakers and a rectangular handle. I loved watching this clip and seeing all these 80s singers-I LOVED Cyndi Lauper:-)



We love dancing at our house! My kids have some awesome moves. Owen's already practicing the pelvic thrust, a mini-Luke in the making. I was happy to share Michael Jackson with them today.

Playing Catch Up - February and March 2009

I realized after finally downloading my photos from my camera onto a computer, that I hadn't really posted photos since February. Well of course there was a good reason for that, not actually having a computer to download pictures to makes posting them very difficult. Well here I am trying to play catch up with our family's life that went on without a computer!:-)

February 2009: Mom's Birthday

February 2009: Owen's I-pod Valentines

February 2009: Visit from Grammy and Grandpa Johnson

March 2009: Family Birthday Bash

March 2009: Melinda & Isaiah Come Visit

March 2009: Eyan's 4th Birthday