Teandra's Wedding

Here is a slide show of all the pictures that I took at my sisters wedding in Utah. But for those of you who don't want to look at all of them I posted my favorites below.


Grandpa and alex at the temple. Every time that I talk to my dad now this is what he brings up because alex came in walked over to my dad with his arms up and said "Grandpa" (or someting close to that) so that he would pick him up. A drastic change from the first time that he saw him! It was good that he would go to Grandpa becuase the only other person that he wanted was Teda. He kept trying to get her to hold him while she was taking picture.

Me my mom and Iwalani, no wonder everyone thinks that they're sisters!

Chio really likes just hanging out with my mom.

The bride and groom.

This was the only way that I could get alex to stay still long enough to take a picture.

Teandra and Chio.

My dad trying to balance Chio. There's a video of it if you click on the slide show.

Aunt Shawn and her new grand baby.

The whole family together for who knows how long...unless someone gets married...hint, hint, hint....I mean Chantel of course not you, Nini.

Teda and me.

Little alex

Every time that alex sees me he does this, or covers his eyes, or various combinations of covering his eyes and his mouth at the same time. Apparently he doesn't like his medicine. I even caught him throwing away his eye drops which I was grateful that I caught because they are by far the most expensive medication that we have ever had to buy. While I was in the bathroom he pushed a chair up to the counter grabbed the eye drops and ran to the trash and threw them in. Luckily, we keep the trash can in the bathroom so I saw him do it other wise I would have just thought that I had miss placed it while I was franticly searching the entire house.

Christmas

We had a wonderful Christmas this year and if all of us weren't sick I think that it would have been our best yet. Somehow alex woke up knowing that today was Christmas and starting dividing all the presents into 4 piles; "daddy", "mommy", "baby", "i-ee"; they didn't have correspond to the names on the gifts but that's not the point.

These three are the pictures of alex opening his ornament-his first present on Christmas morning. This is by far his favorite ornament-a jack in the box tigger. He even sleeps with it.... and believe me it's not soft. It's pretty cute because he turns it slower and slower as he gets more tired until finally the music stops.

Chio got alex a bag of balloons and he loved them. You can also see teether Chio got on her lap in this video and at the very end you hear how alex says "balloon" I'm not even going to try to attempt to spell it; it took us months trying figure out what he was talking about when he would say it I think that this is my favorite video from Christmas morning.



Chio really didn't smile too much all morning but I think that had something to do with alex periodically running over and smothering her with hugs and kisses.



He got two match box cars and for the rest of the morning he kept trying to hold them while he opened the other gifts even if that meant that he had to stuff them down his pants so he wouldn't drop them.

We lost the screw to the bottom of the tee so that is why it keeps falling apart in this video...now it's ducked taped.





Clothes which I loved, he looks great in orange.

This is a picture of him in his Lightning McQueen shirt but he would get far enough back to take it. He puked all over it and was really sad that we had to take it off then he found it inside out and cleaned in the laundry basket and asked for it to be put back on again.

His dinosaurs and obsession with putting everything into lines.



The remote control car scared alex and I need to have a talk with Santa because now he brings us the remote and makes us hold him standing up while we drive it around; today he keeps asking for daddy because I can't make it do spins.

And on the way through New Mexico alex got to open a present because we wouldn't have been able to fit it in the car other wise.

And here is finally getting the present open.

Christmas is Almost Here

Man, as usually happens after a trip, I have so much to post and no time to do it in. So rather than leave stuff out I'm just going to take it slow posting everything from the vacation and our Christmas stuff through the end of the year so keep reading-although I may get more up than I think today because the TV rule in our house is you only get to watch it if you're sick or mommy got less than 3 hours of sleep and both apply today; so I foresee a lot of sleeping and movie watching.

I'm really excited for Christmas this year. I thought that I would be really sad being away from family, but it's not that bad since we just saw a lot of you last week. alex is really excited to open his presents and not too persistent at trying because he isn't feeling well. I have no idea what I'm getting and I haven't told Alex most of what he is getting either (this is really different because I usually tell or find out a couple of days after the presents are bought-it's like reading the end of a book which I always do). The kids have decided to fully embrace the Christmas spirit and have adorned themselves with Christmas colors; red (pink eye) and green (boogers). We still have a lot of things that we would like to do for Christmas but we are going to take it slow and only get done the things that are practical with everyone being sick- going out to look at lights (alex loves the Christmas lights), have the Christmas story (usually on Christmas Eve but Alex isn't here), make Christmas cookies and watch It's a Wonderful Life and other Christmasy movies.

But most of all I'm excited that our little family is going to be together! I love spending time with them , they are so fun. I'm so glad that you don't have to work on Christmas, Alex, thank you for going out this morning and getting juice for us- I'm sorry that I ever doubted you would go! After driving us home for two days straight Alex still went to the store before work to get us juice and medicine...what an amazing guy. I love you sooo much and miss you a ton have a nice Christmas Eve.

Here are some pictures from our trip that look like Christmas to me:

Dancing and dressing up.

Good food.

4 generations of family together.

Warm clothes.

These are pretty dark but if you look closely you can see Kari and alex sitting in front of the Christmas tree looking at the train and the presents-
seeing Christmas through the eyes of your kids is the coolest thing ever...

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Our Trip Home

This pretty much sums up the drive home...


Just Kidding, it wasn't like this the whole way. We had an amazing trip and a decent ride home I can't wait to tell you about it!

The Parade

This is probably going to be my last post before Christmas. We are going out of town tomorrow (for Teandra's Wedding in Utah YEAH!! ) and I wanted to get this up before Christmas. We went to our city's Christmas parade and alex was a big hit. Apparently alex is a really cute kid because he was causing a lot of commotion. He was sitting along the side of the road in his daddy's lap waving at the people on the floats and people kept stopping to say hi to him and make sure that he had candy. Now alex isn't a candy kind of a kid, his soft spot is fruit snacks, but the people that would walk beside the floats and give out candy would stand in a little line with their floats moving on without them to say hi to alex. alex wasn't the only two year old there and by far not the most excited kid (he really only liked the suped up cars and motor cycles) there were tons of people but the float people kept focusing on alex-they were even taking pictures. The most noticeable instance, however, was this lady on the sing language float. There were about 25 ladies sitting on a hayride like float doing synchronized signing to Christmas Music. One lady saw alex and started waving really exaggeratedly, and alex didn't notice her, so then instead of just continuing with her song she got up off the hay and leaned down off the float and started waving even more until Alex finally pointed her out to alex and he waved and she smiled even bigger and got on with her song. The other women on the float didn't wave to anyone and alex was the only one that I saw that lady wave to. The whole thing actually freaked me out and afterward I asked Alex if he had noticed anything weird and he said, "Yeah, I thought that someone was going to come steal my kid." My fear exactly! I didn't even dress him nice in fact I kept thinking that he looked kind of hoboish. The other weird think about the night was we were able to wear T-shirts for the parade; that's weird because the only thing that I can remember about parades when I was growing up was freezing my butt off. Here are some pictures, but I kept forgetting to get the camera out because I was rocking Chio.

Merry Christmas to all if I don't post before then and KEEP BLOGGING! I love reading what you have to say!

Singing...

At the end of "Cats & Dogs" (an incredibly boring movie that alex likes) they sing this song and he likes it and has sung along with it when it came on for about a year now. Today Alex saw him do it right on cue and thought that it was the cutest thing ever. I guess that since I am surrounded by cuteness all the time I forget what you might like to see. I'm packing so ignore the mess please.

Our Missing Decoration

To My In Laws: On of my favorite decorations is missing some things, see if you can guess what it is.

Have you guessed yet?

Getting closer?

Wow family and color for two pages....and then....


My sister in law had a wonderful idea! She gave us all a scrapbook and every Valentines day we send a scrap booking page about the previous year. I love this tradition that we are trying to start and I think that it's a good idea for all family's that are separated by distance. Thanks Cathy for your idea this is alex's favorite album to look at even with just the two pages.

Christmas Time

I love Christmas Time. I feel like we should all just sit around, talk, play games and; of course; make goodies. But these yuletide feelings don't come until the weather gets cold and I feel like we need to stay in and use the oven to warm up our house (we only use the oven for strategic baking purposes- such as a cold front coming in and all of a sudden we have to make bread). So today was one of those colder days and we were sitting around with alex rocking Rocio in the big blue chair. So I went to go and get the camera but then alex only wanted to take pictures. Then, as you will see, after he took his pictures he held the camera up to Chio's head so that she could take a picture of him.

Kiki vs. Kiora

Nick names are big in my family and if any of you who know my dad know this; I pretty sure that he is incapable of calling a person by their given name. So when I was in first grade my dad came to my school to do a presentation and called me by Kiki and, much to my dismay back then, it stuck. Over the years I have gotten over the humiliation of having my nick name made public (meaning by second grade) and usually have my friends and family call me by kiki. That being said I never introduce myself as Kiki I just don't feel like that's my name. The closest that I'll come is "Hi, I'm Kiora but you can call me Kiki" and I'll say this to perhaps...a roommate that I foresee becoming a good friend until, at her insistence, I start to date her brother.

Why am I telling you this? I don't want any of you to feel like you have to call me Kiora, I don't care either way just whatever you prefer. I never thought that my husband was going to call me Kiki and I think that Alex has called me Kiora about three times in our marriage and it sounded awkward every time. I love my name but I also feel closer to the people who call me Kiki.

My Husbands Blog

For all of you who don't regularly read my husbands blog here is a video of my daughter he put up that I, of course, think is worth watching. I love little alex laughing in the background and then running over to do just what his daddy is doing to the baby.

Todos Mis Hijos

I put the title in English first but I think that it's a soap opera so I changed it just in case; I didn't want to give you the wrong idea. I'm pretty sure that at this time in my life I am going to get credit for talking care of three children. The other day I was holding Chio and sitting at the computer desk talking on the land line. My husband was taking care of alex and they were supposed to be eating breakfast. alex starts crying really hard and yelling at Alex and I can't go in there because I can't get off the phone; I had cleaned, set up breakfast, and got out toys before I made my call so I could have an uninterrupted conversation. So when the call is finally done I go out and little alex is still sitting at the table crying. I ask him what is wrong and he says that his daddy hit him and needs to go to time out. So I keep walking by the table and look over and see that Alex is already in time out, with the timer, looking properly ashamed of himself. Apparently alex and Alex were playing and Alex hit alex harder than he had intended and since alex was sick it didn't go over very well.

Harry Potter

I love Harry Potter, especially the books. So when alex and I got the chance to watch the beginning of it (the not scary part) I jumped at the opportunity. He liked it, he kept pointing and talking about stuff on the movie then all of a sudden he got really excited and ran over to under the tree and pulled out this stick.

I'm sure that you can guess what he did with it. This stick is not like the usual sticks that he finds which are used for makeshift swords and baseball bats. This is only a wand. I was surprised that a stick that looked so convincingly like a wand came off of our Christmas tree and more surprisingly that he was able to keep it a secret so long.

Ward Christmas Party

Alex and I were asked to play Mary and Joseph for our ward party. All the other times that we have been asked to do this it was for a live Nativity where they pretty much asked everyone thirty and under to be in it-so I said yes. As it turns out that is not how this ward does it. So the fact the we have a new, cute, precious, quite baby was, I'm pretty sure, the reason that we were chosen. Unfortunately one of those characteristics doesn't describe our baby at all. So when I found out that they wanted me to walk around like I was pregnant, go behind the manger have someone who had been holding Chio hand her to me in swaddling clothes, and then we would lay her down on some pillows and straw to have the shepherds and wise men come and see her; I warned them that there was a "possibility" that we would need to use a baby doll instead. I hope that they weren't shocked when Chio was screaming her head off when the time came.

Here is our little man from Bethlehem.

I wish that this was the way that we wore our hair today because I thought that mine looked good when the majority of it was covered up so you couldn't see how frizzy it was. They gave us the costumes that they wanted us to wear and I think that the Mary was supposed to be about a foot shorter than I am. So what I had was 3/4 length sleeves and a foot of my pants showing no one mentioned it though.

And these last picture are the ones that Alex took at the party. They really decorated beautifully and we had a wonderful time. Sorry there were no pictures of Alex and only blurry pictures of the cultural hall (Alex thought these looked cooler), Chio was having a rough night.

alex's Exercize Video

If any of you have been wanting to have a shape like alex here is how he got to where he is today! We really liked at the end with the cars. This video has only alex and Alex in it, Alex is going to put one up of Chio so ask him about it.

New Bobby

Because I'm such a genius I accidentally posted todays blog on my mothers blog so to read about New Bobby click on this link.

Oops

Sorry, I just love to see pictures of myself so I posted mine by its self. Just kidding I went back to Cathy's blog and saw that she added that she needed a picture of our family as well. So here's:
our Christmas card spoiler,

the baby blessing,

and the day that Chio was born...these are the only ones that we have of our whole family. I didn't check the blog until after alex had gone to bed but if you need a different one we can take it on Friday when Alex gets home from work.