skip to main |
skip to sidebar
first day of preschool, August 2008 
last day of preschool, June 2009
today was jakey's last official day of his first year of preschool! he is finished in the 3s class and will start in the 4s class in the fall. the year went by so quickly! i was hugely pregnant when he started and he was so sad those first few weeks when we would drop him off. now he can't get in the door at school any faster and he has a sister who is almost 9 months old! he loves his teacher, mrs. tetzloff, and has made so many good buddies at school. we walk either to or from school almost every day (sometimes both) and have had a lot of good little chats on our walks. and jake has become quite a good walker - he can do a mile easily!a lot has happened this year and time has gone by far too quickly for my taste. but each end signifies a new beginning and i can't wait to see what's next.
jacob is in some of the demo videos for new leapfrog toys! in a post i wrote in april there's a picture of him holding a "Text & Learn" toy. he got that for "acting" in leapfrog's demo videos. i'm so proud of him! he even let me have a cameo. to see the demo, go to the leapfrog website (http://www.leapfrog.com/toys/)
click on the movie clapboard on either the Scribble & Write, the Text & Learn or the Learn & Groove.
He is the second or third demo for those toys. you have to click on the orange arrows on the right to scroll through the demos.
we sure had a good time!
may was such a busy month for us! we did have some headway with the living room project, but now it's at a bit of a standstill. we're waiting on crown molding, but i've no idea when that project will take place. but it's good for now.
on may 6th our little boy turned 4!! jakey is such a big boy now. he's a wonderful little helper and such a sweetheart. he loves to make annabelle laugh and loves to play with her. in fact, if he hears her laughing, even if he is across the house, he will come running and say, "what made her laugh? can i try?" and sometimes he'll cry when i have to put her down for a nap because he wants to play with her. cherish these moments, right? so precious.
for jacob's birthday my great friend, jamie, and i threw a carnival party. jake and joey are 11 days apart and this is the second birthday party they've shared. it was such a blast to plan with jamie (she was awesome! check out her ferris wheel cake below!) and the party was so much fun!
annabelle has been growing up way too fast for my taste. i'm pretty sure she's our last but she is just getting too big too quickly! she is sitting up and moving around, but not crawling. she scoots her way across the floor somehow and is really working on manipulating her little body. she is such a good little eater and is now working on finger foods. she rebelled for a month or so, but now she's pretty good. little lady LOVES shredded cheese! has to be sharp cheddar... so picky! :)
ben is working up at cal state hayward in some underground vaults for the time being. thank God he has a job. i am still doing boot camp, tutoring, blogging for my mom & prasad, fliers for dean souza (realtor) and all the fun stuff being a mom involves.
i feel like i'm writing one of those letters you send with a christmas card. we never send those letters. i guess now's as good a time as any for that!
enough for now... every time i blog i say i'll be better from now on... i really will try! things have been so busy, but so good. i truly love my life!
i started this entry tonight because i have been looking through my picasa folders for about an hour now looking for a picture of my family, just the 4 of us. what's really sad is the most recent one i have is the one we had done at picture people for christmas, and the only one before that is of us 4 in the hospital! this is terrible! i have photos of everyone with my kids and husband but me! i guess that's kind of typical, though. anyway, that wasn't very exciting so i thought i'd talk about easter. we had the most eventful easter ever! saturday we spent the day with our in-laws. ben's sister and her family were in town for the weekend, so we all got to spend a lot of time together saturday. it was so much fun seeing the three little cousins together. they did an egg hunt in karen and steve's beautiful and huge backyard. they had a blast. they all tolerated the photo op very well, too. sunday morning we had our own egg hunt here and i actually mentioned to ben that we should get a photo of the 4 of us before we left, but we were out of time. we went over to the shacklefords' for the most delicious brunch. after stuffing ourselves we headed over to uncle chris & aunt koleen's to stuff ourselves some more. such phenomenal food, as always!! the kids had so much fun, as did we. we have nicknamed uncle chris the baby whisperer. he calms annabelle right down every time. it's amazing. anyway, 4 egg hunts and LOTS of candy later, easter is over for another year. i love easter.
well my good friend, jessica, is a writer for the bay area news group. she and i go way back, back to 1992 in fact. maybe even earlier. we met in high school after both dating the same guy. she and i forged a very strong bond back then and remained close for several years. as things go, we parted ways at some point in college and just lost touch. when i was pregnant with jacob we met up for dinner at a mexican restaurant in danville. we had such a great time, but managed to lose touch yet again. i suppose me having a new baby and her getting seriously ahead in her career had just a little to do with it.
then came facebook.
ahh, facebook. i have a love/hate relationship with facebook, but one thing it did do for me was put me back in touch with jess! we met up again at a place in danville she was reviewing for her paper called Easy 925. (neat atmosphere and fabulous drinks, in my opinion... though it has been years since i've been out for cocktails!) that's a lot of unnecessary information for the real story here. jess and i got to talking about the economy and marriage and how the economy is affecting our relationship. it started out as casual chatter, but then i made a comment about occasionally (and i truly do mean occasionally, ben!) sneaking a new t-shirt into my target purchases. she liked that line and apparently her editor did, as well, so the next thing we knew we were having our photo taken for the paper! our photo was on the front page of the TIMEOUT section of the contra costa times and the first few paragraphs of her article were about us! it felt a little silly being photographed in our pajamas with a glass of wine and a movie on (that we were too nervous to actually watch), but that is honestly our idea of a good date night and i guess that's what they wanted for the article! the man who came to take our photos took them of us putting the kids to bed, hanging out on the couch, opening the wine, etc. we didn't get to see any of them (and i'm assuming we never will) until we saw the photo on the paper. lucky for me my friend gina let me know the article had run, and even luckier was that my mother-in-law, karen, was able to run out and nab a few copies!
like i said, we felt a little silly, but it was also nice to know that she liked our story and thought we were relatable enough to put in the paper. enjoy the article.
http://www.contracostatimes.com/search/ci_12118210?IADID=Search-www.contracostatimes.com-www.contracostatimes.com
I actually wrote this post about 2 weeks ago and just never got around to publishing it or posting photos. so here we go!
Thursday, April 2, 2009today jacob had a little video shoot for leapfrog! we went for a casting call last week and it was right during his nap time. i was sure he'd have a meltdown or just not be in the mood to do what they asked. i was wrong. he was so good, talkative, singing... he was terrific. so much so, i guess, that they decided to use him on their website! so today we drove into bernal heights to the house of one of the creative designers at leapfrog. his house was fantastic. one entire wall was a chalkboard. amazing. anyway, they took us upstairs and let jakey sit on the bed and play with some of their new products. he was having fun and i was just loving watching him. i was sort of hoping i would be able to sneak my camera out and get a photo of him in action, but there was just no way. so i'm standing there, watching, wanting to talk to him and get him doing some of the things the people were asking him to do. you know how it is, you feel like you have the right words and the right intonation that will really get him going. wrong! he will respond when he feels like responding. which wasn't too much at first. so they asked me to get in there with him, sit him on my lap, and play with him! me and my poufy hair, sloppy sweatshirt and all. but it was fun. a little nervewracking, but at least i could see all of this from jake's perspective. big camera right in your face, lights shining in your eyes, people telling you over and over what to do... it wasn't as bad as it sounds, but it definitely gave me some sympathy for when he just feels like he's done. anyway, it was interesting and fun. they said the videos should be up on the website in about a month, so keep your eyes out! i'll post the link as soon as i can find it. and we'll just wait to see if we get another call!
(here's a photo of jakey with the new toy he got for being in the video - this is the text & learn, i think)
first day of preschool, August 2008 
