starting over

so it's been a long loooong time since I last posted on my blog.  I decided to update some stuff on my blog to make it more relevant to how our family is now.  I changed the name from the jen's plus 2 mainly for the fact that now we have 3 kids.  the jen's plus 3 didn't really sound right to me so I picked "family hugs" since it's a thing that our little family of 5 like to do when we're all together.  I really love our family hugs especially since our kids are usually the ones to initiate them.

I named this post 'starting over' cause i'm gonna try to post more on here than my fb... i've said this before & i think i've tried this like 3 times already! haha, but hey, 3rd times the charm right? on my fb page, i often post little stories about our kids and funny things they say, but then i feel like some people get tired of hearing about stuff i post.  I really do it for personal reasons anyway (I tend to forget stuff & I wanna remember things my kids say cause it's usually hilarious).

so a little update on our family life.. our 3rd child, Nico, just turned 1 on Oct 19.  He is such a happy baby and sooo easy going.  I don't know if it's because he's the 3rd child and we're pros (yah right!) but it seems like all his milestones are coming so easy! (knock on wood)  He started sleeping through the night at 2-3 months old, sat on his own around 5-6 months, took his first steps around 9 months and started really walking at 10 months. Now he's practically running all over the house! haha.  Jeremiah is now 7 and in 1st grade and Emma is 5 and in preschool.  They are doing extremely well in school and love it. Well, Jeremiah likes it, but Emma loves it. I'm so amazed at how well they learn and how much they retain in their little brains!  To daddy's excitement, J & Em watched Star Wars this past year and have come to love it.  They often hum the songs and/or say lines from the movies.  For like a month we watched Star Wars episode IV every day.  They would never let me watch the next episodes so I would have to watch them when they went to sleep (& yes, I never watched Star Wars episode IV till this year.  I think I watched episode 3 in the movie theater, but I didn't really get it till this year. lol)  Anyway, this leads me to our new dog.  He was born on June 3rd this year to my sister's dog and Jenner surprisingly and finally said yes to the kids many requests of getting a dog!  We got him during the peak of kids Star Wars craze so they wanted to name him Jedi.  He's a cutie patootie, but sometimes his chewing on the furniture & pooping/peeing on my rugs makes me wanna ring his neck! haha.

till the next post! hopefully that'll be sometime this year :)

keep looking, keep looking

So I usually tell the kids to look away from the tv when a commercial for a scary movie comes on.  Jeremiah's on spring break this week & it was during the late morning so I was completely caught off guard.  I wasn't really paying attention to what they were playing but out of nowhere I hear Jeremiah talking to Emma... "keep looking, keep looking, keep looking..."  I look up & there's a commercial for a scary movie on the tv so I say, "Jeremiah!" He stops, then looks at Em & says, all sinister, "Now you're gonna have bad dreams"  GAH! How mean! They both pray every night that they don't have bad dreams so I gave him the "do you want someone to do that to you" speech.  It must be the older sibling syndrome...always mean to the younger ones! (yes, I'm a younger one so I know what I'm talking about. haha)  Poor Em. Hope she doesn't do that to the baby.

We're diaper free!...for a little while at least!

Haven't been here for a while, sad to say..but you gotta start again somewhere! I don't know if it's just easier to log on to FB, but I tend to put everything on there rather than here.  I know I said before that I'd start putting everything on my blog, but just like everyone else I tend to go for the quick & easy route most of the time.  

Anyway, new news, we're expecting again!  We were on the fence about having a 3rd child and I swear Jenner & I talked about it almost everyday.  One day would be, "ya, let's have another one!", the next day would be, "I don't know, should we?"  However, looking back, we never once said a definite NO, so I guess we were just waiting for God to give us our answer :)  We are all definitely excited!

Other exciting stuff happened recently and today confirmed it!  We, or should I say I, finally got my 3yo, Em fully potty trained!  I don't know why I had such a hard time.  Everyone said that girls were easier, but I had a way easier time with Jeremiah.  Maybe I secretly didn't want my little Em to grow up...BUT, diapers/pull-ups were becoming a pain in the patootie!  Anyway, she's been able to go #1 for at least 2 weeks now, but #2 was still not making it to the toilet.  Today, however, I am proud to say a #2 has made it to the toilet and my Em is officially toilet trained!!!  Now I can go buy her those princess panties I promised her! :)  She's gonna be excited. I can't wait to see the look on her face! I'm gonna enjoy this diaper free time cause come Oct/Nov it's back to diapers for at least 2-3 years. lol

MLK weekend

i finally got a chance to download pics from last weekend.  sunday was my first trip to Fresh & Easy.  my nephew, mikey, loves that place and jenner said they had reasonable prices.  other than it being small, I liked it and I am definitely adding it to our places to shop for groceries...

ALTHOUGH,

you can't beat buying a cart full of fruits & veggies for under $20 at Henry's! :)   

anyway, they had some uncooked pizza dough at fresh & easy and i thought it would be fun if the kids made their own pizza.  they were pretty excited-YAY! good idea me!

sauce...

cheese...

now the wait...

& viola! PIZZA (with extra extra cheese)!

em was pretty proud of her creation

& j requested a photo of him eating his

mommy & daddy had our own, but i forgot to take pics. boo!

it was muy delicioso!

on monday the kids wanted to finger paint!!!

i knew it was a good idea to keep my art supplies from design school!

(trying to convince myself i'm not a hoarder & working at becoming a semi-minimalist. lol)

my little artists hard at work...

emma's creations...

the bottom one looks like a rat! eek!

j's creations.  he said the bottom one is train tracks...not surprised! haha



family day

to my surprise we had an impromptu family day today! I didn't have school and apparently Jenner only had to work at one of his jobs and got off early.  we rarely have days to just hang out, so today was perfect! 

Jenner heard about this all you can eat vietnamese restaurant and wanted to try it out.  I love me some Pho and spring rolls so it was a done deal for me!  For the most part the kids did well.  It helped that there was a fish tank the length of one whole side of the restaurant, though.  You never can tell how J & Em are gonna do when we go out to eat.  Actually Em is all about eating- definitely her mother's (& father's) daughter, so we don't really worry about her not getting our money's worth in that dept, but J can be a picky eater. 

Anyway, I had no complaints about this restaurant & the food was pretty yummy. 

I don't remember what the name of it was though.  I'm pretty bad at that. haha.  All I remember was that it was across the street from Tapioca Express! :)

After lunch we went window shopping! YAY!

Jenner had been wanting to take me to the Costco for businesses -there's a name for it that escapes me at the moment, but, OH!  It's the Costco Business Center...

I think?

(I should really do some brain exercises!)

Anyway, we went there and I LOVED IT!!!  I wish they had more items for baking, but I was so excited to find out they had a 25lb bag of flour and sugar!  I had only seen those online until today! 

We ended up buying more than we needed, I mean, wanted, but only spent a little over $30!

That's amazing for a costco trip!

We didn't really have anywhere else to go after Costco, so we asked the kids where they wanted to go and J said..

"THE PARK!"

So, to the park we went.  Of course he requested to go to the park with the train tracks that was near our house.  Our plan was to walk around the track a couple times, but Jenner found an outlet that, in all our years of going to this park, had never seen before! So we followed it and walked over a couple "bridges",

(which were really just a foot off the ground, if that. haha)
to be precise,

the "shake-shake bridges" as the kids called them,

 in reference to the Thomas the Train, Misty Island Rescue DVD, of course.

Anyway, this track went in between the golf course & park to the far end where the big playground was. 

After a while of playing on the playground we tried to get the kids to leave, but Emma found a friend and sat down at the table in the playground and said,

"Hi! I'm Emma!"

it was so cute and I wish we could've stayed longer to watch them, but it was pretty cold.

so, with more coaxing and a bribe of walking back on the train tracks we finally left.

When we got home it was too late for a nap so we just made some adobo for dinner, got the kids showered and put them in bed early..YAY! :)

now, on to exercising!

motivation! motivation! motivation!

you're skin-ny mommy!

the other night jenner went out for our good friend's birthday get together.  it was too late for us to get a babysitter so i stayed home with the kids.  after dinner i let them play while i watched a little of the miss america pageant on tv.  jeremiah happened to walk by me as the evening gown portion of the pageant was on so I told him, "look j! what a nice dress she has on! and she's so skinny! i wish i was skinny like her!"  he looked at me and said, " you ARE skinny mommy!" I thanked him graciously, then he said, "ya! look at your hand, there's skin on it! you have skin all over mommy, see? your skin-ny!" 

I just laughed and said, "you're right, J! i AM skinny!"

oh, the minds of children! they are so smart! :)

i'm pretty bad at blogging...

but i'm really good at facebooking - which i'm going to try to switch & reverse this year.  I have a tendency to update my fb status often with little stories about j & em and after i click on post i think to myself that i should have just put it on my blog. 

here's to more blogging this year!

:)

the holidays were awesome and full of family & fun. 

this was our tree...

& our family tradition of jeremiah putting the tree topper on...

this was thanksgiving at the delacruz's

(for some reason we didn't take pics at my family's houses. boo!)

christmas morning at home...

mommy was kinda surprised that Santa didn't think of the mess these blocks made, but was happy the kids were happy.  jeremiah was so excited that he got the Thomas the train Track Master trains he asked Santa for.  he's officially obsessed with Thomas the train...and friends!

later that day, we got ready for late lunch at Lolo Rudy's and dinner at Owo Pete & Grandma Marie's house.  jeremiah didn't take a nap so he wasn't excited about me wanting to take his pic.

here's the chaos that is christmas at grandma marie's every year.  

& this was just one side of the room! :)

& finally, NYE at home.  Usually I'm the only one up for the turn of the new year, but this year everyone stayed up with me!  I was so excited that I made us all party hats! :)

this pic was taken right after em told me that I was her "bes pwend!"

<3

emma was so excited to say happy new year!  we missed the actual countdown cause we were on the phone greeting family so we did our own countdown. the kids loved it!

jeremiah wanted to test out his camera skills. 

it took him about 30 mins to take this pic, but he did pretty well!

here was our last minute NYE treats...

& so starts another diet! haha.

I think I gained 10 lbs over the holidays! I started my official workout this week...not gonna say what exactly that entails because I have a bad habit of not sticking with it when I admit that I'm exercising, so I'll just keep it to myself :)

We thank God for the blessings he gave us in 2010

& we look forward to all the blessings to come in the new year!

Happy 2011!!!