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!!!

family photos

Tanya Mercado Photography Blog: The Balat Family Video

so ever since Jeremiah was born I've been big on taking family photos every year. In prior years we've had our good friend, Ferdi (frameandfocusphotography), take our pics...we'll probably hit him up this year for photos too cause I just got the kids Christmas outfits and they are too cute I can hardly stand it! haha. Anyway, this year, one of my good friends from a previous job, Tanya, started taking pics professionally. I love her photo style (She's really good at scrapbooking too!) and I was excited to ask her to take our pics! We also got to finally take pics with my sister & her family (I'll post photos again in the near future). We took some joannemichelle photos as well, but we were missing my cousin so we'll have to re-do those business pics later. Anyway, the link above its to Tanya's blog and our family montage. Hope you love it as much as we do!!! :D

It's our 5th Anniversary!!!

It's Jenner & my 5th wedding anniversary today.  We didn't really plan anything special for today, just because I had clinical almost all day and Jenner had to work.  I think the only thing we did plan was to have dinner somewhere with the kids.  Thanks to our little family business that I started with my sister and cousin (joannemichelletreats.blogspot.com) we've been able to take the kids out a couple times a month.  It's nothing extravagant, but it's good to get the kids, well, all of us out of the house all together once in a while.  The kids are at the age where they can feed themselves well, plus they're so curious about everything around them, we might as well use this time as a learning experience so that they can learn some social skills as well. 

Like I said, I had clinicals almost all day today.  I woke up at the crack of dawn hoping the day would go by quickly.  Don't get me wrong, I like being able to experience new things in clinical, but this time around isn't really any different from our past clinicals.  Welllll, we all got to the clinical site early to research our patient, but hit a road block because it seemed that the charge nurse was not aware we were coming early.  There was a little mix up and no communication.  Long story short, we needed to pick patients, but didn't know which ones we weren't allowed to get or which one had precautions.  Finally we met our instructor for our morning meeting and he said 1 of us would be able to go to the ER and another would be able to go to Ambulatory (which is basically pre-op).  We all put our names on a piece of paper and our instructor picked 2 randomly.  Luckily, I was one of the people picked!  The other was a friend of mine from past semesters.  Guys usually like to go to the ER, so not knowing what was in store I chose Ambulatory.  My instructor took me up to meet the charge nurse and she suggested for me to stand in on a surgery!!!  I was soooo excited!!! When I was younger I saw a total knee replacement surgery on PBS and was so enthralled by it!  I thought, wow! wouldn't it be cool to see one of these in person!? Back then I didn't even consider a health care profession, but now, today, I got to witness a total knee replacement!!!!  Talk about crazy!  I got to shadow the pre-op nurse and watch her prep the patient about what was gonna happen and she let me prep the IV bag (of course, I didn't put the actual IV in) and I got to use a doppler to try to find the patients pulse.  Then after a couple hours, I helped her take the patient to the operating room!  I even got to change into surgical scrubs...booties, hat, mask, face shield.  I didn't go near the sterile field, but I was close enough to see everything!  Everyone was so welcoming and the nurse in pre-op was a great teacher!  It was my best clinical experience yet!  Can't wait for more days like this! :D

Now I just gotta wait for the kids to wake up from their nap and for Jenner to get off work so we can have family time!  What a perfect Anniversary/Friday/Clinical/Family Day all in one!!!

my! how time flies!

It was Jeremiah's 4th and Emma's 2nd birthday on Saturday and Sunday, respectively, this weekend.  We planned for a small Halloween Costume Party, but with all our family & friends and their children, small is no longer an option! haha.  Miah & Em had soo much fun at their party! Jeremiah dressed up as Thomas the Train, of course! and our little Emma was a ballerina.  Jenner & I were surprised so many people dressed up! We're thinking we might continue this Halloween Costume Party theme.  It's so hard to choose a theme party when you have a boy and a girl whose birthday's are so close together! Our solution, Halloween! :D

Above is a pic of Miah & Em when everyone is singing Happy Birthday and you can tell how happy they truly are that all their friends were singing for them.  When everyone started to sing Jeremiah looked at me with a surprised look and smiled.  He even started to sing along with everyone!  Emma loved it too!  She knew exactly when/how to blow out her candle.  I'm so proud of both of them!  That was my favorite part of the party because the happiness in their faces was priceless! 

Eventhough it can be rough sometimes, being a Mom is the most rewarding title ever!  I love my kids so much and I can't believe how fast they are growing!  All day Sat & Sun, everytime I looked at Miah & Emma, I just thought of the day they were born.  I can still feel all the love I felt for them back then on top of all the love I have for them now.  The whole experience of Motherhood is awesome and I wouldn't trade it for anything! Jenner & I are sooo blessed to have Jeremiah & Emma in our lives.  They are so loving and caring and they make us laugh everyday!  I am truly head over heals in love with my little family! No words can express my love and joy for them!

Happy Birthday my Jeremiah and Emma Michelle!  I love you both sooo much!!!