Rain Man

Close friends and family affectionately call Eric “Rain Man”. Why, you ask? Many reasons, but I’ll share a few. First, he can do math in his head. I’m not talking large addition and subtraction, I’m sure a lot of people can do that. The kind of math that I’m referring to is large multiplication and division. Stuff most people would do with a calculator. Don’t get me wrong, he is very fast with the addition and subtraction. I used to use Eric instead of a calculator when I balanced my checkbook in college (he was faster). Also, Eric tends to get a little ‘hot water burn baby’ in most social situations. The final example I’ll give you is when we first met, all of his vitamins and cds were alphabetized and categorized. It was quite a site. This precise organization has dissipated a little over the years due to lack of time and other things (or children) requiring his attention. However, the Rain Man in him is still there as evidenced by his projects over the past few days. He has cleaned out and organized all of the closets. This was a huge undertaking. Our closet especially, well at least my side. Let me say, that I haven’t really organized or done much since we moved and I was pregnant with the babies when we moved into the house. That being said, including maternity clothes, I had 6 different sizes of clothes. Needless to say I had a lot of clothes that don’t fit any more, so off they into the ‘donate’ pile. Eric also organized and cleaned out his side of the closet. This was a big deal because Eric has a ridiculous wardrobe. He has more clothes that I do (or did). Between the two of us we have 8 huge bags going to Goodwill. I’m so proud of him for taking on this challenge and for helping me. He also organized our walk-in pantry. The pantry was another area that had gotten out of control. He used his magic and viola it looks great and I actually have some extra space. Eric also went “Rain Man” on the garage. It now holds a ping-pong table, his Christmas present from my parents, and a dartboard. I’m so impressed by how easy all of this is for Eric. He just kept asking me, “How do you eat an elephant?” I know the answer is, one bite at a time, but I decided that I would never eat an elephant. I don’t think I could ever take that first bite! I love having everything organized and I’m really disappointed in myself for letting it get so disorganized. I would love to blame it on the craziness of the last 15 months, but I hate excuses. I will just say, that now that it is done my goal is to keep everything the way it is. Thanks, Rain Man. You are the best and I love you!

Christmas Day

Here is our Christmas day in a nutshell.

7:00am – Syd woke us up. We thought she would wake up much earlier so we were pretty happy that it was this late. We were up until midnight assembling toys.
7:30am – The babies woke up.
7:35am – The kids found the picnic table that Santa left in the playroom. It is a big hit.
The five of us opened our presents. The kids were so cute.
8:00am – Macky was the first one to climb on top of the table. Eric had predicted that someone would climb on it by 11:00am, but our little circus bear couldn’t help herself.
My family joined us to open presents and we opened presents from our families that live far away. The kids made out like bandits. They got so much great stuff.
10:30am –Started cooking and getting ready for lunch.
12:01pm – Lunch was served. All of the food was so delicious. Everything tastes better when shared with family and friends.
1:00pm – Kids laid down for naps and we began to clean up the house.
4:00pm – Kids woke up and we actually opened some of the presents. Before, we just unwrapped them. The kids loved playing with all of their new toys.
5:30pm-8:30pm – Ate dinner, bathed kids, ate bedtime snacks & bedtime.
What a busy day!

I had a wonderful Christmas. I loved having Syd wake us up. I know very soon we will have three little ones climbing in our bed telling us, “Wake up, its Christmas, its Christmas.” I can’t wait. I loved seeing the look on Syd’s face when she saw the picnic table and when she found her cookie for Santa with a bite out of it. The babies are still kind of young, but each year will just get better and better. I know I say this often, but I love our little family of five. I really did have a Merry Christmas.

We love our picnic table. Thanks Santa!

Paper explosion part 1

Paper explosion part 2

What is it Mommy?

Mommy and Macky after Christmas lunch.

Christmas Eve

Today was a busy day. Here is my to do list.

Make banana nut bread
Sauté veggies for stuffing
Assemble & decorate gingerbread house
Vacuum
Laundry
Wrap Eric’s presents
Go to Parent’s for tamales & posole ( hominy, pork and red chile stew YUM-O!)
Assemble picnic table and kitchen for kids.

Syd and I assembled and decorated the gingerbread house during nap-time. Hopefully Syd will be extra tired from skipping her nap and will fall asleep easily. She did a great job decorating the house. It was so much for both of us. I will say that engineers should be careful about doing projects like this. I wanted to make sure that it was perfectly lined up, and that all of the walls were square. I finally decided that most people doing these aren't engineers, so I had to just leave it with a crooked wall and a slanting roof. Syd was just as bad. She was very particular about where she put each piece of candy. She put a lot of thought into where she put each piece. She is so cute. This is definitely a project that we will do each year.

Even though today was super busy it was still a really good day. I got a lot accomplished (everything on the list except the last one) and was still able to have fun with the kids and spend time with my family. I can’t think of a better way to spend the holidays.

Well, I guess I should get off of here at start putting presents under the tree and assembling the kitchen and picnic table. It is going to be a long night and I have a feeling that it will be a very early morning. Merry Christmas.

Family Pictures

I’m posting most of our family pictures. Cara of CaraMia Photography took the pictures. Check out her blog http://www.caramiaphotography.blogspot.com/. I can’t even tell you how low key this photo session was. It was really easy and I think that is why we got so many good pictures. I was really worried that we wouldn’t get any good pictures of the five of us, but Cara managed to get a lot of really good ones. My disclaimer: it was about 40 degrees and the wind was blowing about 35 MPH. So, if in a few of them we look a little cold and wind blown that’s because we were. We were all pretty cold by the end. Still, I’m super happy with them and can’t wait to get them printed and in frames. Thanks again, Cara.

Finally

Lately I’ve found myself using finally in almost every sentence. I’ve decided to share a few examples with you.

Eric and I finally bought a new camera. We have been debating on which one to buy for a while. I thought I wanted a SLR, but I knew that I would probably never find the time to learn to use it correctly. After a lot of research, we decided on a Panasonic Lumix. It is the perfect cross between a SLR and a point and shoot. I’ll include some pictures we’ve taken with it at the end of the post. I think it is a perfect addition to the ‘Lotinez’ Family.

We finally had some family pictures taken. I got them back today and I love them! My friend Angela knows a girl from church that takes amazing pictures and agreed to take ours. (Thanks Cara!) We drove up to Oklahoma last weekend and had them done in front of the old school house in Moore. I’m so happy with the way they turned out. I’m planning on posting them soon. If you want to check out her photography page it is http://www.caramiaphotography.blogspot.com/.

It finally feels like winter in Texas. For the longest time I didn’t know if would ever get cold here, not that I’m complaining. As many of you know, I hate the cold, but it doesn’t really feel like Christmas time without a little bit of chill to the air. I actually had to break out my winter coat. I didn’t know if I would ever use that thing again and I was a little sad, because it is brand new. I got it the last winter we were in Missouri and I really like it. At least I know that I will get to wear it a few days here and there.

I’m finally making some progress on my Christmas shopping. I still have quite a bit of shopping left to do, but I’ve made a dent in my list. Unfortunately I will probably have to brave a few stores this weekend. The rest I can probably buy online and just get them late since I won’t be giving them away until after Christmas.

We finally put up our tree and we haven’t had near the problems that I thought we would. The babies look at it and say, “ball” about a hundred times a day, but for the most part they stay away from it. I added some more ornaments this year and I’m really happy with the way it looks. I love my tree. I think it looks really pretty. I also have pictures of it to post.

I finally mailed my Christmas cards. Last year, my Mom and I took the kids to two different studios and I hated all of the pictures. We ended up coming home and spending two hours trying to get at least one picture that was half way good enough of the three of them to put on a card and send out. This year, Cara made our card using one of our family pictures and I’m really happy with it.

Lastly, I finally saw Twilight, and I loved it. I was supposed to go with a friend from here, but it just didn’t work out so I went with Angela when I was in Oklahoma. Don’t worry JD, I will totally go and see it again. It was a little different from the book, but what can you expect? Of course there will be some differences, the author is cramming a 550 page book into a 2 hour movie. I thought that they did a really good job of keeping it as close as possible. I can’t wait for the next one to come out.

Enjoy the pictures from the new camera. It is so much easier to take good pictures now.

Plastic tub train!

A pic of Macky taken with the film grain option.

My little scientist.

Syd just being cute.

Our Christmas tree.

Christmas Program

This morning was Syd’s Christmas program for school. She has been practicing her songs all week and was so excited that we would be coming to school to watch her sing. Her teachers put her in the front because she does such a good job remembering all of the motions and the words. Syd did a great job. She didn’t get stage fright or anything. She sang loud and did all of the motions. It was so cute! Last night, while I was away from the house, Eric taught her to take a bow. So today, every time there was applause, Syd would take a bow. It was the funniest thing ever. Only Eric and Syd would come up with such a thing. I took a video of part of one of the songs so you could at least see some of the program. I couldn’t take all of it with our camera. Fortunately, Eric did record the whole program with my parent’s camcorder. So we will have it for our records.

Tonight is Eric’s work Christmas Party, so we are going out alone. We will be having a whole night out away from the kids. Thanks, Mom. We haven’t been out on a date in a while so we are both very excited. I’ll post pictures soon.

Singing her heart out.

Crunch!

So cute.

Projects – Be afraid!

Today was a day of projects. In a recent post, I mentioned that Syd wanted a Christmas tree in her bedroom. Well, my Mom thought this was a great idea. She had an extra one, imagine that! So, last night my Mom and Syd went to the store to pick out ornaments for her tree. Syd picked out these really pretty silver and pink ornaments. My Mom tried to get her some other fancy ones, but Syd didn’t want them. She only wanted her tree to have lights, pink and silver balls and the most important thing of all a ‘Christmas Star.’ This morning my Mom and Syd came over with the tree and Syd couldn’t wait to decorate it. She wanted to get started right away. While the babies ate breakfast my Mom and Syd took the opportunity to get started decorating the tree. Syd did really good hanging all of the ornaments. I wasn’t sure if she would have the coordination to hang them on the tree since they are kind of small, but she did. After the babies finished breakfast I decided to let them join in the fun. They were in awe of the tree. They both loved trying to grab the ‘balls’ off the tree. This is exactly what I feared would happen. It took a little longer than it should have, but they finally got in finished and once the star was on the top Syd stepped back and said, “Oh, Kiki that tree is amazing.” I think my Mom’s heart melted just a little bit. It was so cute.

The next project of the day was to give Mason a haircut. He has been in dire need of one for a couple of weeks now. Usually I have one of my best friends cut it, but I won’t see her for a while and I just couldn’t wait, and I refuse to pay someone else to do it. I decided today that as a mother of a boy I was going to learn how to cut his hair. So I got out the clippers, strapped him in the chair, and started my first haircut. I decided to go with a 2 guard on the back and sides and then a 4 guard on the top. I didn’t realize how long his hair was until I made that first pass with the clippers and a ton of hair came off. I think I almost had a heart attack, but it was too late. I had to keep going. I got the sides and back finished and decided that it was kind of short, but it was okay. It was time to move to the top. Holy cow, a 4 guard is short! I don’t know what I was thinking. When I finished Syd said, “Mama, Mama, he is bald like Daddy.” Thanks Syd for making me feel better. Like Eric always says, “Its only hair.” I guess it will grow and the more I look at it the more I like it. Don’t get me wrong, it is a little shorter than I had planned, but I still think he looks cute. Unfortunately for Mason this won’t be his last Mom haircut, let’s just hope practice makes perfect.

Can we hang just one more ornament?

This tree is really pretty!

I love it, Kiki!

Mason with hair.

My bald baby boy. I'm sorry, Mason.