Flashback Friday

Luke's 1st summer was full of sunbathing, swimming, boating, tubing, and birthday partying.

Chilin' at our neighborhood pool
Ryan's uncle & aunt took us out on their ski boat and we had a blast. I love just riding in the boat, soaking up the sun, and watching God's beautiful creation.

Sailing the seas with Daddy
Watching the waves with Mommy

While we were riding the waves,
Luke took his first taste of broccoli
If looks could kill, the broccoli would be dead...
this was the beginning of Luke's hate-hate relationship
with any & all types of nutritional food
Family picture before tubing
Yes, we took our 7 month old son tubing in the middle of a huge lake wearing a life jacket that was 3 sizes too big...looking back I don't think that was
the smartest decision on our part.

The summer ended with some birthday party fun

Luke after our friend, Omar's first birthday party

Helping Aunt Kat celebrate her 21st birthday

8 Months

Aubrey is 8 months old!

The two highlights of this past month were getting her first 2 teeth and finally growing some beautiful brunette locks.

Aubrey's first 2 teeth starting coming in a couple of weeks ago and it was not a fun experience for her
or for anyone who was around her.

She was in such a whiny mood that one of our story time buddies, Ethan, forbid her from ever riding in his car because he was tired of hearing her whine.

Aubrey's new hair looks more like a spikey mohawk than beautiful brunette locks...she inherited
her daddy's soft, fine hair and must have his cowlicks too.

Side view of mohawk

But, I can't totally blame Ryan for Aubrey's hair woes, I had a mohawk of my own when I was her age.

The only difference was that my mom was able to
curl my mohawk
Because of this mohawk,
my parents called me "Mr. T" as a baby :)

Don't think we'll be giving Aubrey
any "cute" nicknames like that.

Baby Kellen

The kids and I are in Houston this week welcoming our new baby cousin into the world!

Kellen Reid Sloas was born Monday at 2:00 pm, he weighed 7 pounds 1 ounce and was 19 1/2 inches long.

Kellen has the cutest little cry, Holly made the comment yesterday that his cry sounds like a piglet's squeal
and it really does!

Big sister, Parker, loves her new little brother, and she is already helping out with his bottle and giving him his
"fooler" (pacifier) anytime he cries.


Luke hasn't paid too much attention to "baby Ke-when", but he is having a blast playing with Parker.

Aubrey has no idea what is going on, but she has been a real trooper this week; as I type this we are in Holly's hospital room and Aubrey is taking her afternoon nap in Parker's wagon!

Aubrey & Parker having some girl time

It was extremely hard to get a decent picture of the 3 of them

And there was no hope of getting a good picture of
all 4 of them

Flashback Friday

Luke's big 5 month milestone was becoming mobile...yes, he started the army crawl at 5 1/2 months! He was army crawling long before he learned to sit on his own.

Luke had a favorite toy, a crab rattle/teether (Mr. Crab as we affectionately called him), and Mr. Crab got just out of his reach one day

So, he pulled up on his forearms, and pushed off with one foot

And Mr. Crab was captured!
For 2 months he had blisters on the inside of the foot that he pushed off with, but it that didn't seem to bother him too much, because it never stopped him from exploring every nook & cranny of the house.


Crawling all day really wears a baby out!

Valentine Photo Shoot

This is what happens when you try to get a nice Valentine picture of a 2 year old and a 7 month old.

First we have to make sure our bow is in the proper place
Then we get distracted with our car

Next hunger pains set in and we need to snack on our car
Sometime in the middle of the pictures,
we decided it's time to undress

Then Aubrey decided to play some games with her brother.

First she pulled his hair,
which she thought was quite hilarious

then she picked his nose

Finally I got a semi-decent picture of both of them

Happy Valentine's Day!

Wordless Wednesday

Chilling on the recliner watching some Mickey Mouse
We found Luke's favorite show on the internet

What Not To Wear

This is what happens when Daddy is in charge of
dressing his daughter
Yes, my daughter is wearing a t-shirt and her brother's whitey tighties (or in this case, navy tighties)

At least she had some pink on her socks

When I asked Ryan why in the world Aubrey was wearing Luke's underwear, he told me that he couldn't find her sweatpants and she needed something comfortable to wear.

She does kinda look like a sumo wrestler in them :)

Success

Luke's potty training thus far has simply consisted of Luke sitting on the potty a few times a day
whenever he asks to go potty.

Nothing happens when he's on the potty,
we just sit, talk, sometimes read and he gets 2 M & M's
for simply sitting on the potty.

Well, this afternoon while he was sitting, we'd been talking for several minutes, and Aubrey started crying, so Ryan came to sit with him while I went to get Aubrey.

I picked up Aubrey and I hear Ryan screaming,
"you did it!", "you pee-peed in the potty!".

Aubrey and I go racing into the bathroom and we all do a happy potty dance and congratulate Luke!

During all the celebration, Luke just stares at us with a blank face as if to say, "what's the big deal?".

We rewarded Luke with a handful of M & M's and I'm sure he was thinking, success never tasted so sweet! :)

A Girl and Her Food

On my dad's side of the family(the Alfano side) there isn't one girl who doesn't love to eat...well maybe with the exception of my youngest sister (she could live off pb & j sandwiches).

My sisters, cousins, and I were never shy around the food; at family meals we were always first in line and filled our plates as high or higher than the boys.

In my immediate family there were several mouths to feed and not always enough food for our big appetites, so we learned to eat fast in order to be the one
who was able to get seconds.

Eating fast is not the greatest habit to have and ever since Ryan and I started dating he's been trying to break me of it.

I remember one of the first times Ryan ate a meal with my family, he just sat in awe (or should I say disgust) as he watched my sisters and I literally inhale our food.

Ryan was puzzled at our love for food, because as he told me at the beginning of our relationship,
"I just don't enjoy eating".

When my sister, Anna, heard him say this, she was completely flabbergasted, she looked at him like he was an alien, exclaiming, "what do you MEAN you don't enjoy eating?!?".

All this to say, Alfano girls love to eat!

It seems that Aubrey has inherited this
Alfano affinity for food!

She has been a great eater since birth and she has never been afraid to alert you when she is hungry; from hearing her hunger cries, you'd think that she was malnourished or something!

This morning I introduced Aubrey to biter biscuits
and of course, she loved them!
But, I must say she did didn't make near the mess her brother did the first time he ate a biter biscuit.

I'm glad we have at least one child who loves eating!

PDA in the Nursery

Ever since we started going to our church about a year ago, Luke has had one special friend in his nursery class. Ella is her name, or as he calls her "Eh-wa" (his "l" sounds like a "w").

For several months he cried every time we dropped him off in the nursery, and we heard he would sometimes cry on and off the whole morning.

At the time Ella was the only other kid in his class that we knew so, we started really talking up Ella every Sunday morning, saying things like "'don't you want to go to Sunday School and play with Ella?" and "Ella is going to be very excited to see you!".

After a while it seemed to work, and he stopped crying when we left him in the nursery.

I always wondered if Luke and Ella really played together in the nursery or if they were too young to really interact much.

Well my question was answered one Sunday morning last summer as I was watching a video during the church service. This video(some live video, but mostly just pictures) showed different ministries in the church and was meant to try and encourage people to serve in different areas of the church.
About half way through the video I see a picture of Luke & Ella standing side by side hovering over a baby cradle with a baby doll inside!

Not only do Luke & Ella play together, but it looks like they've gotten pretty serious if they are already playing "house".

Since then I haven't seen anymore pictures of them at church and I'm starting to think he's playing with boys now, because most of the kids he mentions after church are boys.

Now Luke (and Aubrey) are old pros at going to the nursery, besides Sunday, they also go on Tuesday mornings while I'm in Bible Study.

Today on the way home from Bible Study I asked Luke if he played with Ella in the nursery and this was the conversation that followed:

Me: Did you play with Ella today at church?

Luke: (holding his hand out) Eh-wa, hold hand!

Me: Luke, did Ella hold your hand?!?

Luke: (beaming) Yes, Eh-wa, hold hand...oh BOY!

Well I guess they moved straight from playing "house" to acting like they are dating.

I'm not quite sure how I feel about this, at first I thought it was really cute, but at the same time I don't want any girl moving in on my little man, even if she is adorable and very sweet. :)

These are the only two pictures I have of them, both are from last summer.

Wordless Wednesday

I almost never get to see Luke sleeping anymore, because I'm too afraid that if I go into his room I'll wake him up. He was sleeping so soundly yesterday afternoon that I was able to sneak in and take some pictures.
He's been sleeping with his hand(s) behind his head since he was a couple months old.

Water Adventure Update

Great News! Our potential water leak disaster turned out to be a leaky sprinkler system!

Apparently the handle to turn the sprinkler system on and off rusted off several years ago and somehow the system started leaking.

We called the previous owners of our house and they told us how to turn the sprinkler system off, and as soon as Ryan turned it off our water meter stopped spinning!

How the sprinkler system leaked 12,000 gallons of water, without us noticing, I'll NEVER know or understand, but that doesn't matter because it's now fixed and it didn't cost a cent!

Living without water for 5 days didn't seem
to bother the kids too much...

Luke was still able to enjoy his nightly
bowl of popcorn with daddy

and Aubrey figured out how to scoot backwards

Since this picture she has been found stuck in several places, like under the couch, slide, and coffee table (Yes, the slide Luke got for Christmas is still in our living room...it's way too cold to play on it outside).