Halloween 2010

or

Fall Family Time

or

Our Growth Group

or

Parenting in the Raw


Out of all these title choices I ultimately decide that Halloween 2010 was the best, kind of all encompassing!!

Did we have an awesome Halloween? Over all yes. Did it have it's moments? Yes. But that is what families are all about. That even amidst screaming babies, cranky two-year-old and a 5 going on 18 little girl, we still manage to find the joy and love in every (most) moments of the days.

In general I love the fall. Going to the pumpkin patch. Getting out the sweatshirts. Carving pumpkins. Warm apple cider. Yum. But Halloween, dressing up and trick-or-treating is not my bag of tea. I could do with out that part of it but my kids love it. This year I think we managed to strike a good balance.

To start with our pumpkin patch trip was priceless. We went to Nipomo Pumpkin
Patch and of course manage to pick out 2 huge pumpkins to adorn our front steps until November 30th when we get to partake in the 2nd annual pumpkin roll (stay tuned).

My favorite part of the pumpkin patch is to get a tradition pumpkin picture of all the kids, however that was a major fail this year. About 10 minutes to the trip I realized that my picture was not in the cards. Matteo was not going to cooperate. Sam is 8 therefore standing with your siblings or family, is just not cool apparently. Serafina was ready and willing to participate, and well AJ was AJ...a baby. After I let my picture go we had a great time and did manage some interesting group shots! Gotta love it. Here is AJ but my internet is being to slow to load more so hit my dads page for the rest, they are great: click here



On the day before Halloween we had our pumpkin carving day!! Wohoo! The kids all had a great time carving. We managed to get our tradition baby in pumkin shot, and we even carved what I have to assume is the worlds smallest pumpkin. Followed by an great dinner: candy corn pizza and dragon breath bread sticks! Again click here to see a pictures. (because my internet is to slow to load.)

Halloween Day - started awesome and ended awesome. There were a few bumps along the way. In the morning we headed off to church were we heard an awesome message about Reformation Sunday and 2 Timothy. Then it was home to hang out until trick-or-treating in the village, and we would end the night with our Growth Group (ahh my happy balance).

Here is a picture of the group all dressed up and ready to head to the village..





Whats that you say?

I have 4 kids.

Yes your right.

My daughter is in the house screaming because..her hair hurts, her costume is bugging her, her socks are scratchy and well pretty much her world is falling apart.

I knew this was coming and tried to prepare for it. My daughter only wears cotton dresses. I am not kidding. So a week ago I her try on her costume and wear it around the house to make sure she was happy with it. She was. On Halloween I had her get her costume on 15min before the boys so we would have time to adjust what might not be right. But even with all the extra prep, when it came time to walk out the door she flipped a lid. I told her she needed to get it together and we would talk..but she was to wrapped up.

OH MY...it was amazing. So I had to say...sooo...sad.... It looks like you wont be trick-or-treating today.

Off to her room she went and home she stayed in her room. (Nana stayed home with her and graded papers). Nothing like being in the trenches of parenting on Halloween!!

She did get to go to Growth Group after trick-or-treating which was awesome. Our growth group leader spoke a little on reformation Sunday and also all saints day with the kids. And they put together some fall themed games. It was a great way to spend Halloween and it was an awesome balance for me, in letting the kids dress up and trick -or-treat but not having the whole day center on that aspect. The kids were just as happy if not more excited about getting together with our growth group then trick-or-treating (yeah).

And of course for all the pictures of trick-or-treating in the village click here.

That wraps up Halloween 2010.

Regusci Winery

You wont believe it....



hold your breathe...



I finally am going to post about our family vacation this past summer...with pictures!!



I know your excited!!

So this summer we decided to head up north to the Windsor/Napa area to spend a few days tasting wine and relaxing. Our main goal was to get over to Regusci Winery. One because they are cousins of Matt's grandfather and second how cool is it to go to a place that has your name written all over it!! We went up there with my Nana, Papa, Popop Bill, Noni, Nono, Karlee & Jeremy, and Mario and Christin. While we were there we also meet up with Matt's aunt Linda and her son Cory and Noni's cousin Tamara, her daughter and a couple of her friends. We were a traveling circus.

We spent the first night on the town green of Windsor. There they had a little farmers market and a great concert in the park. The place was packed, we sat around on the grass, ate corn dogs and just enjoyed the company of all our family.

I snapped this picture note the finger in the bottom corner, but really like it!!


I took this picture one for the family shot and two for my friend Jeanette, I thought she would appreciate our strollers that I LOVE!!

The next day one group of us stayed back in Windsor and offered to let my big kids hang out with them. Which meant Matt and I got to run around Sonoma county like a young couple in love with only one little baby tasting wine and of course not missing out on Korbel, since champagne is my thing!! YUMMY.


Then the following day came our crazy adventure into Napa to visit Regusci Winery. Since we were a crazy, load, large group of 21 people, it was decided we would take our car, my parents would take there car and everyone else would pile into a huge motor home!! OMG you should have seen them driving that thing down all the curvy roads it was fantastic. We all had a great time. We ended up visiting a little train park and headed over to castle winery as well. It was a long day but it was so much fun just spending time with the family!!

This is a picture of the motor home and our car illegally parked in front of city hall, that's what you get when you are running around with a bunch of Italians.



The two Matthew Gene Regusci's

They had a great green area for the kids to play, which was awesome because we spent 2 + hours there. Here I am attempting to help Matteo play leap frog.

We quickly turned to red light green light.


The youngest vintage!


The whole gang (-minus the camera man Jamie)


What vacation would be complete without sleeping with a shark.
(our hotel gave the kids pool toys, Matteo decided to sleep with it!)

All in all it was a great trip! Everyone had a blast.

Stay-cation

Why has there been a gap in posts? Not because of school, or the baby, or crazy summer schedules......No...we have been on a STAY-CATION!! What is a stay-cation, well it is a vacation were you stay home!! And has it been a blast. What might you ask prompted our stay-cation. Well Sam's Noni and Robob decided it would be fun to take him to Salt Lake for a vacation. Serafina was sad that she was not going so we told her we would have a stay-cation what none of us knew was just how much fun it would be.

It started last Thursday we played at the beach in Avila and then spent one night in a hotel out there and played in the pool all day Friday. Then on Saturday we headed out Ravin Waterpark in Paso. The kids had a blast. Here are a few pictures from the waterpark:

AJ sporting his glasses from the eye doctors (that's for another post)



My two month old in his 0-3month swimsuit, yes my child is still wearing newborn.


AJ spent most of his day napping in the shade!

On Sunday, after Church even on a stay-cation you have to go to church, we headed out to the concert in the park. We had a great time basking in the sun/fog and enjoying bluegrass music.

Serafina catching a ball!! HA

There was a bounce house!

Dancing!

Our cowboy!

Well there are the photos from our stay-cation. Hopefully Noni took pictures of there fun times in Salt Lake and I can post them later. We have video of the water park but I haven't figured out how to post them to my blog, if your really want to see it head over to Matt's facebook page he has them up there!

Cowboy's

You may not know but deep down inside the Regusci Family are cowboys (cowgirls if you ask Serafina) at heart. On any given weekend you will find all 6 of us (yes AJ has boots too) tromping around in our cowboy boots and hats (Matteo calls them "cow" hats). You can often find the kids biking, scootering, and any other outdoor activity in their boots.


One of the Regusci kids favorite weekend chore is to go down the hill to tend to the goats. Down with the goats they enjoy running through the field/ tall grass on a hill, and sharpening their roping skills by trying to lasso the goats (yes we have a real lasso rope).


But what they are mostly excited about is that fact that mom recently found a horseback riding school within 5 minutes of the house. Serafina just completed her first daddy and me class and is eagerly awaiting her next one. Sam is eagerly (asking me daily when it will start) awaiting his horseback riding camp, 5 straight days of nothing but horses, which is middle of July!!

Of course my had our resident photographer head out to a couple of the class to get pictures. Of the most exciting events of her last class was that while practicing different positions of riding Serafina's horse bucked her right off. The poor thing flew to the ground and landed face first in the dirt. But like any good Cowgirl she brushed off the dirt and climbed back on, smiling the whole time. So with out further ado pictures:

This picture was taken after she was thrown from the horse


As was this one.

Trick riding

Brother loved to watch.



They made them take care of their horse!


And even took a trail ride!





After a long day of riding a cowgirl needs her rest: