Supporting our Troups

Yesterday my husband forwarded this message to me in an e-mail:

Red Friday

Very soon, you will see a great many people wearing Red every Friday. The reason? Americans who support our troops used to be called the 'silent majority.' We are no longer silent, and are voicing our love for God, country and home in record breaking numbers. We are not organized, boisterous or overbearing.

Many Americans, like you, me and all our friends, simply want to recognize that the vast majority of American’s supports our troops. Our idea of showing solidarity and support for our troops with dignity and respect starts this Friday -- and continues each and every Friday until the troops all come home, sending a deafening message that every red-blooded American who supports our men and women afar, will wear something red.

By word of mouth, press, TV -- let’s make the United States on every Friday a sea of red much like a homecoming football game in the bleachers. If every one of us who loves this country will share this with acquaintances, coworkers, friends, and family, it will not be long before the USA is covered in RED and it will let our troops know the once 'silent' majority is on their side more than ever, certainly more than the media lets on.

The first thing a soldier says when asked ‘What can we do to make things better for you?' is ’We need your support and your prayers.' Let's get the word out and lead with class and dignity, by example, and wear something red every Friday.

We decide to join in this morning and hopefully ever Friday (if we remember):

Don't mind my expression, I was using my timer for the first time on the camera and the kids were going wild! It is Friday, V-day parties, raining and we are supporting troops! Oh my!

Play Yard

When Matteo learned how to crawl we knew we were in trouble with all of our stairs there was no way we could gate them all it would cost us way to much and be ridiculous. So we made the best investment ever and bought one of these play yards with the extra extension pieces. (it is huge with the extension pieces)
Honestly it is the coolest thing in the world! But now we have out grown it. Matteo has mastered the stairs. The few huge sets of stair we have do have baby gates and so I was getting ready to bid farewell to the play yard until this morning when Serafina and Matteo found a whole new use for this wonderful piece of baby equipment:



Yes it makes the perfect tent builder! No more do you have to use books, couches, tables and chairs. The play yard makes the perfect tent house, door included!!


They have been entertained for hours now. The laundry is folded, my sock draw is organized, and well the kitchen, we wont go there. And the best part is that when Sam gets home from school it will be new to him so he will want to play, which will get them excited all over again!

What a beautiful Friday!!

Weekend Away

This weekend I went to Fullerton with my mother-in-law (Noni) and sister-in-law (Karlee) to visit Karlee's sweetie Jeremy (who just moved there to attend college), to look at college, and well to shop. Matt stayed home to hold down the house and watch all three kids. Here are the highlights from his and my weekend:

-Septic guy unexpectedly showed up to finish up the septic work.

-I get a call from Robob our gate wont open.

-I have to deal with this problem on the 101 in LA traffic, that was fun.

-As Matt is heading out to pick up Sam from school Septic dude, gives Matt an estimate of the cost (lets just say there was 4 numbers)

-I get a call.....not a happy Matt on the way to get Sam.

-Hour later..I get another call...Matt ran out of gas....yes with all 3 kids in the car. AAA will be there as soon as they can.

Saturday: They are supposed to be at a birthday party.

-Serafina wakes up and pukes. Mom offers to watch her. She is sad she cant go to the party.

-I get a call, Matt is now in Morro Bay at the party location...there is no one there. Come to find out the party was moved to next Saturday due to the rain.

-4:00ish Betsy and I drive around front a store to pick up Karlee and Jeremy. Karlee notes my front tire is flat.

-We drive to 3 gas stations before we find one that has a working air thing. Inspect the tire, there is a screw in it. It is now passed 5:30. However we did luck out the garage man stayed open and fixed my tire.

-8ish we take Jeremy back to his apartment, his roommate bought a cat, with out running it by Jeremy or their other roommate....awkward.

Sunday

Pretty under control

Monday Morning

So excited, Matt bought me the new Zac Brown Band CD. We are big country music fans. The kids too and it is nice because for the most part the songs are pretty clean. I feel safe turning a country station that nothing to explicit will come on.

The kids love the song Country Fried, Sam has most of it memorized, so they were just as excited to listen to the CD.

We load up.
Pop it in.
First song.
Toes.

"I got my toes in the water, ass in the sand"

The "A" word was clear as day!! I about died, I decide to ignored it. They didn't seem to pick up on it and hoped the song didn't repeat it. WRONG! It was repeated. After the second time I skipped to the next the song and prayed that there would be no more bad words. There was not. It was a great CD!! The kids loved it as did I, although we will not be listening to "Toes".

What a weekend.

Rockin' Party

My parents decide to not help me in my 12 step program in over coming my guitar hero addiction, but instead made it worst by purchasing me Rock Band for my birthday, gotta love it. Now I have officially sucked my husband and best friend Jon into my addiction because you have to have the full band to make it fun right?!?

Which meant Matt and my Mom had to throw me a Rock Band party. We invited a over a bunch of my friends who we knew would rock the house. They requested that everyone come dressed in there best rock get up and you would never guess... KISS made an appearance!!

By the end of the evening just about everyone had tried their hand at some type of instrument, drums, guitar or vocal. Also by the end, everyone was improving on there skills, that or we had thrown back enough to drink we were no longer noticing the bad pitch and missed notes! Who knows! Either way it was a great time.

As always my dad, know as Papa-razia all night, was in charge as pictures so: click here to view the fun filled evening!

Here is one photo Papa-razi missed:

Back Tracking

Before I can move forward with any further posts I must share some of the fun pictures and happenings from Christmas break. I posted the link to the pictures my dad took on Christmas day but now I will share a little more of what happened on Christmas eve and after! (With school back in session I am finding a little more time on my hands to get back to uploading pictures and blogging!).

To start with, my sister-in-law Karlee and I took a couple of class on artisan cookie decorating. We both had a blast and came away with some very cute cookies. Then I manage to convince my mom to make the artisan cookies for her cookie exchange she does every year, which meant we had a weekend of cookie baking:9 dozen little Santa's to be exact. It was a blast.

These are the cookies from one of Karlee's and my classes.



The kids getting in on the decorating.



Even Matteo.



My mom and I working on the last bits of Santa decorating!

A few close ups!

Moving on....next came Christmas Eve. We always spend Christmas Eve with Matt's family. Normally we head to is Grandfather's house but this year his Mom (Noni) decide to have it at her house. As always, the kids had a great time. It was very low key, we all enjoyed siting around, chatting, eating, and just being with everyone. The kids got to open up a few gifts. They loved their ride on animal toys from Bish-nono, but their top picks were from their Uncle James, who sadly was not there but sent them via Bish-nono! He got Serafina a baby alive, Sam Lego's and Matteo cars that made noises! I had no idea how exiting those toys could be!! Good job Uncle James.

Nono looking at his photo book.

Bish-nono and Bish-noni looking at their photo book.

Matteo and his noise making cars!! He could not be happier!

Everyone playing don't break the ice! This was another hit the Scalzo kids bought this game for the Regusci kids hoping to have a fun family game! It worked!

My Hope hat, from St. Jude's!

Opening up Baby Alive, I wish you could see the joy/shock better!

The big bows!

Family

Another Christmas tradition of ours is Velvet Cream Popcorn. This is just about the best popcorn in the world. They are located in Kansas, were I was born. That is were my family learned about them. When we moved out here we were very sad to leave the popcorn behind, but....very glad to know they ship. So for years ever Christmas we would order huge tins of there popcorn to have during the holidays. Now Popppop Bill has taken over and send my mom a box at her birthday and the family another box at Christmas, we are in love!! Yumm. Well this year Matteo manage to sneak away from me to try his first taste of velvet cream popcorn...

Now I know, no popcorn for kids under 3, but I had to take the pictures before I said no!!

He was just so darn cute.

And might I say, he was quite proud of himself!

These last few snapshots are just of the kids having fun around the house. We didn't travel anywhere this Christmas. Just hung around town. The kids had lots of time to just enjoy being home.

Matteo is riding Serafina's bike that she was to small to ride last summer when she was 2 going on 3!! It was to funny I had to take pictures!

Serafina spent most of her time taking care of all her babies! They are all tucked in for bed right.

This is our first attempt to get Matteo to take a few steps. It was looking promising. He was really balancing and standing up for a long time. However he never did take a step (this was before our Monterrey trip). Instead he just held onto that boom box thin, stood in the middle of the room and dance. We were all laughing, the kid can balance, holding a boom box, and dance but refuses to walk?!? Can you say stubborn?




Now...that concludes the back tracking post...we can now look forward to the RockBand Birthday that brought down the house last night, in honor of my 27th birthday!

Laundry Day VS. The Septic

When it comes to the running of the house/ household tasks, there are certain aspects that I am very anal about. The laundry is one of these such aspects. Laundry is done every Monday; sorted, washed, folded, and put away. There are just no if's, and's, or but's, about it. (with the exception of poop or puke). Tuesday mornings are the best days of the week because you wake up and there is not one piece of dirty laundry in the house. AHA the beauty of it all.

Enter...... The Septic

We have been living at our house now for just over a year. About 2weeks ago we noticed our leach field was leaking (part of a septic tank system). No big problem as we have two leach fields, we just switched over to the other. Well that one was leaking to...

Enter....The septic dude (ie- The professional)

He came out today poked around. Decide to open up the septic to drain to both leach fields at the same time. With all the people living here he thought this might be a good solution. He also decide it might be good to do some maintenance things and then we will see if all that clears up our problem. Then he dropped the bomb shell

"Do you do all your laundry in one day?"
"Yes I do."
"You need to stop doing that. It floods the septic tank, so it take work right. Could be part of the problem."


I tried to explain to him that this was impossible. That it would go against ever fiber of my being. The septic dude just laughed and told me that I better go against my fibbers otherwise we will be paying upwards of $10,000 to put in a new septic in a few more years.

I wanted to cry.

No longer will there be a morning I will wake up and all the laundry be clean and put away.

I am destined to wash, fold and put away everyday of my life now.

The sadness is to much to bear.

I think the answer is to have Matt take over the laundry.

Steps

I almost forgot with all the news of the new school. Sam is not the only child who took a few new steps this past week.....


That's right dear sweet Matteo took his first steps in Monterey this past weekend (more to come on that). He was so excited to see all the fish I think he forgot he was standing and sure enough one step happened (at least Daddy and Papa say). Then later in the hotel Nana and Mommy witnessed two more steps. Last night Nana and Robob witnessed three or four steps (the count was unclear).

YEAH MATTEO. I would not consider him a walker, but I would consider his first steps taken!