Happy Easter!!

We just finished a great weekend!! We spent Saturday morning looking at houses, this has become a weekly event for us, and we are looking forward to the day that one will actually be ours. Then we went straight to Sienna's 1st Birthday party. It was at the beach and the perfect day for it. It was fun to celebrate with them and Alicia enjoyed playing with the sand toys at the beach. This is a picture of Alicia and Alex from the birthday party.Here is a shot of Sienna diving into her birthday cupcake!! It's true, we spent my birthday celebrating Sienna's birthday. Then we went home and relaxed for a while and Alex went and picked up carry out sushi and a birthday cake for me. Alicia was a really good girl the whole day, and it seemed like she knew that she was supposed to be extra good for her mommy. This was a good end to a week that was not so good for Alicia, and just as I was suspecting from her cranky mood all week, I felt a big molar popping through the other day. So, it was a relief to know that her crankiness and pickiness with food had a cause.
Alex and Alicia made me feel very special on my birthday, and my phone was ringing off the hook all day from everyone calling to say hi. So it was a special day, and I went to bed feeling as though my birthday couldn't have been any better...I loved the day with my little family.
We celebrated Easter with Alex's family at his parents house. They set up a little Easter egg hunt for Alicia in the backyard. I think that some of them were doubtful of her skills, but she caught on right away, and loaded up her basket by herself, finding every egg and racing on to the next one. Here are a couple of shots, it was really cute!! I love this one, you can she that she is focused on the egg she is approaching!! (So what if the eggs weren't really hidden, she's only fifteen months old, give her a break!!)
A family shot while Alicia proudly holds up her basket full of all the eggs that she collected!!
This was a quick shot of my time with Alicia just before the hunt...I gave her a little pep talk, which seemed to pay off.We ended our Easter sunday by going over to swim at Ken and Silvia's...Alex and Alicia didn't get in the water until about 7, and Alicia was so exhausted that she barely moved, but she definitely enjoyed her first swim of the season with her daddy. The water was heated to about 90 degrees, so it was just like her little bath at the end of the night.
And this is for anyone who thinks that my duck story was exagerated. I made Alex go back to the park with me to feed the crazy ducks again while I took a few pictures. Here are the shots of some of the ducks. You can see the normal duckks, and then the monsters in this picture with the red heads.

And this is one of the crazy ones with an afro type of crown thing on its head!
Seriously, just a bunch of UGLY ducks!!! Alex agreed with me about how mean and nasty these birds were...especially after he got pecked in the leg three times! He even hit a duck a few times to push it back. If you get a close up of this picture, you can see the variety of odd ducks surrounding Alex and Alicia...so it was by no means an exageration!!

Beware of the Geese!!

We have all been feeding the ducks at some of the local parks lately. However, that came to a near end the other day. Alicia and I went to feed the ducks at a new park. I had noticed this park didn't seem as crowded with birds, and thought that there may be less of the aggressive geese. I was wrong. As soon as we got out of the car the ducks and geese came towards us, and couldn't be shooed back. I was carrying Alicia and tossing out chunks of bread as fast as I could but more and more ducks and geese just kept closing in around us. And these weren't even normal geese, they were like crazy mutant geese with red heads and beaks, and tufts of feathers sticking up on their heads like crowns, and all different colors. They were really scary looking and very mean!! After a few minutes of walking backwards trying to shoo them off, I just threw the rest of the bread one direction and ran the other way carrying Alicia! Even as I was buckling her back into the car I was kicking back at an approaching red-headed goose with my left leg. This may sound stupid or ridiculous, but it was seriously traumatizing and felt like a scene out of some sort of horror film.
On a different note, Alicia has really taken to wearing a hat recently. This is coming after months of her refusing to have anything on her head or in her hair. Maybe, she'll even let me put bows in her hair soon. In this picture she has a pacifier in her mouth, don't worry...she hasn't really taken to pacifiers, but she likes to use them sometimes, especially when and after Sienna is here. She was very excited about her hat!! This is a picture from Vanessa's graduation party. She recently completed her Master's degree and she had a party to celebrate.
Alex and I used to get donuts together every Saturday morning while I was pregnant, but since we had Alicia, we haven't had any. We decided to go this past weekend, and this is a picture of Alicia holding her first donut hole. (She likes salty more than sweet, so she had a couple little bites and was done.)
Some of Alicia's favorite things right now are coloring with her daddy, reading books, long walks, climbing into daddy's chair all by herself and without needing to stand on anything, and sitting on her potty with her clothes on while I get her bath ready.

I think that summer is here...

It's already getting pretty warm here in CA. We are all enjoying the weather now, but I know that this is just a foreshadowing that the summer is going to be brutally hot. Right now we are making the most of it going on long walks in the afternoons and on the weekends. We just put together Alicia's wagon from Waldo and Teri for Xmas and have been enjoying it. Alicia loves to ride in it and has been very good about staying on her bottom. Alicia has no problem staying in the wagon, but she loves to play a game with us and continually throw her ball out of the wagon and then we throw it back in.
She loves to go to the park and gets excited whenever one is in view. She is very disappointed if we walk past the swings without letting her play on them for at least a little while.
On a recent playdate with April and Bryce...April is reading Moo, Baa, LaLaLa and it is quite entertaining.
Grandpa Charlie just came out for a visit and he rented a Lambo for his time here!! (Just kidding, we took a picture of him next to one in the South Coast Plaza parking lot.)

Alicia went for her first carousel ride, she seemed to be enjoying it, but about halfway through, she climbed up into her daddy's arms.
Grandpa Charlie got to read to Alicia, here they are looking at the Rudolph book that Alicia got for Christmas...regardless of the season, it is a current favorite.
Alicia thought the ball in pool idea that her cousins had was pretty cool, so she got her own, and all of her friends have really been enjoying it lately...and it won't be long before we are actually using it as a little pool this summer.

One of Alicia's favorite foods is hard-boiled egg (I know she's a weird kid). She must have really been enjoying this one, because you can see the chunks of yoke all over her face and she is making her favorite funny face!
She loves to try on daddy's shoes. Our shoes are supposed to be off limits, but she looked so cute that I had to snap a picture before telling her no.

Just not a good morning...

Today was not a very good day. First of all, I didn't sleep well last night, because I was up for about an hour and a half two seperate times with a screaming baby...I don't know why she was screaming, but she was...and she wouldn't let go of her Pat the Bunny book. She eventually cried herself to sleep with it. So I woke up late and tired and already feeling behind. Then when I was feeding Alicia I realized that I was out of pancakes, and trust me, you do not want to be out of the child's pancakes!! Then we both got ready to go visit our friends and go shopping and we walked out the door loaded down with diaper bag, baby, purse, snacks, etc. and as soon as I shut the locked door behind me I realized that my keys were sitting inside. So I was stuck outside with my arms full, locked out of the car and the house and Alicia by my side...but at least she wasn't locked in the house!! So, I called my husband...no answer, I called his parents, no answer...then we went to the park. Shortly after, Alex called me back, and he was able to come back to the house to save us...but he had to bring along the guy that he was training. Alicia and I were thrilled to see Alex pull up and got ready to load up into the car as originally planned, when I noticed that my car had been ransacked (it took me a second to realize this, because my car is not kept in the most tidy of conditions), and the stereo had been ripped out...what else could happen? It was only 11:30. Fortunately, it did get better from there, Alicia and I went to see April and Bryce and had a great time, then we had a little trip to Costco to load up on Monsters for Grandpa Charlie's visit, we took a nap, went for a long walk with Alex to the park and fed the ducks, had a nice dinner, a good bath time, and then it was bed time. So at least the day got better, and at least they just took the stereo and didn't damage or steal the car itself, and at least Alex wasn't too far away today and was able to come home and save us...so I guess we have more to be thankful for than to complain about when it all comes down.