Pumpkins, Tinkerbell, and Leaves - Oh My!

Well, fall is officially here (and gone???). We've enjoyed trips to the pumpkin patch...

...had a completely unsuccessful Tinkerbell episode (aka "Halloween")...

...and rounded it all out with some fun in the leaves.

We hope this finds you all happy, healthy, and enjoying the season!

Big News! Big News, I Say!

Milestone

Ha! You thought I meant for one of the kids...didn't you?! Nope, just my car, who has no name, but is kind of like a kid!! I guess it's effectively about halfway through its "useful" life, which isn't so bad considering it's 6 years old (it's a car, people, we're talking about a car!). Let's just hope the batteries last longer than my mom's did - whoops! Only posting this because I had uploaded the photos from my phone already. Updates on the HUMAN children to follow soon! By the way, Catherine might look angelic in this picture, but this was taken the night that she climbed out of her crib for the first time...maybe the "angelic" look was just blurriness from the camera phone...hmmm...food for thought.

Muy mal.

As Trevor likes to say, every vacation has its low point. Ours happens to be the trip to Tulum yesterday...not good. Oh well, hopefully the worse is behind us now. We shall drown our sorrows with massages later this afternoon...that should help. Tulum was beautiful, although by the time we got there, we hardly noticed! We just wanted to be back at our hut on the beach. But we did manage to get some shots of the proliferation of iguanas that live at Tulum. And once we got back to our resort (heaven), we found our room to be decorated for my birthday, complete with a fully filled hot tub! Like I said, heaven...

Hola!

As you might have guessed by the (lack of) posts, we are having a great time! We are especially enjoying breakfast. If the old adage "you are what you eat" is true, I am currently a chocolate croissant with a side of bacon and a mango daiquiri. Trevor is anything topped with salsa verde! Speaking of the bacon, OH MY GOD!! It's manna sent from heaven! I think it's deep-fried and I can't get enough of it! Today we walked to a small "town" about 30 minutes south of our resort. It was a bust. Definitely see the need for an all-inclusive resort while in Cancun... Tomorrow we are headed to Tulum to visit the only Mayan ruin built on a coast. Hope it's fun! We talked to Max today and he asked "What are you doing?" Good question, but the uninteresting answer is "pretty much nothing." And that's just the way I planned it :)))

Wish you were here!

For the next week, we will be deviating from the "Max and Cate Show" and bringing you (periodic) updates on our vacation WOK (WithOut Kids). So far, we LOVE it here, although we're not quite sure yet if we are beach people...that remains to be seen. The people here are lovely and the resort is beautiful. We definitely are happy with our choices. The breakfast this morning was buffet style and the buffet itself spanned 3 large rooms...I think I could eat 10 things a morning for the entire time I am here and not eat the same thing twice! Trevor ate a "mexican" breakfast with fried bananas, some kind of tortilla/egg combo, and melon juice. I stuck with eggs, bacon, chocolate croissants, grapefruit and tangerine juice! Just the "juice bar" was amazing. We staked out a couple of lounges under a hut on the beach and are headed there now. Other than that, we love you all and miss you too! It's fun to be away, but it also makes us realize how much we appreciate all our friends and family.

2 years, 1 month, 13 days (aka...my mommy is so lame!)

Well, Catherine's birthday came and went (and went and went...). January 10th seems like forever ago, but I was just uploading the digital pictures to the computer and thought I'd post some here for you to enjoy. Thank you to all of you who indulged Catherine's love of all things Elmo. I think we're past that phase now and onto bigger and better addictions (read: Dora). Trevor and I decided that we are going to try and MAKE Catherine's cake for her birthday every year. This year's cake turned out quite well, if I do say so myself.

What happens when your daughter is left home alone with her daddy and brother

Daycare costs WHAT?

Apparently even the H&R Block TaxCut program finds the price of childcare exorbitant!!

Quotes

I have a lot of books from my "youth" filled with random and various quotes that I liked. Here's one I found today: Happiness consists not in having much, but in being content with little. Marguerite Gardiner

Sick Days with Daddy

I was sitting at my computer (working diligently, of course, not posting on my blog...) when this photo came through on my email. Makes me TOTALLY wish I was at home with my little sick girl and her loving daddy!!! But at least I know she is in wonderful hands :)

Let it be known to all...

that on this, the twenty-fifth day of January in the year two thousand and nine, Andria and Trevor have at long last determined where they will vacation and it shall be here.

Broc Omama

Catherine has been listening to NPR a lot lately. She's formed quite a fondness for the next President of the United States (good girl!) and sings his name from her carseat on the rides home. Apparently, she thinks that he remembered her birthday. Max brought over a card from his brother (Broc) and when we opened it, I said to Cate "It's from Broc" to which she replied "Broc Omama!"

Tall, Thin, and Smart

Those were the words that Cate's doctor used to describe her at her 2 year old check-up this morning! She's 33.5" (50%), 24 pounds (25%), and is talking like a 3 year old. Personally, while it's always nice to hear someone say your child is "smart", I think the bars are set a little low for the assessments. Maybe that's just me. I would say Cate is towards the higher end of speech, but plenty of kids her age are speaking like she does! Oh, and when the doctor said "tall" I think she meant relative to her weight, but in the Staniec house, we'll take average height any day! So, in short, we have a normal, healthy 2 year old who is enjoying all of the "perks" of being 2, meaning she says "no" to just about everything, only wants juice in the cup that is dirty, doesn't want to wear her jacket outside, and insists on picking out her own clothes (although she'd rather not wear any at all!).

Just call her Picasso

Catherine has been "creating". Our favorite is her first installation entitled "Caterpillar". She carefully arranged her stacking cups one by one on the stair, turned to us and said "Caterpillar". See if you agree.


Her second installation was of the non-permanant kind. We'll just call it "Orange Lentil, Dum-dum, Pretzel Man" (and, yes, we are bringing the snow INSIDE these days...d*mn daycare!).


And, finally, this picture needs no caption...but we'll call it "Beautiful Miracle" all the same, thank you very much.

Happy New Year!

Man, January 5 already - time flies! We had a wonderful holiday celebrating with all of our family this year. While our trip down to Atlanta was delayed and we spent several unplanned hours on Christmas Day in the Rochester airport, we really can't complain! The kids managed to behave and my husband was a saint (especially in comparison to the father of two (both under two) who took a NAP on the couch while his wife ran after the kids...ahem...). So, in the interest of getting some pictures up to show you, I'll just post them for your viewing pleasure. Oh, and if any of my "u's" are missing, it seems Catherine has been playing with the computer keyboard again and I have to JAM down on the u to get it to work, so that's why! By the way, are you following me on Twitter???


Max enjoying his new microscope!


Catherine wondering if Santa brought anything else besides the "box"...


One of my favorites - I gave Max a Star Wars battleship ornament that plays the Star Wars theme - too cool!


Ahhhh...."Bobo" and sister!


Aunt Lolo taking her turn in the house.


Cousins...can you believe the similarity in their hair color??? I think this is what it would look like if Ali had had 5 kids!


Cate "helping" take down the tree.

From Our Home to Yours...

May you have a wonderful holiday surrounded by those you love.

Snow Angels

You might have heard we are getting a bit of snow...turns out Catherine has inherited her brother's love of the stuff...who knew! Once we convinced her that we were going outside to play in the snow (daycare brings it inside for them to play in - why would you do that?), she was all for it. Enjoy!

"No Santa Lap...No Santa Lap..."

Wednesday Morning with Max

School was delayed this morning by 2 hours. Max and I made our way leisurely through the time. Here are some highlights of our morning discussions...


Me: This Saturday we're going to take Catherine to see Santa Claus.
Max: Ok.
Me: Do you want to sit on his lap with Cate or not?
Max: NO! I know he's not real now.
Me (innocently): Who's not real?
Max (with a "well duh" face): The Santa in the mall.


Max: When are you going to fix the clock radio in my room? It says it's February 8 at 2:30.
Me: How about I teach you to do it? Like the parable: If you give a man a fish, he'll be hungry tomorrow. If you teach a man to fish, he'll never be hungry.
Max: Yeah...you're going to fix my radio. I'm the lazy guy who just wants the fish.

Happy Wednesday!