May 2011

Here are some pix from May and a few from early June! The weather finally got nice here and we've been able to spend lots of time outside! Lydia has been saying new words almost daily and Makayla continues to entertain us with her conversation!


Some of Lydia's new words include: More, bite, Dad, Grandpa, Papa (she seems to like men these days), peek, book, belly, belly button, shoe, toes, all done, down, sit down, rock, row (as in row, row row your boat), pretty, teeth (as in brush her teeth) and whoa! I also think she said, "I see Dad" the other night, but she hasn't said it since, so maybe it just sounded like that. She rarely says, "Mom", which is kind of a bummer...but she can't seem to stop saying, "Dad!" LOL! Lucky Chad!


Makayla continues to learn new words and learn how the world works. I was reading the grocery store add this morning and I said, "Chad, ribs are on sale. Do you want to grill some ribs for dinner?". Makayla said, "I want some ribs!" I thought, "Hmmm...has Makayla ever eaten ribs?" Then Makayla continued on, "I want some ribs for my hair!" I thought, "ah, she means ribbons for her hair!" Later that day she got a lesson in what "ribs" are!


Makayla is quite the negotiator these days! She has learned to pedal her bike and loves to run outside by herself. We really have to keep an eye on her. Today, I told her to go wait in the garage while I grabbed my purse to go to the park. I came out the door a minute or two later and she had the van running and was trying to put it in gear! YIKES! I didn't realize the sliding door was still open from my trip to the grocery store. She must have hopped right in and grabbed the keys off the console, put them in the ignition and turned on the van! Chad and I will no longer be leaving the keys our vehicles! When we got to the park, Makayla was walking towards the slides and she said, "Mom, I'm excited!" It was the first time she used that word to describe how she's feeling!


Lydia continues to love to eat her oatmeal every morning. Some days she eats almost the entire packet of instant oatmeal. She has been a very picky eater until I realized she likes to take bites from the food on my plate! She's expanded her menu quite a bit since I learned to sneak in new foods from my plate! She is also very independent and watches everything Makayla does or has and wants to keep up to her big sis!


We took a trip to the N.E.W. Zoo, which is about 45 minutes from our house. The kids always love going to the zoo! On this particular trip, we had a picnic lunch in the back of the van, which the kids thought was pretty neat!










Makayla looked outside one day and told me it snowed! Check-out her snow-covered tree!

Lydia has figured out how to climb up onto things...here she was caught in the act:



We've been able to take our new boat out a few times. Here's a few pix out on the boat!



Lydia took a dip in the river on one of our boating trips!The kids absolutely LOVE being outside! When we get home from daycare, they would both rather play outside than eat dinner! Here's a photo of Chad and the girls walking down the street! Makayla is very proud of herself because she can now pedal her trike and her bigger bike with training wheels!

Here's Makayla sliding down the slide on our new swing set. It's not fully assembled in this photo, but the kids didn't care!

Lydia just LOVES to swing on the swing set! I liked this photo because is shows Lydia doing her "where is it" sign! I think she wanted to know where Chad was because he stepped inside the patio door!

Here's Lydia trying out a few different positions to see what's most comfy...

Here's Lydia just havin' a good time!

Makayla thinks its very fun to push Lydia, but sometimes this makes Lydia very mad because she doesn't want Makayla to touch her! (The girls hate when the other one touches them. Sometimes Makayla hates it when Lydia looks at her!!)

The neighbor girls had their slip-n-slide out and Makayla was so excited to go over and slide on the "slippery slide" with them. However, once she got up close, she got very shy. She finally took a little slide on it, but since she didn't have much of a running start, Chad had to pull her across!

Here's a random picture that I thought was fun! This was taken when we were in Texas!

Memorial Weekend Up North

We spent memorial weekend up north at the Evers' Family cabin! Here's a photo of Chad, Kevin, and a bunch of the kids heading out in the boat to do some tubing! Even though it was pretty cool, Makayla was super excited to take a turn in the tube!

Here's Makayla after tubing! She never actually made it onto the tube, but she did get a nice snooze! There's a little heater that was sending warm air right under her towel! How cozy!

Here's Lydia enjoying a granola bar. She sat there and picked out every mini chocolate chip from the granola bar and then left the granola behind! :) She's our chocolate lover, for sure!

This is the new toy that Mom spoiled Makayla with! :)

Traveling to Texas

We took a 10 day trip to Houston and San Antonio Texas! We picked the destination because my brother, Jeffrey Sandoval, graduated with his PhD in Computer Science from Rice University in Houston, Texas. So we made a vacation out of it and spent a few days in Houston, about 6 days in San Antonio, and then wrapped up in Houston for Jeff's graduation. We loved being able to spend this vacation with my parents and my brother, Jeff, and sister-in-law, Monica. This was our first time flying with the kids and they did great! In fact, they did great for the entire trip! We've had an unseasonably cold spring, so it was great to get away from Wisconsin and enjoy some warm weather.

Jeff's Graduation
Here are some pix from Jeff's graduation at Rice. This is the Quad where the outdoor commencement ceremony was held. The ceremony started at 8:30am to try to avoid the mid-day heat!

This is the arch that the students walk through after the ceremony is over!

Here's Jeffrey after walking through the arch!

Here are Jeffrey and I after the hooding ceremony, which was the day before commencement.

Here's Jeffrey with our proud parents!

Visiting Friends
While in Houston, we visited my college friend, Katie. Her daughter, Ashlyn, is only a few weeks younger than Makayla. The girls had a blast playing together outside! And Lydia had a blast outside too!

Ashlyn has a motorized car which Makayla loved driving! The 2 girls rode all around the backyard!

Lydia enjoyed sliding and swinging! She went for an occasional ride in the car with Makayla!We also visited and stayed with one of Chad's college friends, Francis, when we were in Houston. Here's a photo of the girls hanging out in his backyard!

The San Antonio Zoo
The kids had an absolutely fabulous time at the San Antonio Zoo! There were tons of neat animals to see and both girls really enjoyed it! Here's a photo of Makayla, Chad, and my brother, Jeff. Here are the girls and I. Makayla wasn't a big fan of sitting on this lizard!

Although the lizard wasn't a big hit, this train was! Here's Monica, Jeff, me, Lydia, Makayla, and Chad!

San Antonio Children's Museum

The girls really enjoyed the San Antonio Children's Museum! The museum was nice, but really made me appreciate how nice our Appleton Children's Museum is!

Here we are sitting in boat!

Makayla got to milk a cow!

Makayla also enjoyed the toy grocery store! She filled up her cart and then got to scan everything at the checkout!Here's Makayla driving the trolley car! Lydia enjoyed climbing up and down on the seats!

The Alamo

We made a quick visit to the Alamo! You can see Makayla's excitement...

Rain Forest Cafe

We ate dinner at the Rain Forest Cafe one night. The kids were a little young to fully enjoy it, but I sure enjoyed my pina coloda! Here's Makayla and Grandma sitting at the animal bar stools!Here's Lydia and Auntie Monica!Hanging out in the Hotel!

We shared a very nice suite with my parents and brother and sister-in-law in San Antonio. Makayla kept everyone entertained in the evenings! Here she is playing Ring-Around-the-Rosie with Grandma and Lydia! Lydia loves doing this and it was a way that Grandma got Lydia to warm-up to her!Makayla also liked to be the "teacher" and have us all sing songs and do what she said!Makayla got to go swimming almost every day at the hotel! She loved the pool and by the end of the week, she could swim all around the pool using her floating ring!Lydia enjoyed investigating all of the cupboards and for some reason, she liked to crawl in this one!Sea World

We took the kids to Sea World, but I think they were just a little too young to enjoy it. Below, you can see me standing next to the strollers. This is as close as Makayla would let us get to Ernie and Bert!Auntie Monica loved Sea World!! Especially petting and feeding the dolphins!Parks, Parks, Parks!

Towards the end of our trip, Makayla was asking me everyday if we could go to the park! The kids really enjoyed being able to play outside everyday! A few days, Makayla complained of being hot, but for the most part, she enjoyed the sunshine!
I took a photo of this slide because it intrigued me! The rollers all turned as a kids slid down! I decided to give it a try myself, despite another Mom warning me that she heard it hurts when an adult goes down! Well, I should have listened to her!! My tailbone felt every bump between every roller and I was sore for a few days! Ouch! Better leave this slide to the kids!

It rained one day, so we found an indoor bounce area to play at! Both kids had a blast! And I think it met Makayla's desire to go to a park!Riverwalk
Here are some pics along the riverwalk in San Antonio. It was very beautiful to walk along!

This waterfall was one of Makayla's favorite things to see along the Riverwalk! It was right outside our hotel, so we walked passed it going to and from most walking trips!

All in all we had a great trip! The kids did wonderful on the airplanes and were pretty flexible with all the sight-seeing and traveling that we did! Maybe it's time to start planning the next trip.... :)

April 2011

Happy April...I'm a little slow to post this because we took a 10 day trip to Texas in early May! We all had a blast and the kids did great on the airplanes! Congrats to my brother, Jeff Sandoval, who earned his PhD in Computer Science at Rice University! More to come on that trip in a separate post....

April was still a pretty chilly month in Wisconsin, although the kids did get out side as much as possible! They both LOVE being outside. Chad recently bought a swing set for the kids, so watch my May post for some photos! In the meantime, here are some pics of our adventures in the backyard!

Here's Makayla helping Chad plant some little trees! I'm afraid these little trees are going to get trampled by the kids, but hopefully a few of them make it!
Here are the girls in their toy house! Makayla likes to put the bark chips in the little sink (where Lydia is standing) and Lydia likes to put the bark chips in her mouth! She loves it even more when you tell her "icky" and try to take them out of her mouth!!

Here's a photo of Lydia splashing in the rainwater that collected in the little sink!
Lydia loves to take Makayla's stuff and run away with it. Here's Makayla chasing Lydia to get her crocs back!

One of the first times we took Lydia outside, she spotted the neighbor's rocks. She thought it was a bunch of balls and she ran over to take a look (and a taste)!

I took this photo one morning because the sunrise was just beautiful! The photo hardly does it justice. The trees were just glowing in a bright orangish-yellow color!

We had a fun play date with Ella and Jayden! Here's a photo of the kids...it was funny trying to get them all to sit still and look at the camera!

For some reason, we really didn't take a lot of photos in April. Even though we didn't take a lot of photos, I did keep a list of a lot of the amusing things that Makayla has been saying these days!

We were outside playing one day and I showed Makayla some of my daffodils that were starting to bloom. She told me that the flowers had been sleeping in the ground and that the sun woke them up! Then she began singing a song about the sun called, "Mr. Golden Sun!" A few days later, Chad had called diggers hotline, so there were flags all over our yard. Makayla went outside, saw all of the flags, and told me that the flags must have been sleeping in the ground too!

Makayla is learning about her favorite things. Makayla likes to tell me her 2 favorite friends are Breckyln and Lydia. Brecklyn is a friend from school who Makayla loves to play with! One day I moved a lot of baby books from Makayla's bedroom into Lydia's bedroom. Makayla noticed this and was kind of upset. I was trying to explain to her that these were baby books and she had lots of her own books. She grabbed one and ran off with it and then turned to me and said, "Mom, this is my FAVORITE book!" Then she marched off to her bedroom with it! One day she told me that I needed to share with Dad because he was my favorite!

Sometimes Makayla likes to tell me strange things that I know can't be true. One day she couldn't find her "Brown Bear" book, so she told me, "Dad must have sold it!". (This was shortly after Chad sold our boat.) One day she told me that Chad had been carrying her on his shoulders and that he scratched her eyes on the ceiling! Hmmm... One evening I asked her where her sheet from daycare was. She said, "Lydia ripped it so Dad threw it out!" So later that night I was asking Chad what the sheet said before it got ripped and he told me it was not ripped and he did not throw it out! Hmmm.... One night Makayla woke-up in the middle of the night and she peed the bed. I went into her room and she did not want to get out of the bed. I tried to explain to her that she peed the bed and we needed to change the sheets. First she tells me, "Mom, that's just my water, it leaked!" (She has a sippy of water in her bed) So I checked and the sippy still looked pretty full. The she still didn't want to get out of the bed and I explained that there was pee in the bed. Then she tells me, "Mom, that's bath water!" Hmmm....

Makayla also likes to be a little mother-hen to Lydia. She will tell me all the naughty things that Lydia does and she'll talk to Lydia like she's the mom. She likes to tell me, "Lydia isn't listening" when Lydia doesn't do what I ask. She will repeat things I say to Lydia. She will say, "It's okay sweetheart" and "I know sweatheart" when Lydia is crying. She always wants to help me change Lydia's diaper and get Lydia dressed. I think if Lydia would hold still, Makayla would be a pro at changing her diaper! One day, Lydia threw her sippy cup of milk on the floor. Makayla picked it up and said, "You're all done with this!" and put it in the fridge!

Lately, Makayla really likes to read the book, "The Cat in the Hat." One day it was thundering pretty loudly, so I told Makayla to listen to the thunder. I said, "The thunder goes thump and bump!" She looked at me and asked, "Are the Cat-in-the-Hat and Thing 1 and Thing 2 up in the sky?"

Chad got me some flowers for my birthday and Makayla and I were admiring them together. She was asking me the names of the flowers in the vase. When I told her, "This is a daisy", she looked at me funny and asked, "Where's Donald?"

Lydia is continuing to be more vocal. She clearly says, "ball" and she'll say, "dad" and "water". In the bathtub, if you ask her where her toes are, she'll smile and laugh and grab her foot and lift it up! She also likes to play peek-a-boo by putting a blanket over her toes! Then I ask her where her toes are and she laughs and moves the blanket!! Lydia has very little fear and does her best to keep up to Makayla. Here's one final photo of Lydia climbing up on the register in order to see out the window! She's become a pro at at this...and all sorts of other climbing lately!