The First Birthday Party

Posted on June 20, 2016 by Mdfrisco

The day before Dylan’s birthday we had a party to celebrate his first year. Since it was the weekend after Cinco de Mayo, we kept the celebration going into the weekend with a Cinco de Mayo theme.

Dylan had friends of all ages come to celebrate with us.

We just celebrated this little cutie’s 1st birthday a month earlier.

After everyone ate and the kids got some good playtime in, it was time for cake!

Dylan didn’t quite know what to do with the cake, so big brother got him started by showing him how to properly eat the frosting with your fingers.

Once he got the hang of it, he decided he liked it.

Then he figured out how to pick it up, and shove it directly into his face.

Some of the kids made it in the group photo

And it wouldn’t be a kids Cinco de Mayo party without a Pinata! Thanks to one of my girlfriends we had the ultimate giant Pinata, it was almost adult sized!

The birthday boy got the first swing

Then all the kids had a few rounds starting with the little ones

And big brother got his turn

I love the kids cheering in the background!

And you can tell this girl knows her way around a Pinata by the looks of determination on her face!

And the kid who plays T-Ball is the one who finally got the job done!

A happy Birthday Boy!

All the kids (and adults) had a great time. We are so thankful to those who came to celebrate with us. When the party was over Dylan couldn’t go to bed without opening his presents, with lots of help from his brother of course!

I’d say it was a successful first birthday and looking forward to all the birthday parties to come!

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Papa’s pool

Posted on June 2, 2016 by Mdfrisco

The last weekend in April we went to Papa J and Nonnie’s house to celebrate Papa’s birthday. And Justin made the mistake of telling Jacob we were going about 2 weeks before. So…every single day, all.day.long he kept talking about going to Papa’s to swim in the pool. Every time we were getting ready to go somewhere, he would ask, “are we going to Papa’s?” When we put him to bed at night, we tell him it’s time to get some sleep so he is ready for the next day’s adventures, and he always asked “Tomorrow are we going to Papa’s pool?” Finally, the week before, I started laying out the days and telling him what we had to do each day before we could go to Papa and Nonnie’s house. It went something like this…“Today we have to do laundry and run errands, tomorrow you have school, the next day is a playdate and swimming lessons, then you go to school again and when we pick you up from school, THEN we will go to Papa’s house!”

After counting down the days, the day finally came for us to go, and we had a great time! The things I didn’t get pictures of was golf cart rides, trip to the park, yummy meals and lots of family time playing together. And of course what Jacob had been waiting for…we spent lots of time in the pool.

Jacob is not the only one who loves to swim, Dylan was having a great time too!

They love being with their daddy and Papa in the water.

And Jacob loved being launched into the air by Papa.

And Dylan was cheering him on.

It is fun to sit back and watch them playing around, being silly and simply just being kids (both the big boys and the littles!)

And Dylan has become quite the dog lover. The neighbors dog spent the day with us and it was a love affair between the two. The dog followed Dylan everywhere, and Dylan loved every minute of it and was signing doggie all day long. I’ve gained supporter in my quest for a dog!

And while the guys were golfing one day, the boys and I were able to get a quick lunch with one of my best friends who I had not seen in a long time.

It was a fun weekend celebrating Papa and spending time with family!

Springtime

Posted on April 28, 2016 by Mdfrisco

It is amazing how fast the days turn into weeks and the weeks into months and the months into years! Some days drag on forever, but time in general is just speeding by. Here we are enjoying another beautiful San Diego Springtime! With St. Patrick’s Day and Easter just a couple weeks apart, March was a fun filled month.

I love how Jacob really learns about all the different holidays not just with what we do at home but at school. They have so many fun activities, themed lunch parties, and all the holiday crafts. After his St. Patrick’s Day party at school, I tried to get a picture of both boys. Neither one would sit still, so I gave them some of the shamrocks that Jacob made at school and asked Jacob to tell Dylan about them. That lasted for about 5 seconds, when I was able to snap this picture.

Then Jacob took off and I was left with this handsome dude.

He was eyeing the artwork and trying to figure out what to do with it.

After looking at it and waving it around, he decided to rip it to shreds and see how it tasted

It must not have been very tasty, because then he took off after Jacob.

After St Patrick’s Day came Easter. Our original plans for Easter weekend were pretty relaxed. Jacob and I had a birthday party to go to on Saturday, then we were going to church on Sunday. However, thanks to March Madness, a group of us had an impromptu get together on Saturday evening to watch the game, which also turned into an Easter egg hunt for the kids, and a fun evening with friends. Here they are lined up waiting for the GO! to start the hunt.

And I will admit…I didn’t do the whole Easter basket thing this year. And since this was a last minute thing, we didn’t have a basket for Jacob to use for the hunt. So Justin ran out to the car and grabbed a wine carrier bag for him to use. Parents of the year, I know…

To make things fun for the dads we also hid cans of Coors Light for them to find. Somehow it turned into the dads giving the kids a dollar for every can they found and brought to them.

Sunday morning we celebrated the real reason for Easter at church. After the service we did another Easter egg hunt. Instead of quickly gathering as many eggs as he could, Jacob would pick one up, and crack it open to see what was inside before putting it in his bag. He is very selective…

And then he and Dylan got into a groove where Dylan would pick up an egg and Jacob would take it and put it in his bag.

After the service we went to our friends house with a group of our church family and spent the rest of the day there.

We feel so blessed to have all these wonderful friends who are like family to get together and do life with.

He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: ‘The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.’ – Luke 24:6-7

THREE

Posted on February 20, 2016 by Mdfrisco

The first week of January, after we got the house cleaned up from Christmas, we got out the birthday decorations to celebrate Jacob’s 3rd birthday!

Jacob was born on a rainy day, so it was appropriate that the week of his birthday we had a pretty wild storm come through town. Over a span of 5 days we had rain, flash floods, thunder/lightning, a tornado warning, a power outage and an earthquake! For people who are spoiled with San Diego’s perfect 70 degrees and sunny weather, it made for an exciting week! Jacob was so happy to use his new umbrella and rain boots

and I felt like I was glued to the window for days watching it all unfold! This crazy birthday week weather also confirmed my suspicion that this is going to be a wild year navigating life with a “threenager”.

On his birthday we had a trip planned to go visit the local fire department since every time we drive by he looks to see if the garage door is open. If it is not, he says “it’s closed, that means there’s not an emergency and the fire trucks are sleeping.” If it is open, he is thrilled to see the trucks and yells “They’re awake! They’re awake!” However, due to the flash floods and thunder and lightning I decided it would be best to stay home rather than driving through the mess, and they were busy enough during the storm. That night after daddy got home from work we had a giant cupcake to celebrate his birthday and he sang along with us when we sang Happy Birthday to him.

I’m THREE!

The next day at school, he had cookies with his class to celebrate his birthday again. And that weekend we had a Thomas the Train themed party with some of Jacob’s friends! When looking online for a bakery, I discovered the bakery that did our wedding cake has their main location nearby. So that was an easy choice for his cake. I’m not really big on birthday cake, but this one was GOOD!

Not all the kids made it into this picture, but I love seeing these kiddos together and it will be fun to look back on these pictures when they are older.

He also had his three year check up with our pediatrician. We addressed the peanut allergy again and his blood test results came back a 2 on a scale of 0-6. It is a low number, but there is an allergy there, so we have an appointment to visit my old office do do some more testing. Otherwise, he is a very healthy boy who now weighs 30.9 lbs and is 37.5 inches (a little over 3 feet) tall.

It was a fun week celebrating our cute, rambunctious, stubborn, frustrating, smart and sweet 3 year old! To close this post, here is Jacob’s 3 year old picture with the giraffe and elephant.

The Season

Posted on February 2, 2016 by Mdfrisco

We are still alive (barely) over here. I am slowly but surely trying to get a little more caught up on the blog, so lets go back in time and rediscover Christmastime 🙂

Christmas is my favorite time of year. Yes, it gets crazy and chaotic, but it is a good kind of crazy. It’s not only the actual day of Christmas that I love, it is the entire season. We did all kinds of fun things to celebrate the season and to prepare for Christmas at our house. I wish I could say that I had my camera out at the ready and was taking all these wonderful photos to document the season…however, with two small children, time is not my friend. And the time and effort that goes into taking those beautiful, creative photos with the perfect lighting and setting just didn’t happen for me this year. But it doesn’t mean I didn’t whip out my iPhone to snap away, so I do have pictures to share.

First off, baking! For as long as I can remember, my grandma has always made an old family recipe for pecan sweet rolls that we would have on Christmas morning. When my grandparents moved out of their house into their retirement community, they didn’t have the kitchen capacity to make them any more and it really was too much work for her to do at that point anyway. That first Christmas after they moved, it dawned on me that she wouldn’t be making the sweet rolls and I couldn’t let that tradition stop! So I called her and told her to email me the recipe and I went to Costco to buy a mixer with a dough hook and ever since then I’ve been making the rolls for our Christmas morning. The past few years, my mom has come to help (especially once the kids started showing up!) It is an all day process and they are so worth the work. This year my grandma (Oma) came over to visit with us while we made the rolls. It was a bit of a chaotic day juggling, making the rolls, taking care of the kids and Oma and making lunch, keeping the kids entertained, etc… but we got it done and Oma really enjoyed the day with us and it made for some fun memories!

A few days later, the boys helped me make cookies. I love how Dylan is just plain happy to be a part of anything we are doing, especially if his favorite person (Jake) is involved. Jake is really good at using the cookie cutters, and he is even better at eating the cookie dough!

This year we experienced another parenting “first” when watching Jacob in his preschool Christmas Program. His class is the youngest, so they were only onstage for about 7 minutes and they sang “Go Tell it on the Mountain” and “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”, then they came back onstage for the grand finale. Even though Jacob knows the words to the songs he pretty much just waved his star around and searched the audience for us. I could tell when he found Grandma since his face lit up and he started waving back to her.

It was pretty cute, he had a lot of fun and we are proud of him for going up on the stage in front of all those people!

We had my family Christmas party at my Aunt and Uncle’s house. Jacob loved playing with the new trains he got.

And Dylan was a real life doll for his girl cousins. They were completely enamored with him and he loved the attention!

That night we drove to my parents cabin with plans of staying a few nights and going to Wildlights at the Living Desert in Palm Desert like we did the year before. However, we all got sick…miserably sick. So we took it easy for a day before heading home. It was too cold and windy to work outside with a cold, so Jake and grandpa watched the National Finals Rodeo on TV

and we gave Dylan a warm bath, hoping it would help with his congestion. Even when he’s sick, he’s my smiley happy boy!

We were all so congested and plugged up, we could not hear anything. The pressure from driving over the mountain really bothered the boys and they cried the entire way home. It was a long drive. And the cold lasted a long time, but we finally got better. And we kept celebrating the season…

Growing up my mom sang in the choir and they would always sing at the community Christmas tree lighting ceremonies, or Christmas programs or some other kind of Christmas event. I remember going to many of those events with my dad to watch my mom. There was something magical about the music, lights, hot chocolate and bundling up on a cold night. Now we are still enjoying these community events, but with the added bonus of seeing it all through our kids eyes. The first one we went to was at the Bernardo Winery. They had a great train village set up and Jacob could have spent the entire night there! Every time we would go do something else, he kept saying he wanted to go back to the trains, so we made several trips there. We had some amazing food from the food trucks they had, but the wait was ridiculous, thankfully we had the train village to entertain Jake while we waited for the food! This year Jacob really started understanding the concept of Santa Claus. So while we were waiting in line to see Santa (he hadn’t arrived yet), we were talking to Jacob about Santa being on his way and how we were going to sit on his lap and tell him what we wanted for Christmas, etc… Jacob was excited! He kept watching the sky and waiting to see Santa in his sleigh with his reindeer.

And when Santa did arrive Jacob was starstruck to see him in real life! While we got closer and closer in line, he watched all the other kids sit on his lap and take their picture with Santa, however, when it came his turn…he wanted nothing to do with it! But Dylan didn’t mind at all.

So then we thought if we did the family photo, Jake would be more comfortable, but he wouldn’t leave his daddy’s arms.

A few nights later we got together with some of our neighbors and went to the Christmas festivities at the Rancho Bernardo Inn. They had carolers that Jacob loved listening to, they had a giant gingerbread house, beautiful decorations, a fun lighting show/display complete with fake snow and again Santa Claus. This time we were able to convince Jacob to at least stand by Santa, I told him that Dylan needed him to hold his hand.

Poor Dylan has these crazy cowlicks at the front of his hairline, no matter what I do, it won’t go one way or the other and it’s going to be a battle for him the rest of his life. But with the twinkle in his blue eyes and that big smile I still think he is pretty darn cute regardless of what his hair does 🙂

On Christmas Eve we had family and friends over for a German food feast! And we went to the Christmas Eve service at our church. It was a special service singing Christmas songs, watching the adorable kids program and hearing the heartwarming message, which is always a nice reminder of what Christmas is truly about. Celebrating the birth of our savior is the reason for the season! And even though I didn’t get photos I wanted to with my camera, we were sick most of the time and Jacob didn’t want to sit on Santa’s lap, it really doesn’t matter, we still had an amazing time with family and friends and created memories to last a lifetime.

For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. – Luke 2:11

Fourth of July

Posted on September 17, 2015 by Mdfrisco

For the past few years it has kind of been a tradition to spend the 4th of July on the Bay with some good friends of ours who live there. Before we left we took some patriotic pictures of the boys with some flags that Justin bought for Jake to hold while he marches (one of his favorite things to do around the house now).

Then we headed to the bay. It was a fun day of food, games and friends. If you are a regular on this blog then you will probably recognize Jacob’s friend Kennedy, born only a month apart, these two have shared lots of fun times together over the last two and a half years. It had been a little while since these two saw each other though and they picked up right where they left off. They got ahold of some flags and started walking down to the water. My heart melted when I watched them and I knew I needed to capture this sweet moment.

They just stood there on the sand right where the water came in and waved their flags,

pointed to things out in the water,

discussed something very important,

laughed and marched around,

and they were the cutest all American kids on the beach!

Julia and I took our traditional picture with our newest babies who are 4 months apart.

And here are the boys in their matching camo shorts.

That night after getting the boys in bed, we walked out through our backyard onto the golf course and met up with our friends (who are also now our neighbors) and watched the fireworks. It was pretty cool since we could see two different shows from the comfort of our own home. Next year I think I may try to master taking good pictures of fireworks…

We survived

Posted on July 23, 2015 by Mdfrisco

I never got into the reality TV series Survivor, but it seemed like everyone I knew watched it when it was popular. The show was about a group of people who were put in a remote location (like in the jungle or a deserted island) and they had to survive the elements, find shelter, food, etc… It was a test of not only your physical strength and capabilities but a test of mental and emotional strengths as well. Through a process of elimination one person “won” the show at the end and became the ultimate “Survivor”. I feel like that has been our life for the past few months. Except instead of one survivor, we all survived, barely!

It is amazing how much your life can change in such a short time. Whether or not you planned on the change or knew what was coming or had much time to prepare, sometimes it can turn your life upside down. In the span of a six weeks, we closed escrow on a new house, started a major remodel on the house, packed up our old house, moved AND had a baby in the middle of all of it. Yes, we knew these things were going to happen. Yes, we tried to prepare as much as we could. But it was still hard. It was not our ideal situation to have a baby in the middle of a remodel and move, and to be living in the house during some of the remodel with a 2 year old and newborn, but that is just the way it worked out. It was crazy, it was hard. We had SO MUCH help from our family and friends with packing, moving, taking care of the kids (and us) and the remodel and our amazing church family provided meals for us for several weeks, we couldn’t have survived without them all and we are SO thankful for their help.

We are still not done, and won’t be for a while, but at least the major stuff is done and we are living comfortably in our new home. We’ve finally had a chance to slow down a bit and breathe…and settle into our new normal. Looking back over the last couple of months, I am amazed at what we did and survived. It was not easy, it was hard, physically…mentally… and emotionally…but we survived and we have an amazing new house and another precious little boy who joined our family. It was all worth it.

Obviously, this blog was pushed off the radar during the craziness. I have lots to share and have been trying to remember to take pictures along the way. I am really trying to make time to sit down and write about all of this because as hard as it all was, it was pretty awesome too and I want to remember it. So I will be back, soon, I hope 🙂

Shower fun and Easter

Posted on April 9, 2015 by Mdfrisco

This last weekend was filled with lots of friends, family and fun! Justin’s parents and grandma came to visit, and Jacob loves that time spent with them! On Saturday my girlfriends thew a shower for baby #2. It was a nice intimate day with some awesome girls who I am so thankful to be on this motherhood journey with!

At school, Jacob’s class had an Easter party so he was already stocked up on eggs and Easter goodies. Including a bunny hat he made and kept on his head when we went to go visit Oma later that day.

So on Easter Sunday we had a nice morning at church and just spent the rest of the day together relaxing.

Sunday also marked 36 weeks of pregnancy for me. I am now going to the doctor weekly and all continues to look good. My belly dropped and our little guy is in position, ready to go. I have been having alot of Braxton Hicks, which I didn’t have too much of with Jacob. So I keep thinking every single day that I will be going into labor. Which is kind of good because it motivated me to finally get my hospital bag packed and the infant car seat ready to go! This morning at my checkup I was talking to my doctor about all the Braxton Hicks I’ve been having so she checked to see if I am dialating yet and I am not. Whew! That makes me feel a little bit better and I’m just praying that he stays put for at least another week. Here’s my 36 week belly.

Reunited

Posted on January 5, 2015 by Mdfrisco

If you have been reading this blog from the start you know about the 3 of us who became 6 (even if you already read that post, you need to go back and look at the picture, wow!). I was pregnant with Jake at the same time as two good friends of mine who were pregnant with their little girls. While we have so many friends with kiddos, I think there will always be a special bond between our 3 families.

From the start of our pregnancies and still to this day the 3 mommas are always checking in with each other. First, about doctors appointments, ultrasounds, pregnancy ups/downs. Then came the baby arrivals and the checking in to see how we were doing, offering advice, sharing stories of the babies “firsts”, milestones and supporting each other. To this day we are still checking in with each other and sharing stories as our kiddos are embarking on the wonderful age of 2. The daddies are pretty close too and their bond has gotten stronger in their experiences over the last 2+ years. As much as I would love to say that these 3 kiddos will always live in the same town and would always see each other often, that just is not a reality. Due to a wonderful job opportunity the Haigis family moved to Idaho a few months ago. Thank God for technology, we are able to easily keep in touch with them and us mommas are still checking in with each other. They made a trip back to San Diego for Christmas and we were able to get together for a playdate!

So the challenge for the day was to get all 3 kiddos in the same place for a picture. I think we had a bit of success!

Love you all and can’t wait to get everyone together again!

The Whites

Posted on December 7, 2014 by Mdfrisco

I have done several photo shoots at Old Poway Park and this is the 3rd year I’ve taken pictures for the White family, and I think these are some of my favorite pictures I’ve taken both at this location as well as for this family. Anytime we are working with kids, especially 4 young kids, it’s hard to get them to sit still, and get them all to look at the camera and smile at the same time. But I think we had a little bit of luck this time around, and it is only going to get better from here on out. Here are some of my favorites…