Alaina turns 21. VEGAS BABY!

Alaina hit a major milestone this year with her August Birthday- the big 2-1!!!
We set off for Vegas mid August and thanks to our Uncle Chuck we got to enjoy the luxury of a timeshare suite on the strip! The hotel was awesome! We felt like celebrities.

The highlight of the trip was the Cirque du Soleil Beatles "LOVE" show that we attended at the Mirage on saturday. The show was amazing! So beautiful! Alaina was completely satisfied cause she's the die-hard Beatle fan.

After the show, we took some more crazy pics, mom played the slots, and we walked around Vegas til the early morning. Weekend in Vegas complete!

David and Elias

So yes, it's been a while. The babies are almost three months old, and I have yet to post

an official picture on this blog. Some of you may wonder, "what's he been doing this whole time? How lazy can you get? Where are the pictures, already?" I assume those of you wondering these things have never taken care of twins.

This summer I have discovered two things: 1) taking care of two babies at the same time is more than twice as hard as taking care of one; and 2) the Octomom is without a doubt, hands-down the most insane person in the history of mankind. In fact, I'm pretty sure my top three would be something like this:

MOST INSANE PEOPLE OF ALL TIME

1. The Octomom
2. Jack Nicholson in "The Shining"
3. Anyone who appears in a Jackass movie
   

Little-known fact: you can train kids to reproduce like amoebas. Here, David is just about done forming from the top of Hanna's head. It sure beats labor!


David and Elias begin their training for the 2028 U.S. Olympic Men's Synchoronized Diving Team. They're also learning pizzazz: David is dressed as some sort of elf with a stylish vomit stain, Elias is going as Rasputin.

This picture has to be one of my favorites. Neither of them looks like they particularly want to be there.

The obligatory first bath shot, with the added wrinkle that it's a picture of someone else taking a better picture of the same thing. Interesting fact: Hanna's camera is better than ours. She's packing six megapixels and has her name monogrammed right on the front.

Here, David and Elias take a well-deserved breather after a tough morning of sleeping, pooping, farting, and more sleeping.

The boys are very healthy and are growing at an amazing rate. They are both well over 10 pounds and starting to focus their eyes on us. Their eyes are still blue and their hair, eyebrows and eyelashes are all light-colored.

Meeting the Beck Twins!

Everyone has been excitedly talking about the recent birth of the Beck twins, David and Elias. They are the first set of twins to enter the family, and to top it off, they are boys (the female to male ratio is slowly evening out)!
Grandma and I drove up to Santa Barbara for the weekend to visit; she needed to go apartment hunting because she will be caring for the twins starting next month.

We also got to see Joe in a wonderful performance of Max in the play, Laughter on the 23rd floor.

Check out the pictures of the handsome twins, Hanna and me playing, and some stills from Joe's show! :)

Fourth of July and Reinel's 26th celebration!

This fourth of July/birthday weekend was so fulfilling for me. This year I bought some tickets for a concert at the Hollywood Bowl to see a band I really enjoy. My family was going to join me for the event. But, they surprised me by coming up the night before to BBQ for July 4th!

I bought some meat and even some sparklers, and late into the night we played a hilarious game of Catch Phrase.
My boyfriend and his friends that were visiting stopped by as well, so we had quite the little impromptu party!
Sunday was the day of the concert, and I could not wait to get to the lovely Hollywood hills for our pre-concert picnic!

We arrived with little hassle, had a lovely picnic and then headed into the concert for a wonderful concert complete with fireworks!
Here's a video of the finale! (you can see and hear that we had a great time)

I am truly grateful to have my family close by and ready to party at any moment! There are always good times to be had, and new memories to create!

Graduation Parties-Tahlya turns 14!

At the end of June, we had a busy weekend celebrating birthdays and graduations.
On Saturday, we had two graduation parties at the same time! First, we hit up Matthew Duarte's high school graduation luau in Fullerton. Click on the photo for the festive party pics!

We left the party early and hurried over to La Verne for Kristi Campa's high school party at her house! All the Campas were there and the rest of the family too- little Jake looked like he had a lot of fun!
We ate and watched Jacki throw some mean pitches to her cousins and then the girls went for a swim.

Tahlya and Makayla stayed and partied through til midnight for her 14th birthday- they even toasted with Sparkling cider!
By the end of the night, we were pooped, but really enjoyed seeing family, especially so many times in one month!

Tahlya graduates and gets a new kitty!!

We are very proud of Tahlya for graduating eight grade this year! Grandma came down to San Diego with me to attend Tahlya's ceremony and I had a little surprise for her stowed away in my truck.
It was a kitty that Mike and I had been caring for, for the last couple weeks. Tahlya nearly died when she found out we had kitties a few weeks back and proceeded to bug our mom for one every day.
She was ecstatic when she returned home from the ceremony and spotted a little fur ball in a cute, pink play bed. I took a few pics of her with the kitty and of her opening gits to celebrate her day. Alaina took some more pics, hopefully we can get some more up here. :)

Auntie Debbie's 50th Birthday!

For Auntie Debbie's 50th birthday, the family got together for a rockin' good time!
We celebrated in Fontana at Auntie Debbie's house. As soon as we arrived, we could hear music inside, and we entered to a surfin' beach themed party.

I snapped a few photos of my crazy parents dancing to Shout!, the family party song. Also, little J.Flo, (Jake), Stella and Ovidio's little tyke, was dancing all night! We all had a great night, and were happy to spend some family time together!