We continue to grow:)

The expansion of our family garden!  

Now that it's a little warmer outside we have been very busy with outdoor projects.  We're having a great time expanding and working in our family garden.  We're very excited for this family project and for the kids to be involved, learn and grow.

Alton is 3!

Alton turned 3 in March:)  The week of his actual birthday was kind of blah with him being home sick from daycare for a few days and John was out of town for work.  Luckily we had his birthday party planned for a couple of weekends later and it was great.  We did a construction theme and he had a fun time opening his presents, having cupcakes and spending some time with his grandparents, aunt and uncles and family friends.  A few of our big boys favorite things right now are trucks, tractors and cars.  Chances are you can find a matchbox car on his person at just about any time of day:)  He loves Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and finally loves listening to stories being read to him.  He's a high energy boy who has amazing large motor skills.  He zips around on the scooter like a pro and loves throwing and kicking balls.  He's been talking more and more lately and has been pretty consistent with saying complete sentences.  His favorite foods right now are blueberries, grape juice, sausage, and peanut butter toast! 

Big boy opening presents!

Daddy's boy of course wanted daddy to help him open his presents:)

Yeah!  Another truck! He can't get enough trucks, that's for sure.  He calls them all his 'work trucks'.

Someone suddenly became shy when we started singing happy birthday to him.  He's wearing his new Packers jersey he got from us.  He wanted to put it on over his clothes the second he opened it:)  He would wear it to school every day if we would let him! 

Yum!  Chocolate cupcakes:)  Happy Birthday Alton!

Happy Family Day to Alton!

February 1st marked Alton's 2 year Family Day Anniversary.  We received him at the age of 10 months old and he was a happy, smiling, adorable little monkey with more energy then you can imagine:)  He was a good sleeper right from the start and loved eating.  He got around by army crawling and starting to pull himself up to stand on the furniture after a few weeks of being with us.  From the beginning he sucked his fingers when he's tired and was a daddy's boy right from the start.  Today he is almost 3 years old and is learning and growing so much.  He loves his toy trucks, cars and tractors and has amazing large motor skills-riding a scooter, drop kicking balls and throwing a football like nobody's business. We still can't get him to eat a single vegetable but he overall is still a good eater.  He still sucks his finger when he is tired and loves his "blue blanket" and "Puppy Joe Joe" stuffed dog.  He is sweet and charming and we love him so much!



Meeting Alton for the first time.  February 1, 2011.



He was all tuckered out from the excitement and fell asleep on the ride back to the hotel. 

Back at Hotel Paris.

Smiley boy!

I love eating!

  To celebrate we went out to dinner and on the way out we ran to the back yard to hang up this cute pine cone birdfeeder Alton made at school.  February 1, 2013.

Happy Family Day Alton Joseph! February 1, 2013.

Christmas 2012

Our 2012 family Christmas Day was a big success:) We were able to stay home and have Christmas Day at home with just the four of us again and it was great! I"m not sure what time everyone was up and at 'em because I really didn't even look at the clock, but it was light out so it couldn't have been too early;) Alton was into opening presents this year so it was fun for him and Athena of coures was ready to start ripping into presents!


Alton is really liking books lately so we're taking advantage of that and making sure he has lots of great books that we can read to him and he can sit and page through.  He seemed to like these board books right away and paged through each of them before opening more presents.  His big gift was an awesome new play rug for his room and a bunch of trucks and cars to go with it. 

Athena has been wanting a bigger dolly carrier/carseat for her babies Colton and Paisley.   I found the perfect one, and her face lit up when she opened it and saw what it was:)  Here she is modeling it with baby Colton.   

Amber got several gifts this year too.  Here she is having one of her breakfast snausages that Athena helped her unwrap:)

Rock On girlfriend!  Though poor Amber in the background seems to be saying "Seriously?  WHY?  WHY?!?!"

Alton really loves the book Alphabet Rescue so Athena gave him the other 2 books Alphabet Adventure and Alphabet Mystery. 

When Athena started playing with her guitar this afternoon Alton ran and got his drum for a little impromptu jam session:) 

Check out this after lunch pig pile!  Daddy with all 3 of his little ones. 

Ena reading Alton one of his new books:)

After the boys fell asleep for a nap and before Athena fell asleep for a nap, her and I made some pretty Christmas chocolate covered strawberries.  We had them later in the evening along with our delicious babyback ribs that were braising in the oven for dinner. 

We have had such a great Christmas already and we still have a lot more celebrating to do:)  Because of work and travel schedules, we will be celebrating with with all of the extended families over the next 2 weekends so the fun has just begun!!

Happy 6th Birthday Athena!

We had Athena's birthday party today and it went great!  It was a princess spa party and it was a ton of work, but Athena had a blast so it was SO worth it:)  I absolutely could not have done it without the help of my friends and MIL. We had a manicure station, pedicure station, hair salon and a snack station.  Each station was run by 2 adults while I expedited and rotated the kids through the stations. 



There were 16 girls total. 

The manicure station.  Each girl got to choose the colors for her fingernails and also pick out a flowery emery board to keep.

The hair salon.  This station was stocked with a plumeria flower hair clip for each girl, hair glitter, and each girl also got to choose a lip gloss to keep. 

Alton even got in on the salon action.  He actually kept his hair clip in for quite a while!

The pedicure station!  Everyone loved this one-they got to soak their feet in the spa, then choose the colors for their toes and also got to choose the colors for flowers or polka dots drawn on them. 

For snacks everyone got a cupcake and also got to eat the snack kabob that they each had created at the snack station. 

All day long without a  nap and so many pretty girls to flirt with wore out this big guy!  He zonked out on daddy's lap before 7:00:)

Halloween 2012

Once again we were lucky enough to have friends come and join us for trick or treating.  Each year as the kids get older they enjoy it more and more and it gets more and more fun to take them out and watch them enjoy themselves:) 

Ena was Princess Jasmine.  She wanted this Jasmine costume somethin' fierce when we were at Disney World this summer  so we shelled out the cash for it with the understanding that it was also going to be her trick or treat costume:) 

Alton was the cutest little pirate ever!  He rode in the wagon for about the first 10  minutes, but once he warmed up to the whole trick or treating thing he was off!  Running to keep up with the big kids:)

Coolest picture ever!  We got all six of the kids to pose for a picture under the big moon as it was starting to get dark.  Alton looks so big in this picture!

The 3 big girls.  All dressed as princesses of course:)

Afterwards everyone headed back to la casa de Zuge for yummy chili and dilly bars! 

A Summery Fall Day:)

I had a weekend home with the kids this weekend while John was out doing guy stuff up north.  We didn't do too much exciting.  Mostly just ran errands, hung out at home and got regular weekend stuff done:)  We did run and pick up some pumpkins to carve since this is one Athena's very favorite things to do!  We did one on Saturday and Alton wouldn't get anywhere near it.  He wouldn't even sit by it for a picture let alone touch it.  The following pictures are from when we did another one on Sunday.  He finally warmed up to it and ended up having a great time with sissy:)

He sat and watched Athena for the first few minutes, then finally reached out and touched it with one hand from as far away as possible. 

Finally he inched in for a peak inside. 

A little bit closer inspection and...

He was ready to join in the pumpkin gutting!  Squealing with laughter along with Athena...I should have taken a video instead of just pictures because these 2 were hilarious:)  After all the guts were out they sat and played with the guts like playdough for quite a while.  After a quick bath for both of them and a clean-up of the counter we carved it and set it out on the front steps with a candle to light it up at dark. 

We headed outside for some pictures by the front bushes since it was such a nice day out. 

I was very happy to get some pictures of both of them together with both of them actually cooperating!!!

So gosh darn handsome!

Little cutie pie!

Beautiful princess:)

Happy Fall!!