A History Lesson of Sorts

Yesterday the boys and I went to the cemetery where my dad was laid to rest. I wanted to set flowers there from my family to remember my dad's birthday. We stopped at the flower shop where we picked out 3 blue flowers from the boys, 3 yellow flowers for my brother Paul, Andrew and Curtis, and 3 pink flowers from me, my mom and Brandi (his dog). It is so much easier to go there with the boys than it is to go by myself. We sat and talked about grandpa and how he loved the boys and how he loved cars. They helped polish his headstone. My dad would be proud! The cemetery is relatively close to where I grew up. I decided I was going to take the boys on an adventure from my past. I wanted to show them where I grew up, went to elementary and high school, the park I used to go to and the pool that my brother and I basically lived at during the summer. We also made a stop at Carl's Jr. where my brother used to work to have lunch. It was a memorable trip with the boys and it was good to be back in La Mirada.

This is the house I grew up in. It used to be yellow and white but with no shutters. The gate used to be wood and this is where we were greeted daily by our dogs Brownie, Kabin, Stryker and Corkie. My dad would only let us have 2 dogs at a time though. I can still remember the time when the brick was put on the house. The front window you see in the picture was my room for most of my childhood. There is another window in the front but it is blocked by the truck in the driveway. That was Paul's room and I moved in there when he went to college. My family moved into this house when I was less than a year old and my parents moved out of it when I was 17 years old. I sure have a lot of memories here.




La Pluma Elementary was the school that I attended from Kindergarten until the 7th grade. We didn't have a middle school in our district. There are alot of teachers I still remember from this school: Mr. Moore and Mrs. Ansley were two of my favorites. I met my life long friend Dina here. Her and I are still friends after all these years.



La Mirada High School is where I attended school from the 8th grade until the 12th grade. Gosh I was so happy to graduate from this school! Ms. Farber was by far my favorite teacher. She taught the computer classes at the school. This year will be my 20 year reunion and I'm not sure if I will go.


This is the park across the street from the high school. My brother and I spent a lot of time at the park. We would go fishing or play at the playground. I remember this rocket ship that we would climb up in and just sit for awhile. For the 4th of July, the park would host a family event and then put on fireworks at night. I remember going down the make shift toboggan ride they had for the kids. Fun times! They didn't have this great jungle gym that the boys played on for an hour or so. It was cool to take my boys to the park where my brother and I spent so much time. I think we would still be there if Grant didn't have to use the potty!

And finally this is the "plunge". It is the local swimming pool which is next to the park. We were lucky to have everything so close to our house! Paul and I would walk there everyday in the summer and swim. We would be there from when they opened up until they closed. We were also part of the swim team so we would be there until after they closed too! I don't know what I would have done without the plunge. I loved it there! It's not there anymore but they had a high diving board. We called it the "high dive". Paul was the master of the high dive.

It was a great trip down memory lane yesterday. I was so happy I could share it with the boys.

Grant's Baby Pages

Tonight I worked on Grant's scrapbook. I decided that I was going to start a scrapbook for each one of the boys. I think I am going to do one page at a time for each of them because if I ever come to a stopping point, at least they will each have the same amount of pages. It would look bad if Nolan had a completed scrapbook and Grant and Jack didn't have anything!

There is kind of a funny story about the second picture below. This is the second page in Grant's book. While in the NICU the boys were given a small stuffed animal to have in their isolette. Since the boys are identical, we needed something to tell them apart in the early months of their life. Jack was the tiger, Nolan was a small blue bear and Grant's animal is pictured above. So I get completely done with both pages and I am looking at the pictures and then I realize......I put a picture of Jack there instead of Grant!!!!!! The only way I realized this was because of the stuffed animal. I noticed that the animal was a tiger and not Grant's designated animal. So I had to find another picture of Grant in the NICU because I wrote about "Grant being in the NICU" when in actuality it was Jack. I had a good laugh about it.

I am having a good time scrapbooking but it keeps me up so late. There is just not enough time in the day to do everything I want to do. All mom's can relate to that :)

He Would Have Been 64. Happy Birthday Dad.

My dad had a unique birthday, 1/23/45. It is so fitting because he was a unique man. He was strong, proud, protective, loyal, committed, and hard as nails. He grew up the old school way. He had to provide for his family at a young age because his father passed away when he was young. He got in a lot of trouble with his mother and would hide in trees so she wouldn't find him. He had a brother and two sisters. One of his sisters passed away when he was very young. My father was a very hard worker and very smart even though he did not go to college. He had a great reputation in the bakery business which was his career most of his life. During his illness, it was very hard for him not to work. Keeping busy kept my dad sane.

Other than his family, his biggest passion was restoring old cars. He and I spent countless hours in the garage tinkering with his cars. He had every tool imaginable and he taught me how to use each one in his tool box. Building cars with him was one of my fondest memories growing up. As I got older, we would go to car shows together and it was such a special time for us to bond. In fact, at this time, we would be planning on going to the NHRA Winternationals in Pomona for his birthday. It was a yearly tradition for us before he got sick. Thankfully before he passed away, I was able to take him one last time and I will never forget that day. He was so happy to be there with me and I was with him.

My dad passed away almost 3 years ago and it still hurts as if he passed away yesterday. He was such a big part of my life and there is this void in my heart that can never be filled. I miss everything about him. I know he would be so happy to see our boys growing up. He anticipated the birth of the boys for so long. I was so happy I could give him the gift of being a grandfather. One of the best things I got out of doing the show on the Discovery Health Channel was to see my dad's reaction to seeing the boys for the first time. It makes me cry every time I see it.

One of the best gifts that my dad gave to me was being there on my wedding day and walking me down the aisle. It was a moment that I had waited for all my life. He was so happy for Curtis and I but he was so sad for himself. He felt as though he had lost me to someone else. He loved Curtis and knew that Curtis was a man who would take care of his daughter. The picture above is one of my favorite pictures of all time. In fact, Curtis had it printed on canvas for me and it hangs on my wall in my bedroom.

I love you dad and I miss you so much. Happy Birthday!

My First Scrapbook Pages

I had purchased a Cricut machine during my Black Friday shopping extravaganza. It had been sitting in the spare bedroom since then. Everyday I would see it and I thought to myself "I hope I can find the time to scrapbook". It took me 2 months but I broke it out last night. I dug through my 777 pictures and found the ones of Nolan that I wanted to scrapbook (thanks to Costco for not keeping my pictures in order.....err!)

Back in when I was newly married (and maybe pregnant), Curtis' sister Kirsten and his mom Shirley took me to the OC Fairgrounds for the fair. At the fair, there was a scrapbooking expo going on. At the time Kirsten was scrapbooking pages for Adam and got me interested in purchasing stuff for myself. From time to time I would get out my paper trimmer and some stickers but other than that, the stuff sat in my cabinet. Although I did attempt a scrapbook for Curtis and I but there were only four pages in it and they were pretty pathetic.

So last night I got all my stuff out and started scrapbooking! Doing Nolan's baby page brought back so many memories. The day he was born and how small he really was. I included two of my favorite pictures of him in the NICU. One is of my dad's hand on top of Nolan's back and the other is the one of Curtis' wedding ring sitting atop his little foot. It really gives you perspective on how small he really was.

After spending hours scrapbooking last night, I will be 100 before any of the boys books are done! Oh well....at least I can say I tried.

Pictures, Pictures, and More Pictures

Today I had "special mom time" as we like to call it in our house. It's where either mom leaves the house or Curtis leaves with the boys. Today, Curtis left with the boys and baked a cake at grandma and grandpa's house (yummy by the way!) The silence was deafening in the house with no one here. Well besides four dogs at my feet to keep me company.

So today I found myself organizing the gazillion pictures we have on the computer. Some days I miss the old film cameras. I think with digital cameras you just click, click, click and end up with more pictures than you know what to do with. My intention with these pictures is to slowly start making scrapbooks for the boys. Keyword here is slowly. Yep, in all my "free time" I hope to make it happen. Maybe when the boys get out of college I will have at least the first 5 years of their life done.

I had already organized pictures from their first year of life. Today I organized the second, third and fourth years of life. It was sad, fun and nostalgic to see how fast my little boys have grown up. We have made so many great memories as a family and I hope my boys remember all the great times they had and will have growing up.

Please enjoy some of my favorites of the boys from their second year of life. This is from February 2005 to February 2006.

Some Oldies but Goodies

I thought I would make a slideshow of some pictures of the boys from their first year. I hate to admit it, but in some pictures I don't know who is who! They are identical after all........Someday I will have to explain to them that I was too sleep deprived to always keep track of who I was taking a picture of.

BOING! BOING! BOING!

Today was the first day of the boys gymnastics class. Oh boy did they have fun! Curtis and I laughed almost the entire class watching them. This morning they were very excited to go to "nastics" class. They kept asking me if it was time to leave yet. I wish everyday was as easy as today getting them out of the house!

Of course when we got there I had 3 times the forms to fill out. Thankfully they were patient and sat in their chairs while I filled out the paperwork. Inevitably someone had to use the potty....even though we just left the house 10 minutes ago.

Their class was quite big so the teachers divided them into 2 separate groups. There was one other boy there which was nice to see in the sea of girls and their cute leotards. From the minute the teacher turned on the music, they were ready to go. The smiles were so big and they followed the directions of the teacher very well. I could tell they were having a blast. It made me so happy to see them having such a wonderful time. And yes, I was secretly hoping that they would be exhausted from the hour class and come home and take a nap. Yeah, that didn't happen. After class I asked each one of them what their favorite activity was. Nolan said the trampoline, Jack said the tunnel and Grant said everything. So every Tuesday you will find us at "nastics" class burning off some energy.

A New Year, A New Blog

Happy 2009 everyone! It's a new year and I have had this blog set up for awhile now but have never found the time or energy to start blogging. I hope to turn a new leaf this year and make a conscious effort to write down my thoughts, dreams, hopes or just funny stories that happen daily around our house. A am getting too old to remember everything so maybe someday I can look back and see how fast life just passes us by.

This year, actually in 6 weeks, the boys will be turning 5! Don't ask them about their birthday because for some reason they don't want to be 5. Maybe because they know kindergarten starts when they are 5? Who knows....but they want to be 4, only 4. This year brings a new challenge for me. We decided to take the boys out of their pre-k program and I will be homeschooling them for the next 6 months. Somebody hold me....It will take a lot of patience and dedication to get them ready for kindergarten but I am up for the challenge. They have a desire to learn and encourage each other to try new things. Grant is great at writing his alphabet. He will show his brothers how to write a letter if they don't know how. Along with Grant, Nolan loves to spell words. You can find us out back on the patio writing with chalk with words like McQueen, Dinoco, Christmas, trees, clock, chair, train, etc. You can find Jack playing his trumpet or driving his long Thomas the train around the house. He is not in a rush to write his alphabet. Not my Jack. He takes his time with most things.

Our family is looking forward to hopefully a healthy and happy 2009. We have a big decision this year as to whether or not the bullet from Curtis' neck will come out. It's a scary thought but I pray that the decision we make will help Curtis with his pain and discomfort. It's hard to believe that it's almost been 2 years since that freak accident. God has a plan for our lives. That's for sure!

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God Bless you all and I wish you a very happy and healthy New Year!