A Vazquez Weekend

The weekend is almost over and I must say it was a good one. Why? Because all we did was chill. Friday we had my nephews sleep over and Abram had a blast with them. Saturday morning my niece joined me in a house full of boys. By 2pm everyone was back where they belong. I was at a cake decorating class at Michaels and A.B, Elian and Mr. R were at the park. They picked me up and we headed to the grocery store. We loaded up on things we needed for a small family bbq, came home, grilled and set up a little table outside for a party of four. Sat down and we enjoined some delicious carne asada Mr. R grilled for us. YUMMY! The kids really enjoyed it.

Today we took a trip to Denios Farmers Market & Swap Meet. The kids were loving it as much as Mr. R and I loved it. After we stopped by In n Out for some burgers and headed to the park. And now we are just enjoying the remainder of our day. I am leaving y'all with a picture of Saturday after the jump.

Day Four: Potty Training

I'm making an official announcement: Today my son is officially potty trained. We went over to Target to run an errand and I put a diaper on him just in case he would have an accident. While we were shopping he asked to use the restroom and we ran. Imagine a mom in a truck cart racing through Target with a toddler and an infant yelling 'Hold it! Hold it!', CRAZY! Once we got home he was still dry.

This journey has been awesome and easy. I know that not every parent has it this good when it comes to potty training but I think it all comes down to the child's readiness. We really wanted to train him since he was 18 months old but it didn't go well, so we waited. We started to show him the process of using the toilet since he was about 15 months and at first he wasn't too into it. As the time went by he showed more and more signs of interest. Last week I noticed he was telling me when he needed a diaper change and that was huge cause he refused to get changed a few weeks back. That was the biggest sign for me. So again, the child has to display some kind of interest.

Just a few other little tips, don't scorn if there are accidents and be very patient and encouraging. Buy your little one some big kid underwear in characters he or she likes and if he/she is not ready don't preassure them. I was really lucky.

Day Three: Potty Training

Day three went well. With one accident in the morning and that was it. At night I have been letting him sleep in a diaper but last night he came to me twice to alert me he wanted to use the potty. This morning he woke up with a dry diaper. Today is day four and I am running a small errand to test it. Wish us luck.

Day Two: Potty Training

Day two started about an hour agortt when my boy woke up and I thought for a moment that we were going to have a set back when I took him to the pot and nada. He kept saying, "no quele" (I don't want to). But a few minus after drinking his morning milk he asked to use the restroom. A good, positive sign I've been seeing since yesterday afternoon is that he crouches and closes his legs... that's a sign of muscle control. I hope this goes great today but it is going to be a long day for sure.... with lots of patience.

Day One: Potty Training

Started potty training Abram today and so far he has only had one accident, (btw), was my fault. I have a timer go off every 20 minutes and I got a little distracted after it went off that by the time I got to him, he had already done his duty. Day one is almost half way through. Let's see how long it takes before I can consider him 80% trained. I think I am going to put Elian on cloth diapers so that when it comes the time to potty train him it won't be as hard. Trip to Joanns soon.

Quotes

Wisdom begins in wonder. ---Socrates

Projects...

I came across these lamp shades on Google and I am incredibly in ♥ with them. So I've decided to make it my next project (with no more birthdays to plan for a couple of months). I'm going to go thrift shopping later today and see if I can score some cheap and nice looking shades, keeping my fingers crossed! These are Pottery Barn and I'm pretty sure they are pricey. I'll have to post my results once I'm done with this project. I'm giving myself a budget of no more than $10.00 and see what happens.

Yo Gabba Gabba Party Prepping

I've been shopping for the past few weeks just gathering supplies for the decorations of Abram's 2nd birthday party and today I finally got around putting some of them together. The theme of course is Yo Gabba Gabba, Abram and Elian's favorite show at the moment. Great show by the way.

I went to Michael's and got some card stock paper for the invitations. I downloaded and printed all the graphics, which came from this amazing mom's tutorial. They came out better than I expected by the way.



I've also started working on the tee shirts the boys are going to wear. Since Abram's favorite Gabba character is Plex, I had to make him the Plex shirt. Elian will be wearing the Muno tee. I've still got to get around sewing them, right now they've got the pins on them to hold the faces in place.


I got this little red container at Dollar Tree and I customized it with a Muno eye and smile. My cutouts are not perfect but when Abram saw it he was all excited. However, I'm putting a cricut on my bday wish list this year. Any donations?


I also printed the heads of all the Gabba characters as they will be part of my centerpieces. I'm just not quite finished with that project, yet.


So far it's been very exciting to work on this bday party theme. I've got Mr. R working on a Plex costume that he will be wearing that day. He is actually pretty creative (and a major perfectionist) when it comes to all these things. I've got to upload a picture of him working on Plex on my next post.
So far

Elian's Baptism

We celebrated Elian's Baptism this past October and although we thought we'd have a rainy day, it was actually a beautiful day, so we went right ahead with Plan A. It was a very special and blessed day in our family.

This was the sign at the entrance of the yard. Now the frame hangs in our bedroom with a picture of the kids, Mr. R and I from this day.

I went to Ikea and got a candle then I came home and made the wrapper in photoshop. To think that I almost ordered one online, mine came out pretty nice. I had this little white picture frame already so all I did was add a picture of my baby boy the day he was born and voila! Cute, cute.

The favors in the basket were cross curio boxes that I ordered online and got an amazing price for them. The ones in the organza bags were decade rosaries that I purchased at a local store. I got the letter E at Michael's, the baskets and small candle at the Dollar Tree. Love how my shoes made it on the picture. I was wearing flats during the party. Hey! It's hard to wear high heels on grass, lol.

The curio boxes came wrapped like this so I had to do nothing but put them in the basket.

A closeup of the decade rosaries.

The Menu.
We hired a taco guy and the tacos were pretty darn delicious and huge.

The night before, my sister and I stayed up very late making these cookies. We made our own icing and they turned out to be delicious. We received many great compliments on them.

The drinks table.
I made the sangria a day before in a hurry, I had so much to do. Anyways, It turned out pretty yummy. It was a popular drink and it's almost gone in this picture.

We used paper lanterns to decorate the inside of the tent. I got the yellow ones on Ebay and the white ones at Goodwill, 2 for a buck, it was a great find so I got a few bags.

On a future post I'm going to upload some of the ceremony pictures. All these photos were taken by jessiesphotos.com and she did great, specially with the family portraits.

Just a Saturday Night

We took the kids out to a local aquarium shop last night and Abram fell asleep on our way there, but Elian was wide awake and loving it.

He really liked touching the fish tanks because the fish would either swim to him or get scared and swim away.

If only Abram would have seen this. I'm sure he would have yelled "NEMO!"

But he was completely asleep the whole time and didn't wake up until we were back in the car.

Vacation is Over

Our vacation is over and we were left with some great memories. Just a little peek into it after the jump.