Friday, June 27, 2008

Prayer Request

Hey Everyone,

Just wanted to stop in to ask if you would pray for me this weekend. My neighbor Kim and I are going on a retreat in Cornville, Arizona. It's a Precepts bible study retreat and I am so looking for to it!! We will be driving with a few other ladies so if you could just pray for our safety that would be great and also for Julio and the kids here at home. I'll tell you all about it next week.

Have a wonderful weekend!!

Love ya,
Mar

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Kids and creativity

Just an interesting lecture on children and creativity.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/66

I have been thinking a lot about what he has to say about squandering our kids creativity in order to teach them "the basics". Not that I think math and language are not important, but I want to pay more attention to my kids and to what they are interested in and I want to give them the space to let their creative juices flow!

Don't worry, I will be teaching my kids the three R's but there will probably be much paint, yarn, and mess in between the reading, writing, and rithmatic!

If any of you are interested in some neat ideas for being creative with your kids you should check out this blog http://www.soulemama.com/ and her book is great too, "The Creative Family" I love reading her stuff and as many of you know Julio and I love Maine which is where she lives, so I just love looking at her pictures =)

love ya,
Mar

Monday, June 23, 2008

Update of our week!

Well, a whole week has passed so I thought I would update you on our exciting life!! Lets see... The girls are doing great in their swimming classes. We go there three times a week and their teacher is awesome! Marina is swimming like a little fish and Michaela is finally not crying through the whole lesson. Here's a pic of Marina all dressed up and ready to go! We decided to build a fort in our family room this week. It lasted all of about 2 hours with Michaela running around. We did get to read a couple of magic tree house books in there along with Michaela's favorite "Alexander and the horrible, terrible, no good, very bad day" Don't ask me why she loves it but I think I have read it about 20 times this week! She says "Mommy, it's my favowite, I yove it!" How can I resist that!
This is where you can find Julio just about every day. He loves to draw and he got a hold of my new scrapbooking pen so everything he drew this week has been in black ink ;)



Thursdays are extra busy for us. I take Michaela with me to bible study at 10am, the kids have an art class at our neighbors house at that time and then I pick them up and take Julio to another art class at 11:45. Here is what they did last week. That's a volcano that Julio made in the bottom corner. We had lots of fun erupting it when we got home. Other than the fact that ( as my neighbor Kim says) our skin feels like it's melting off every time we step outside, that's about all of the excitement going around down here.
Love ya,
Mar
P.S. Praise the Lord for ZiZi Rita's baptism. I wish I could have been there to see her get dunked!!




Monday, June 16, 2008

The Measure of a Man

Since Father's Day has passed and I have been thinking about what a wonderful husband I have I thought I'd share a few thoughts with you.

The top ten reasons I love my husband:

1. I love how I feel protected whenever I am with him. I know he will stop at nothing to keep his family safe.

2. I love how he makes me laugh, a lot!

3. I love that he is not afraid to cry. I love how he gets all teary eyed when he reads a card from the kids and how he cries during the worship meeting at church when he gets up to talk about the Lord.

4. I love how he never gets into the buffet line until everyone has passed through at least once. He says it's because he can take as much as he wants and not have to worry if there is enough food, but I know it's because he always puts others before himself.

5. I love how we call eachother Muchach without even realizing it and how sometimes people get confused and ask "what's her name??"

6. I love how he will never make a major decision regarding our family without praying and asking the Lord for guidance.

7. I love how he wrestles with the kids when he gets home.

8. I love how he can strike up a conversation and become fast friends with a total stranger no matter where we are.

9. I love that he is not ashamed of Christ! Anyone that meets him knows that he is a christian and if they are not believers he will make sure that they hear the gospel or at least get a tract before they leave.

10. And finally, I love the way he loves me!

I could give you many more reasons but I thought I'd keep it short. I am truly blessed to have Julio in my life and I am so grateful that the Lord brought us together at such a young age. People sometimes ask me if I regret getting married so young and if I knew then what I know now would I still have gotten married? My answer is I have never regretted marrying Julio and even though we have been through many hard times they have only made our marraige stronger. I would do it all over again in a heartbeat!!

I love you forever, Muchach!

Saturday, June 14, 2008

Fun In The Sun!

Hey Everyone!
Our face painting inspired Julio to have a "carnival" in our backyard. So we invited his buddies and we had some fun in the sun.


First on his agenda was running through the sprinklers.

There is something just not right with jumping throught the sprinklers over rocks! I really wish we had some grass:(



Of course, after the sprinkler was on for a while we were left with a nice mud puddle. The boys decided to build a dam.



Here's Marina and Braden playing a game.










Marina using her paddle as a guitar.





Of course, you can't have a carnival without some face painting!








Pretty cool, huh?





She really looks like she belongs in a circus here!




Julio loved this dragon that I put on him. He didn't want to get wet after he saw it, but he changed his mind when we decided to go swimming in our neighbors pool.








Here's the crew.


Afterwards we went next door to swim and Michaela
decided to check out the drumset.














She was so funny! She would hit the drums with
the sticks and them hit the symbol with her head :)















We had a great day! I miss you all and I was thinking about you all being at Cristina's grad party all night. I wish I could have been there. Sounds like everyone had a great time.
Love you,
Mar

Thursday, June 12, 2008

Fun with Face Paint!

We bought some really cool face paint from Target today. When we got home I had some fun with the kids. They decided to be super heroes. Marina is Rainbow Girl, Julio is Indian Boy and Michaela is Love Girl :)





Julio did the rainbow on Marina's arm all by himself.







Michaela's didn't last too long. She started washing her arms with the dirty paint water while I wasn't paying attention.

















My Super Heroes!


Love ya,
Mar






Our week with Nonna, ZiZi and Emilio

It's been a while since I've posted. My mom, sister and nephew just left on Monday, they were here for 11 days. We had a lot of fun and I miss them already, especially little Emilio!! He is the cutest thing. He learned something new everyday that he was here. He is 17 months old and it is amazing to see how much they learn at that age. I forgot already and Michaela is only 2! Anyways, I thought I'd post some pictures of our week. My sister has a lot better pictures in her camera, but I forgot to download them before she left.

Ang and Mom, I hope you guys had a good time. We miss you!!


We took a trip to Sedona

Me and Julio

In front of the church that was built into the rocks. It's so beautiful there!






Our little guys. Aren't they adorable!! Emilio looks bigger than Julio, but he's really not.







Playing in the fountain. Of course, Michaela looks like she is about to fall in! She's always doing something to make my heart stop.






Emilio's cute smile.


Marina making gnocchi with Nonna.





little hands hard at work.


Nonna in the kitchen, where else?!



Beautiful, perfect gnocchi!






OOPS! I forgot to rotate this pic. It's of the kids at VBS.





Last day at VBS. They had a parents night where the kids sang there songs for us and we watched a video of the week. It was so cute! This year's theme was "Power Lab" and learning about the power of God. It was a science theme so they did some experiments and fun crafts. The kids had a blast!

That's Marina in the middle with the orange shirt. There were over 500 kids this year!


After the meeting we took a little hike up to the cross at the top of a hill next to the church. Michaela was so proud of herself as she walked up the hill all by herself.






walking back down the hill.
It's so nice to have visitors. The house seems so empty now. It's always sad to see our family leave so I'm trying to keep my mind off of it by cleaning out our playroom. I filled up 8 garbage bags of toys to give away!!! I don't know where it all comes from but I know where it's going. The kids were happy to give away their stuff, Julio said "The poor kids are going to be so happy to get all of these toys!" I'm only keeping what will fit into our big storage ottoman in front of our couch and then I have a bookshelf full of bins in our playroom that will hold stuff. I feel so free!! I'll have to post some pictures when I'm done.
Love you all!
Marilena