Added pictures up through the end of 5/07 – still lots more to go to get caught up. 🙂

In case you’re wondering about the time of this post – yes, that’s right, it’s about 3AM – Mimi is having one of the girls’ infamous fever spikes right now and I’m on watch until it gets down to 98 again (pretty close now).

Update 9:52PM: We’re caught up through the end of 7/07 now – we’re getting there! You can see almost all the pictures of the process of getting our pool put in including the day we started adding water and our first real swim in it!

Update 11:54PM: Daddy wanted to upgrade the wordpress (blogging software) version. That snowballed into upgrading mysql, which was a pain in the tush to get back and get the databases and users restored. Here we are with the blog back – next will be to get the photo galleries back – stay tuned…

Update 12:10AM (2/16): Galleries are back! Now if I can just get rid of that blog header… :-/

Update 12:43AM (2/16): I give up – the new header stays!

Our neighbor Zane’s daddy has setup a blog just like ours at http://www.thehumanglynnproject.org/ – he’s a cutie! He’s also got a new post up about our b-day party – go check it out! 🙂

Amazingly enough, it’s been a whole year since the last time we posted! So many things have happened since then, it’ll be hard to remember them all, but here we go…

The girls’ 3rd birthday came and went – this was the first year where they seemed to understand it was their birthday and as you can see from some of their pictures, they also knew how old they were! 🙂

They were also the beautiful flower girls in our neighbors’ wedding (once again, there are plenty of pictures!). We had to coax them to come down the aisle as their shyness got a grip on them during the stroll. But, they made it and everything turned out beautifully – in a couple months they’ll be flower girls in Uncle Shaun’s wedding!

A little bit after the wedding we had a near catastrophic event take place in the Silva household when our computer’s hard drive became corrupted and we nearly lost all of our beloved pictures and the captured memories of the girls’ lives so far. Luckily, a recovery program got us 99% of everything back and we’ve been backing up ever since (which reminds me :))…

More exciting news that happened around their 3rd birthday was the revelation of how to know when to go to the bathroom and potty training was complete. This literally saved us over $100 a month that we were spending on diapers so we are very thankful for the girls for this (not to mention the greater prevalence of fresh air!).

The girls also started the “Home Schooling with Nana” program this year and have since learned to write all their letters and count to 100 (they can also count backwards from 10). They can also write their own names and have an ever growing vocabulary which includes words like accordion and fuschia (spelling??) – they also seem to knock us over with new words almost every day. They’re very up on their colors and can, without hesitation, distinguish between lilac purple, regular purple, and fuschia – which daddy definitely can’t do.

As the housing market was beginning to take its downturn, this year saw us contemplating our housing situation, but eventually deciding to stay here and plant some thick (read: expensive) roots in the form of completely re-done kitchen lighting, a room makeover that turned our spare room into a craft room/play room/mommy’s workshop for her wreath business, and last but, CERTAINLY not least a resort-quality pool/water feature and patio upgrade (pictures of all this will be up in the galleries shortly). Along with the addition of the pool came, of course, swimming lessons for the girls. After a couple months of lessons and the last few weeks of swimming at home once our pool got finished, they’re not quite water-safe yet, but they’re getting close! 🙂

Along with Nana’s home schooling, the girls also started ballet class once a week at the community center and were just given the compliment by their teacher of being the best students in class and really learning what she’s trying to teach. We’ve had a couple recitals at home and they are looking more and more graceful with each one.

For Halloween this year, the girls were Chino Poblanos (mariachi dancers, for those not hip to that term). They entered a contest at our local park one afternoon and were given an award for best pair in their age group (they didn’t do places for this contest, but we think they were 1st place – but maybe we’re biased ;)). We quickly surrendered the reward (cold stone creamery gift cards) to Nana since she spent countless hours sewing sequins and beads on these amazing authentic outfits.

The girls have also become quite handy with a mouse and monitor and can find their way around the disney website to play games and watch videos, etc. They also enjoy stand-alone preshcool games on the PC and have a blast with viva pinata on the xbox and all things mario on the nintendo wii and ds (these “accomplishments” make daddy happy to no end – finally he has gaming buddies to play games with – only now, getting a turn happens much less frequently!). They’ve also been known to drum along in rock band in practice (easy) mode with ~40% score on some of the easier songs – it’s pretty amazing to think that a 3 yr old can keep some semblance of a beat using a drum pad!

For Christmas this year, the girls’ star presents were princess bikes with training wheels. Unlike the ATV’s of last year, they both quickly took to them and love riding them up and down the block. They also have enjoyed their growing/talking puppies that know their names. This was also the first year where they seemed to understand that Santa was coming, because unlike every other night of the year, they went to sleep within minutes of going to bed – they knew that Santa was watching and knew when they were sleeping and when they were awake!

And, back full circle again, the girls’ 4th birthday and birthday party have just gone by. Highlights of the party included find (and keep) the lost twin bears, pin the tail on the donkey, break the pinata (which ended up having to be broken by its maker – Nana – if you ever need an unbreakable pinata, give her a call!), and of course lots of cake and ice cream!

Hopefully, we can start to keep this up to date a little more often, but in case we don’t, see you next year! 😉

The holidays were great this year! The girls went to see Santa on the 23rd. While we were waiting in line we kept telling them, you better tell Santa what you want or he won’t bring you anything. Finally, when we got up there and it was our turn, Mimi and Yaya sat still on Santa’s lap, but as soon as he asked them “What do you want for Christmas?”, the floodgates just opened and out poured all sorts of toys from either side of him. I think Santa was a little overwhelmed. 🙂

Christmas day was full of gift unwrapping for the girls. They really enjoyed it and got all sorts of toys and clothes (including their EXACT orders from Santa!). Unfortunately one toy they weren’t able to play with was their Dora power wheels atv’s because the batteries needed to charge for 18 hours (!!) before being usable. We figured it would only be about 4 or 5 hours – needless to say we were in for a nasty surprise at 1am on Christmas day. 😛 So, the next day, we opened one up and put it together – only to find out that they’re not really interested in them! Yaya only cared to ride it for a little while and Mimi would not even go near it. Maybe they’ll grow into them… 😉

We all spent new year’s together and the girls got to shoot off confetti poppers – FUN!! 🙂

Daddy’s 30th birthday was full of surprises…first, mommy surprised daddy with a surprise b-day party out with some friends and then daddy’s co-workers surprised him with a lunch out. With gift cards and surprise parties (and a free lunch from the manager at taco bell one day), daddy had free lunches all week!

The 3rd b-day for Mimi and Yaya is right around the corner…:)

There are lots of new pics up – if you haven’t checked them out in a while, please do!

Sorry, we’re a little behind again on the posts, but here goes…

Barney, the fair, Halloween, Thanksgiving – we’ve been busy! We went and saw the live Barney show the Saturday before Halloween – a fun time was had by all. Once again, the girls are SO well behaved when sitting for long periods of time at movies, shows, etc. 🙂

The next day, we went to the fair and rode rides, saw the animals, ate fair food, and other assorted activities. Mimi and Yaya rode two rides together by themselves (i.e. no parents along with them). They were partially excited and partially terrified. 🙂

For Halloween, the girls were little geisha girls. On a trip to Napa, we stopped by Chinatown in San Francisco and picked up some little oriental clothes and shoes for them and they looked very cute, of course. They had a lot of fun going door to door with mommy and daddy (and mommy and daddy had lots of fun taking them, too!) and saying “Trick or Treat!”. Hopefully, next year, we can get them to say it loud enough so that the people can hear them! 😉

And finally, Thanksgiving…not too much to report here – just a standard Thanksgiving day complete with belly stuffing goodness!

Pictures will be up later tonight…

This weekend we decided to do something we haven’t done before as a family – we went up north and had lunch at a campsite in the woods near Sierra Ancha – about 45 minutes outside of Globe, AZ. Noel’s friend, Theresa, clued us in to the spot and it was really amazing. One reason we went up there was to see the leaves changing on the oak and maple trees. As you’ll see in the pictures from the trip, we were a tiny bit early, but we still did manage to see some nice light green to yellow leaves and a few orange and red ones here and there. We may try again in a couple weeks. It was a lot of fun and opened up a whole new world of things that we can do together! 🙂

That night, one of our neighbors had a Halloween party that we got dressed up for. Mommy was a goth dark angel chick, daddy was a cholo, and the girls were little chinese girls. Go check out the pics! (Although, fortunately for daddy, there were no pics taken of him. ;)) There will be more once Halloween actually rolls around…

We’ve got all new updated pics in the little slideshow at the top left corner of the page. Enjoy!

It’s been almost two years since our last posting (we’ve updated with some photos here and there between then and now, but no real info). So, what have we been up to?

Heh – well, that’s a pretty long conversation, but here’s an attempt at a quick-ish version:

Mimi and Yaya are doing great. As you can see from the newly added pictures, they are as beautiful as ever – maybe moreso, if that’s possible… 🙂 Obviously, they’re walking and talking and currently going through the terrible 2’s (although, in our opinion, they could easily be a LOT worse than they are, so we’re not really complaining :)).

They’re very smart. They know their numbers 1-10 (plus a bit farther) in spanish and english, their abc’s in english, and TONS of other words in both spanish and english. They can speak in long sentences of 12-15 words or more (which is supposedly about 2-3x the normal amount for their age). They love books and various forms of video entertainment (tv, movies, video games – although they still need some help from Daddy with this). They’re very good at the movie theater and will sit quietly through an entire children’s movie – so they’re pretty well-behaved.

They love all kinds of toys with their favorites being cars, animals, dinosaurs, legos and, of course, books. Daddy’s working very hard to get them interested in football and it seems to be paying off as they can often be heard yelling “Go Cardinals!!” on football Sundays. They’re both very big helpers around the house – they’ll clean windows and tables with Nana and Mommy and help Daddy pick the toys up off of the floor. They are just wonderful to have around and we’re very lucky to have them! 🙂

Mommy is doing well. She is working in the design center for a local homebuilder and enjoys the job because it leverages her creative talents around the house. She also runs her own small business out of her own craft room in our house – it’s called Elements – check it out.

Daddy has struggled with health problems as of late (namely a torn left acl and two degenerate discs in his lower back), but other than that is doing well, too. He continues to work as a computer programmer for a local video game company.

And of course, Mayble is still alive and kicking. She’s almost 7 years old now, but you wouldn’t know it watching her run around chasing things that you throw for her. 🙂 (Although, sometimes we wonder because she does bark at things that don’t seem to be there…senility? Maybe? Hehe. :P)

We’re back online (actually, we never really left, but now we’re up to date :)) with a slightly new look and a TON more photos (but minus the movies for now – that’s next). Daddy finally got smart and realized the only way he was going to keep this thing up to date regularly was to use somebody else’s blog and photo gallery code instead of trying to build it himself. Anyway, here are the results…look around and see what you think. The biggest difference is in the breadth of photos that are up there now – before there wasn’t much before the girls were born whereas now the Mom & Dad gallery is populated back almost as long as we’ve been together. Also, we are basically current with photos – all the way up through the end of September of this year. We’ll probably start uploading batches of photos on a monthly basis from here on out (with blog posts possibly being a little more frequent than that). Anyway – enjoy the new photos – there will be a post about what’s going on shortly…

Our first Christmas was very fun. We got (literally) a wagonload of presents – and those were just from Mommy and Daddy and Santa Claus – Nana and Tata brought even more! Most of the time, we had more fun tearing the paper than playing with our presents, but we still had a good time. 🙂

Our favorite present is our wagon. Nana uses it to take us outside on walks almost every day – we love to go outside!