Poppy Manny and Nana Fay

Yesterday we visited Poppy Manny and Nana Fay in Soquel. We haven't seen them in almost two months since me and both boys have taken turns being sick. We had a nice visit and Braden got to show off his super cuteness, Darren was a little quite and even played a little with Lego's that were Pappy's when he was a little boy.
Braden loved an abacus that Nana Fay pulled out and we got the cutest pictures of him playing with it! The weather was perfect and the company was even better, hope its not another two months before we get up there again.

giving hugs before we left.

McCovey's

After the Wildlife Museum we went to McCovey's, a restaurant in Walnut Creek owned by Willie McCovey. The whole placed is decked out in Giants memorabilia! Lots of really cool stuff to see and good food too. I felt a little guilty that Tim wasn't with us, but it gives us an excuse to go back.

The Lindsay Wildlife Museum

Today we went to Walnut Creek to meet up with Auntie Kim who wanted to take us to The Lindsay Wildlife Museum. It was a really neat rescue center for animals that is also a museum. There were all kinds of animals live and stuffed to look at. There was also a guinea pig out to pet but Dare wanted no part of that and they had an owl come out with a handler as well. We saw snakes, birds, squirrels, an opossum, bugs and lots of other stuff too.
Braden got a stuffed turtle in the gift shop (which we names Myrtle) and Darren picked out a paint your own snake set (probably a future blog).

eight months old!

Braden is eight months old! He is so adorable and at such a fun age. He has just started lifting up his arms to you when he wants to be held which I adore, and his other new thing is giving kisses. His kisses tend to be very demanding and even a little aggressive, he grabs your face and pulls you towards him, mouth wide open!

The Tabora's

Our good friends Nico and Reena had their gorgeous twins Lileeanna and Donovan baptized today. I have the very special honor of being Donovan's godmother! Despite rain the last couple of days, everything cleared up and was beautiful for this special day.
If you recall from previous blogs, Lilee and Donovan were born just 3 weeks after Braden and will all grow up together(and probably get into lots of trouble together). We were so happy to be a part of the baptism and witness their very special day.

My beautiful godson Donovan

Lilee

Donovan

Daddy and Dare playing arcade games at the reception

Our friend Justin and his family were there too and Justin was saying hello to Braden

So far so good

Since Braden is mobile now the boys are a lot more interactive with each other. Darren definitely still has his moments when we here "no baby, that's mine", but for the most part they are doing pretty good together. They almost always want the same toy despite the abundance of them around the house but I think that's pretty normal. In this instance with the learning laptop, Dare was even trying to show Braden how to make it work. It only lasted for a couple minutes but in "little guy" time it was like hours!

kite weather

first time Braden ever got to ride in the front seat (loved it).

Darren got a kite in his Easter basket and today we finally put it to good use. The weather was perfect, just enough wind without being cold. Dare loved watching me and Tim fly the kite and would run after it. Braden watched too but mainly was smiling at Darren running back and forth. Tim had so much fun with it even when Darren finally lost interest and went to the park Tim kept at it for like 20 more minutes, which proved to be good because Darren would constantly go back and check on Tim to make sure he was still flying it.

The bottom picture was from a different park we went to on Thursday, we are really lucky that there are a bunch of parks by our house. That one had ducks everywhere that amused both boys very much =)

the rare family nap

Probably more rare than a lunar eclipse we have what we refer to as the family nap. By some miracle Darren and Braden nap at the same time and there are no chores to do around the house, then the family nap is born! This awesome one even lasted about 2 hours....a great day!


The pic below shows even Baron is a part of this!

new phone

Apparently Darren approves of my new phone because when I got it back from him there were 72 pictures taken just like these and all of my apps were moved around (except my toy story app, it was the only one exactly where I put it). Tim jokes that Dare knows more about my phone than he does and I think it might be true!

tough little guy

My love got three stitches last night after hitting his little head on the TV stand, he missed the foam bumpers by an inch or two.
When he got stitches last year it was sad and of course I cried then too but this time was so much worse because he could talk "help me Mommy! Mommy Mommy Mommy!" or telling the nurse and doctors " hey let go of me". I was the bad guy and held him down for the doctors so then he started crying for daddy, it was so sad. We got home late and let him watch Wall-E and eat french fries and he was the happiest little guy in the world.
He hasn't even messed with the bandages and has even sits pretty still while Mommy changes the dressing. He is running around like normal today.... a tough little guy.