The Holidays Are Here!

The holiday season is my favorite time of the year! Isn't it everyone's? We started the holiday season off with long over due visitors from the East Coast. My Kissy, Paul, and Matt all flew out to Oregon for Thanksgiving! It had been way too long since we'd spent time together so it made it extra special that it was during a holiday. Kissy had been dying to get her hands on Amelia. Once she did it was hard to pry her off her.

Ben had so much fun spending time with Cousin Matt! I found them hanging out in the living room together one night talking about sports and watching Full House. Matt was telling Ben how much money baseball players make. Ben was pretty impressed especially once he realized that that must mean his friend Keaton (6 years old) who plays baseball must be super rich!

Courtney's family Jer, Pamela, and Ruby were here visiting as well starting a little earlier in the week. Ben and Ruby always have so much fun together. Here they are playing dress up. You can 't tell in the picture but taking a picture in these masks/hats...whatever they are was making them laugh so hard.

Poor Ben got so sick that he had to spend Thanksgiving day and the next couple days in bed which is not easy for a 6 year old. That weekend was the Christmas parade downtown which I so didn't want him to miss. So, I bundled him up, took a couple umbrellas, left Eder and Amelia at home, and we headed to the parade. It was so much fun! I love our little town and their hometown traditions. 

Yoda on top of the truck was Ben's favorite.

Bonus picture:

Milly's activity seat

More on holidays to come!! Suspensful, right?

Amelia's First Spoonful

We tried feeding Amelia some rice cereal this weekend. I'm sure you can guess her level of enthusiasm.

Anyway, we poured the rest of it in a bottle and threw the spoon and bowl in the sink. Maybe next month will be more successful. At least she's cute even she's looking at me like 'what the hell, mom?!'.

Halloween and Birthday Extravaganza!

After 5 days off work I have so much to blog about! Where to start....
It was so great that I got to take some time off work while Ben was out of school, especially since our first day off was Halloween! Ben was dressed and ready to go trick or treating at 9am. This is him waiting patiently in his room.

We took Amelia to daycare late morning so Ben and I could go on a lunch date and trick or treating down town baby free. It was so fun to do something with just the two of us. Even though we did that for 6 years, it seemed like it had been forever since I had spent any one on one time with him. 

After our lunch date we met up with Michelle, Ella, and Keaton and went trick or treating downtown. The kids had so much fun and Michelle and I had a great time catching up. 

We had a Buzz Lightyear, a G.I. Joe, and a ghost turned Mother Theresa turned Princess in a white sheet. 

The 3 of them have been close since they were babies. So much fun to watch them grow up together. 

Meanwhile Amelia was busy being really cute in her halloween onesie and OSU hat. Proof of cuteness here:

See, I told you.

Here is a fun pic of Eder and Ben waiting ummm....patiently for Ben's parent/teacher conference to begin. His teachers told us he has a lot of energy. hmmm.....I wonder where he gets that from.

On Friday we celebrated my mom's 60th birthday! Our family took her to dinner at a new gluten free restaurant right around the corner from our house. Afterwards we went back to my house and hung out in Ben's room and took some pics. I'm pretty sure this first one could be our Christmas card this year. Just need to photo shop in Eder. 

On Saturday Eder stayed home with the kids while Aaron, mom, and I went out to Newport for the day! We have a favorite breakfast spot out there that looks over the bay and has the best crepes. I'm so lucky to have a mom that I enjoy spending so much time with. It may not have been a two week road trip like we did 10 years ago, but it was still a good memory. 

My Soccer Star

I was updating the calendar on Ben's team website and noticed that one of the parents had uploaded some pictures from a few of the games. There was a button next to the pictures called "download and purchase pictures", but I found another button called "copy and paste". Seemed to work just as well. :)
Here's a glimps into our Saturday mornings.

Goalie Ben

Ever wonder why they call it Bumble Bee Soccer?

Fall Is Here!

The beginning of fall is my favorite time of year! Cool weather, sweaters, pumpkin spice latte, beautiful Northwest leaves changing colors, football (I actually don't even watch football, but I love having it on in the house....nostalgia I guess), fires in the wood stove, pumpkin patch trips, the list goes on! This weekend we took advantage of enjoying the fall with minimal rain. On Saturday I took Ben to his soccer game. Our friends Lydia and Jeremy gave Amelia the cutest soccer sister outfit which Ben was so excited about because when we first told him he was going to be a big brother I took him shopping to pick out of few things for the baby (gender unknown at that point) and he picked out a little soccer cap which we decided went perfect with the outfit....except it can still fit like two of her heads in it.

I am so lucky that Ben and Amelia's Poppy, Courtney, spends time with Ben each Saturday after soccer. They usually hit up a couple parks, practice bike riding, go out for pizza, and spend some time at the library. Ben looks forward to it each week. I had such a close relationship with my grandparents so it's important that my kids have the same. And while Ben and Poppy go off on their adventures I get some downtime to spend with Amelia which usually means we go for a walk with my mom, grocery shop, and clean house all of which is much easier without a 6 year old.
After Ben made it home Saturday evening I decided to pick up a pizza (round two for Ben) and I told Ben if he got dressed fast he could come with me. So he did:

So, off we went in cape, mask, soccer shirt, shorts from the dirty clothes, shin guards, knee high socks, and slippers.

I want him to stay this age forever...sometimes.

On Sunday we went to Airlie Hills Harvest Festival with Sarah and Jay. It was fall in full effect, windy, grey skies, but luckily the rain held off. We went on a hay ride out to the pumpkin patch and let Ben pick out a couple pumpkins to carve....someday. Sarah and I attempted to interview the farmer driving the hay ride and imagined what it would be like to be farmers. Do they have applications for that?

Amelia is hiding under a blanket in the baby bjorn staying dry and out of the wind. Also, please know how long I worked on my hair that morning for no reason at all apparently. Did I mention how windy it was?

Ben helping Sarah pick out a Bert and  Ernie pumpkin at Daddy Jay's request

After the pumpkin patch I dropped the boys off at home and Amelia and I headed over to the Albany Hospital to meet Lydia and Jeremy's little baby Colton who was born on Saturday night. He is so cute!!

Hopefully this weekend the 4 of us will get a chance to spend some more time with him.

After baby time it was time to pick up Courtney and head back to our house to harvest grapes. I wasn't as much help as I hoped to be since I needed to feed Amelia and eventually get dinner ready, but Ben did a good job stepping in and helping out. Here he is squishing grapes to make grape juice.

And here's Amelia in her new hat!

Eder thinks this hat is ridiculous! I think that's why I love it!

And then there's this:

Happy family on a Monday morning! Doesn't get much better than that.

My Mini-Me....Kinda

Every where we go people comment on how Amelia looks just like Eder. Actually, the same thing would always happen with Ben. I guess Eder has some strong genes. Anyway, I was looking through the millions of baby pictures of me....that's a total lie....there's like 3 baby pics of me that exist, (my first 2 to 3 years of life were all on one small roll of film), and I found this one.

Maya - 1982

Which totally looks like this one....kinda.

Amelia - 2012

Ugh! Did you notice the huge space between that picture and this sentence. How annoying! I can't get rid of it. I guess it's just one of the stresses of being a blogger. A day in the life of.....

Anyway, back to my story. I'm just so thrilled that one of my kids slightly resembles me at one point in my life. 

In other news: I've started a new segment on my blog called Name This Caption! Let's play! 

Thanks for stopping by!

Back to Reality

Last week was my first week back to work after 12 weeks of sitting by the pool in the summer sun reading books and watching Ben swim, spending everyday getting to know little Amelia Grace, sitting around in my comfy lounge clothes early in the morning watching episodes of Will and Grace, spending time with all our friends and family who took the time to stop by and spend time with our growing family, and much much more.   So, now it's back to reality. I feel very lucky to work at a place that takes such good care of me and is excited for my return. They sent me flowers on my first day back, had a fully catered welcome back lunch, and even set up a room for me to pump milk in each day. Carly calls it the Pump Palace or the Perez Pump Palace.

Here's a picture of us concluding my last day of my first day back:

In other news:

Ben finally decided to take the plunge and learn how to ride his bike with no training wheels! Once he successfully rode the bike on his own he didn't want to get off of it. Now he's riding his bike each day including to the bus stop in the morning with Eder and then Eder walks it back to the house. We have a great  neighborhood for kids to ride their bike in. No traffic except people who live there or are visiting.

I love this pic of Eder running beside him.

And here's Ben all on his own.

In other Ben news: He lost another tooth this weekend. That night I was so exhausted from a long day of hanging with both kids while Eder was at work, soccer, cooking to prepare for another work week, laundry, etc that I totally forgot to step into the Tooth Fairy roll. The next morning Eder ran into the bedroom to let me know that Ben had checked to see what the Tooth Fairy left him and was sad to see nothing was under his pillow. Eder having to think quick told him that it's best for him to have a full stomach before jumping to any conclusions so Ben sat down in the living room and ate his cereal. I quietly ran into the kitchen and grabbed a dollar out of my wallet (I swear I never have cash on me), and placed it behind his bed (sloppy tooth fairy). After breakfast he came to find me and said "I'm so sad the Tooth Fairy forgot about me, mom!". I told him we should check one more time now that his tummy is full. Of course this time he found the dollar. We normally give him two or three quarters so this was huge! He jumped on his bed and yelled "I can't believe the Tooth Fairy gave me a dollar!!". Well, crap! Now we're going to have to do a dollar every time.

In Amelia news: She is now bigger than Calvin the snowman.

And, well, this picture is just really friggin cute!:

Amelia finished her first week of daycare at Ronni's. She did great! And she wore pink each day. Her choice, not mine. We've been calling her Milly. Trying it out as her nickname. I think she likes it. I turn to my people now wondering what you all think of that name. Thoughts?

Thanks for stopping by! More later.

My Blogging Life

I am excited to say I successfully made it through the first night as a blogger. Phew! Let's see...my first evening after becoming a blogger was a bit busy and exhausting...I'm sure my fellow bloggers hear me on that one. I did however take an hour out of my evening to relax and watch the season premier of The Middle. It was hilare (short for hilarious)! If you don't watch it, well, you should. Coming to work this morning and reliving it minute by minute with Carly was just as fun as seeing it the first time around. Well, at least we thought so. I suppose that's why we call ourselves Marly Perber.
The rest of the evening was a blur including soccer practice, Chinese food left overs (Thanks Waytside!), stuffing my face with a bowl of ice cream while hiding in the kitchen so Ben wouldn't catch me (it was before dinner....I do that sometimes. And by sometimes I mean like every day),diapers, breastfeeding, a round of Old Maid (Ben's favorite card game for the minute), a desperate attempt to clean the house shot down by the always precious milk obsessed baby, etc. Speaking of the always precious milk obsessed baby, sometimes you're running a bath for your dirty, sweaty, sticky soccer star and you look over just to see this little sneaker watching you:

 It's just what she does.

That's all for now. Come again!

Hello to my biggest fans out there.... hello? Upon the suggestion of my Kissy I've decided to start a blog to keep you all up to date on my family. I look forward to looking back on this someday and laughing with Ben and Amelia about all the funny things they said and did growing up. I hope you all enjoy my posts. BTW I have no idea how to blog, so here goes.

My inspiration for this blog:

Well, that took a while. Now I'll go eat some carrots. Thanks for stopping by. More later.