Chess tournaments

Jasmine participated in quite a few chess tournaments this spring. She has done an amazing job in every one of them and received a medal each time. This fall she will continue to be part of the math and chess club at her school. We are very excited because Andrew will join Jasmine in the chess competitions in his first year in school.

Everyone is busy during break time:)

Hello again!

It's been so long since I blogged I don't even know what to post first. I took some time to look through my previous posts so I can try to remember the series of events that happened this year in our lives. I have so many things to post. I hope I can update most everything :)My dates will be close but not as accurate as I would like them to be for our family journal. With that said let the new posts fill this blog. Most of them will be highlights due to time restrains. I sure have missed writing and posting our little adventures.

Martisor-1st of March

Mărţişor is the traditional celebration of the beginning of the spring in Romania on the 1st of March. Men offer women a small decorative object called Mărţişor consisting of a jewel or symbolizing a flower, an animal, insect, etc... tied to a red and white string. This is a symbol of the coming spring, which the woman wears pinned to her blouse on that day, and up to two weeks after. I also remember boys offering martisoare to girls and kids offering martisoare to their teachers. It is a fun day in my country. I have not worn one in almost 13 years so this year I changed that. With the help of my children we made plenty of martisoare for us and our friends. We used clay to make simple designs and when they were dried we painted them with acrylic paint. They turned out very cute and I mailed some out to my friends but unfortunately I didn't package them well enough and many of our friends received them broken. Also, with Michael getting sick in February lot's of Martisore did not get mailed and are still sitting on my desk. I will definitely do better next year. So, if you are one of my friends and would like to wear a Martisor next March please leave a comment and I will send you one.

Happy birthday sweetheart

At the end of February we celebrated the third and last birthday that month for my honey. He is the best husband and father ! We love Jeremy with all our hearts and we are so grateful that he is always here for us. La multi ani iubi you are the BEST!!!

Valentine's day

Our Valentine's Day was filled with all things sweet and lovely!

Parties

Roses

Valentine's decor

Our sweet children/Iubirile noastre

Love and Kisses to all :)

Prince Michael is 1 year old!

Our sweet baby turned one on the 6th of February. Why does time fly so fast?! Every time our children get a year older I feel the need to reminisce about the day they were born. I can close my eyes and vividly remember the first time I held Michael in the hospital. His smell, tiny feet, cute little nose, perfect mouth, etc... Oh, how I love this boy!!!I could eat him up!!!

I love the way he hugs me when I pick him up and how he gives me kisses when I don't expect them. There are so many things I love about our sweet angel but I am not the only one who can't get enough of Michael. The older children love him to pieces also and they can never stop kissing him to the point that he will struggle and scream just to get away from so many kisses. Even though he does not like to be kissed to death by Jasmine and Andrew he sure enjoys following them around and playing with them in the toy room. He copies their every move. I know he adores them just as much they adore him.

Michael loves to play with balls. It really doesn't matter what shape and size they are as long as he can kick them and throw them. You should see this boy kick a ball! Such a tiny frame having such strength and speed with the balls; very impressive. Who knows; maybe a soccer star in the making.

So, for his birthday I made him a soccer ball cake just for him and he loved it. He received several presents among them, there was a ball pit with 120 small plastic balls plus his own small soccer ball. After opening the soccer ball he did not want to open anything else because he was so preoccupied with kicking the ball.

Michael says words in both of our languages (English and Romanian). Here are a few of them: ball, mama, tata( father), daddy, dodo(grandpa), papa(food),tai tai (bye bye)plus lots of other words that are not in Romanian nor English. He loves to talk and uses his finger to point at things he wants.

His stats at his 1 year old well checkup were 21 pounds and 32 inches tall.

We love Michael with all our heart! He is our little ball of energy and we are so grateful Heavenly Father send him to us.

Such a hard winter

I think this was the year when I wanted spring to come more than any other year. I usually enjoy winter but not when everyone is sick and your baby has to be in the hospital twice in one month. Poor baby Michael being the youngest he was affected the most. He got RSV right after Andrew's birthday at the beginning of February but after having some albuterol treatments at home with the nebulizer his breathing improved greatly. The follow up doctor visit confirmed that he was doing better and just when we were starting to get back into a sleeping routine he started to struggle breathing again at night. We took him to the ER where the doctor told us that he had pneumonia. It could have been due to the RSV. Not sure about that though. Sweet baby Michael was trooper and after two rounds of antibiotics he was his happy self again. They let us take him home after a day and we continued the antibiotic treatment for eight more days. Two weeks later I got very sick with body aches, chills, and fever. It was the worst I have ever felt with a cold. I said a cold because they tested me for the flu and it came back negative. Anyway my sweet Michael started being sick also and again he struggled breathing at night. Jeremy took him to the ER Saturday at 2am and they told us that he had bronchiolitis and he was going to be hospitalized. We only stayed one night there and because he improved and did great through the night we were home on Monday. Unfortunately for Jasmine and Andrew they got the same virus I had and went through some miserable days with chills and fever also.

We are all doing great now and for that I am extremely grateful because nothing is more important than being healthy. I think we all realize that when our loved ones are sick.

Prince Andrew is 5 years old!

February is our birthday marathon month. We start with Andrew's birthday, then Michael's 5 days later and we close the month with Jeremy's birthday. My favorite boys get to celebrate all month long.

I surprised Andrew with an Angry Birds themed party. Angry Birds is a game that he loves to play on my phone. The goal of the game is to defeat evil green pigs(they stole the eggs of the birds) by using a slingshot and throwing birds at them. I made the angry birds cake the night before the party just so he could only see it the morning of his birthday. He loved it all as soon as he got to see it. The cake was fantastic and the decorations that Jasmine helped me out with were amazing. Several friends came and celebrated Andrew's birthday with pizza, games, balloons, cake and ice cream.

Andrew is a brilliant boy! He is so smart and well behaved that at times I forget that he is just 5 years old. We sure have been very blessed! This fall Andrew is going to start kindergarten and he is very excited. He knows how to write his first, middle, and last name. He can do addition up to ten and can count to 100 by ones and by tens. He has learned the days of the week, the seasons and most of the months in the year. We are working on the sounds of the letters so we can start reading this summer. Oh I don't want to forget that he is also getting the hang of the value of coins. I think he will do great in kindergarten. At his 5 year old well checkup Andrew weighed 50 pounds (93rd percentile) and was 45 inches tall (84th percentile).

We love Andrew with all our heart ! He always puts a smile on my face with his smarty pants comments. Happy birthday big boy!

Snow, snow and more snow

We have had way too many days of snow this year. It has brought lot's of joy to our children since schools have closed for several days but it has made it hard for Jeremy to get his business accounts serviced due to the weather.

So, when life gives you lemons you must make lemonade! The days we had canceled school and work started with a delicious breakfast made by daddy after which the older kids got bundle up for playing in the snow while daddy cleared our driveway. One of those days for family home evening we decided to go and surprise some of our friends by clearing their driveways also. The kids were very excited to help!

Jeremy used his snow blower and the kids helped by clearing the snow off the stairs. It was wonderful to see everyone working together and our friends came out and thanked us for bringing such great helpers to clear their snow. After we were done doing service for others we took the kids sledding. Even Michael got a quick ride with daddy. Jasmine and Andrew had a blast going down the hill. We did not stay very long because of the cold weather but the time spent there was sure fun.

I have to post just a little more about the snow clearing because I have an amazing husband who did not just clear our friends driveways once but he took the time to do it every time it snowed. I sure love how thoughtful he always is and loving towards everyone.

New Years Eve Party

Growing up in Romania we always celebrated New Year's Eve with an all night party. I remember all the delicious food mom would cook the entire day so that we would have plenty to enjoy as we waited to greet the New Year . We were dressed in our best party clothes and were allowed to toast with fancy crystal glasses. But the best part for me as a child was being allowed to stay up as long as I would like. It only happened one night a year and that was New Year's Eve.

We are keeping some of the same traditions with our little family and Jasmine and Andrew seem to love the same thing I did when I was their age...staying up late. Maybe because their bed time is always 8 o'clock.

For our New Year's Eve party we invited almost 40 people and more than half were children since most of our friends have big families. It took a little prep work to fit so many people but by switching the furniture in the living room and taking some pieces of furniture out in the garage we were able to manage. It all worked out great and we had plenty of seating for everyone. There were board games, finger food, sarmale, chatting, dancing and lot's of fun games for the little ones. The XBox Kinect was a huge hit and everyone from young to old had at least one turn. A couple of families were not able to stay until midnight but there were plenty of us who did. We got out the paper trumpets and crowns and close to midnight we all counted down the minutes until we entered the year 2011. Screams of joy, hugs, kisses and best wishes followed soon after. It was such a great party and I look forward to the next one.

First steps and potty training

On November 29, 2010 my 9 1/2 month old boy Michael took his first two steps all by himself. He has been walking holding on to the furniture since he was 7 months old so we knew that he would walk soon. Andrew also started at the end of his nine months if I remember correctly and by eleven months he was running. Same with Michael now. I have a hard time keeping Michael out of the kitchen long enough to load the dishwasher. He is so fast! As soon as I open the dishwasher door that kid is right next to me even though a second ago he was in the toy room playing with his siblings.

Michael is also in underwear at home during the day and he is doing amazing. For several months now he has pooped in the toilet without any accidents. The peeing is a different story because we still have some days with accidents. I am confident that soon enough he will not need diapers at all. I am grateful to be a stay home mother as it has allowed me the time to potty train all my kids by the age one and saved us lots of money.

We love Michael with all our hearts and I can't believe that he will be 1 year old in February.