M-I-Z-Z-O-U TOUCHDOWN!!!!!

Daniel got to watch his counsin Chase play in the Mizzou vs. Nevada football game today. Chase did a great job and Daniel was really excited when he scored a touchdown.

Click play to watch two short videos of Daniel cheering Chase on. GO #14!!!!!!!!

Chase's touchdown run:


Chase throws a long pass:

It's a......BABY!!!!!!!!!!

We are happy to announce that we are pregnant! I am currently about 11 weeks along, and the baby is roughly the size of a fig. Everything is looking good and the baby should come around March 18th.

Daniel is excited but doesn't want to be a big brother, he just wants to be a "3 year old boy!" He thinks the baby will be ready to learn how to ride his scooter as soon as he/she comes.

Technical Difficulties

So we have done a lot since the last post. Marge was here for another couple of days and then we went to Matt's grandparents lake house for a while. But, when we got home from the lake and we were uploading all 600 pictures (I promise I wasn't going to put all 600 on the blog), our external hard drive crashed. And to make matter worse we had not done a back up for a while. So the hard drive is at the computer doctor.

I will update everything when we get things working again, hopefully soon!

Fouth of July Fireworks!!!!

We had a exciting 4th. Marge came out on the 1st to spend some time with her cute grandson. She got to spend some grandma and me time while Matt had some work to do at school and I was busy trying to finish SDOT's budget at work. Good news is my group successfully turned in a $325 million budget on time and I didn't have to work the holiday!

Friday morning, Dave, Christian and Rian drove up from Portland to spend the holiday weekend with us. Since Seattle has one of the top five firework shows in the US (according to Time Magazine) on Lake Union we all went over to enjoy the festivities. We got to Gas Works Park at 12pm to get a prime location. There was a bunch of cool stuff for the kids to do. They had a huge jumper slide, which Daniel could have gone on all afternoon, kite making, a juggling station, face painting and a crocodile inflatable moon walk/jumper. We ended up staying at the park though nap time so we wouldn't have to find parking places later in the day. By the time 7pm rolled around, the park was packed and we still had 3 hours until the fireworks.

Gas Works Park averages about 40,000 people at the park to view the show. At 10pm (it's only been dark for about 15 min. at this point) a Chinook helicopter flies around the park with a huge American flag hanging down. The firework show is shot off of two barges in Lake Union with the show lasting about 20 min. Both Rian and Daniel stayed up to watch and were memorized by all the colorful fireworks.

We posted all of our pix here on our PicasaWeb page.

We ended up staying around the house for the rest of the weekend because I had a bladder infection that was getting worse even though I was on medicine. I ended up with getting a 103 fever on Saturday. So while I was resting and starting some new meds, Daniel got to play with Rian and everyone at the park and in the jumper in our backyard.

Washington DC

We got back last night from a long anniversary weekend in Washington DC visiting our friends Nathan and Blanca. Matt left last Wednesday to attend and give a presentation at the NALEO conference (National Association of Latino Elected Officials).

Daniel and I flew in Friday morning. We spent a couple of hours in Matt's hotel resting and then we went (or attempted to go) to the Smithsonian while Matt was finishing up a lunch meeting. On the way over to the Smithsonian, Daniel fell asleep, so we spent two hours in the Union Station parking garage while Daniel slept. Matt met up with us and we all went over the the Museum of Air and Space. Daniel had a blast. He loved seeing all the real planes and spaceships hanging from the ceiling. Daniel rode in his first taxi and proclaimed that he "loved taxis." We met Nathan and Blanca at their apartment (which has a great view of the Washington Monument from the roof deck)! We had a great dinner at a small Malaysian restaurant and then just headed back to their apartment to catch up.

On Saturday we all walked down to the White House, the Washington Mommyment (according to Daniel) the WWII Memorial, Lincoln Memorial and the Vietnam War Memorial. Daniel thought that Lincoln was a little too big and didn't want to stay to long there. According to Daniel "That man is too big he scares me!" After going back to Nathan and Blanca's for a nap and some air-conditioning we headed to a Washington Nationals baseball game on the subway. Daniel thought the trains were great. National's Park just opened up this year so it was neat to go to a brand new stadium. Nathan let Daniel bring one of his mitts which he loved. During the game there was a 1 hour rain delay, complete with thunder and lightening. Daniel has never seen a rain delay, since it is a common event here and they built a roof on Safeco Field.

We went to a couple of more monuments on Sunday. We saw the FDR and the Thomas Jefferson memorials. The Smithsonian was putting on a Folk Life Festival. NASA was one of the main sponsors so there were a lot of tents with robots for kids to play with as well as a lot of space ships. I think we may have a future astronaut . We ended out trip with a quick dip in the rooftop pool at Nathan and Blanca's looking out over the Washington "Mommyment."

http://picasaweb.google.com/jebarreto77/WashingtonDC2008

Father's Day Weekend

It has been a great weekend here is Seattle. We FINALLY had two days of weather in the high 60's with SUN!!!!!! I forgot what it looked like.

Matt's cousin Erika came up for business, but stayed with us for the weekend. We went to the Hiram Chittendem Locks yesterday to watch the boats and look at the salmon ladder. Daniel loved to see the boats go in and out of the locks. We went down to the salmon ladder, which takes you underground, but only saw a couple of small fish, so we didn't stay long there. We went back to the locks and there is a really nice grassy hill that was perfect for rolling down. Somehow Daniel talked us all into rolling down the hill with him! He thought that was the best.

Matt's father day present was some tickets to the Seattle Mariner's game on Saturday. We had a great time. Daniel really enjoyed watching the game and liked cheering for the M's. Daniel also really enjoyed the 7th inning stretch where he same "Take me out to the Ballgame." Although the M's lost, we had a great time.

This morning I made Matt breakfast. We had homemade breakfast sausage and biscuits, fruit and some peach Bellini's. It was fabulous. Erika was still here and our friends Sam and Francisco came over. After breakfast we went over to UW and went canoing in the arboretum. We beached the canoe for awhile and relaxed in the sun and the boys played football.

Click here to enjoy some pictures from this weekend: http://picasaweb.google.com/jebarreto77/FatherSDay2008

Memorial Day

We went down to the Oregon coast for Memorial Day with our friends Dave and Christian and their daughter Rian. We went to the Inn at Otter Crest in Linclon Or. Christian's mom works there so we were able to get some really great rooms with awesome views. We had a really rocky view from our rooms, but it allowed us to have a view of the seals that sun themselves on the rocks. The kids loved to watch them.

We were expecting a weekend full of rain, but we ended up having some great weather. On Saturday, we took the kids swimming since we had some sun. Then we headed down to the beach to look in the tidepools and to build some sand castles. At dinner that night Daniel told me his name was "Dan" and when I tried to call him Daniel agian he said "No mommy, I'm Dan."

On Sunday we went to a historic light house in Newport Oregon, just down the road from where we were staying. There were great tidepools there where the kids could look and touch starfish and sea annenomies. There were also seals close by sunning themselves on rocks. We also took the kids to a great beach to fly kites. They loved it! Rian was an old pro and got her kite up really high. Daniel had a spiderman kite and loved watching it go up in the air.

If you would like to see all the pics, click the link below:

http://picasaweb.google.com/jebarreto77/MemorialWeekend2008