Halloween Fun

We had a fun Halloween week. Daniel dressed up as Spiderman. He loved his costume! He wouldn't let us call him "Spidey" until he had his mask on. The weekend before Halloween we went to the Woodland Park Zoo for their Pumpkin Prowl. There were hundreds of carved pumpkins and kids could go and get candy. The next morning we went down to the waterfront for some trick or treating.

Halloween morning we flew to Austin to spend the weekend with Taschi, Tony, Soli and Juliana. Daniel and Soli were so excited to see one another. Guille, Maria Martha and Reni also came up to spend the weekend with us. Soli decided that she wanted to match Daniel, so she was Spiderman also. They looked so cute together. Friday evening we went over to a friend of Soli's for a Halloween party. Then we did some trick or treating around Taschi's neighborhood. Saturday morning we went to Longhorn Caverns and did a really cool tour of some caves. The caves were created from underground rivers, which is very unique way for a cave to be made. Sunday we went to a great little taqueria. A bluegrass band was playing there and Daniel and Soli loved to dance to their music. I left Sunday evening, but the group all had fun on Monday going to place called Going Bananas where Daniel and Soli were able to run around a be crazy. Juliana also got into some of the fun!

Click here to enjoy some pictures!

Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice

We had our 20 week appointment and ultrasound. Daniel came with us so he could see his new brother/sister during the ultrasound. The baby is great, although scrunched up for most of the visit. Daniel got to hear the heartbeat which he really liked. After about 20 min. of checking out all the organs we found out the baby is a GIRL!!!! Daniel asked how we could change it to a baby boy and we told him we couldn't. He then asked "Why?," which was a bit harder to answer. We are all super excited and can't wait for the last 20+ weeks to pass.

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