Happy Father's Day!

My girls are so lucky to have their father as their daddy. He is loving, sweet, funny, playful and considerate. He loves fully from his heart of gold and he looks forward to his days off when he gets to spend it with his girls.

He has always, always taken care of his girls when I had to go to work. With a smile and with a full heart of love. He would look forward to his daddy-only days. He would deal with projectile spit up, crying, and moody toddlers. And with the primarily breastfed baby who would scream while given a bottle. And he even handled having two babies at once better than I.

From day one, he has loved being a daddy. Every stage. Every milestone. He has cherished it all. And I am so thankful and happy that he is the daddy of my children and my husband.

We love you and can't wait to celebrate tomorrow (retail sales doesn't care what day a holiday is, the show must go on!).

Happy Father's Day to all!

The crazy pastries: strawberries and blueberries... oh my!

Halloween night was a blast!

Ava was a great Blueberry Muffin and Emma rocked the Strawberry Shortcake charm.

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween everyone!

Best wishes for a fun and safe night amongst all of the trick-or-treaters, either yours or theirs. :)

We will be trick-or-treating with the girls' cousin who lived two blocks from my parents, along with her parents, my parents and my sister (aka Auntie E).

Pumpkin festivities begin!

The girls and I headed to the pumpkin patch at this ginormous farm in Lathrop, CA. The farm is called Dell' Osso Farms and we had a blast! The farm is home to a huge corn maze, which we didn't go through.

Easter- finally!

Finally! Easter pictures!!! To start off the details, I should mention that the girls went on FIVE Easter egg hunts. FIVE. Lucky girls!!!

Happy Mother's Day!

Just a quick post since I'm running late!

Happy Mother's Day to all of you mommies!

Today for me really was a day to look at my little girls that made me a momma. Those two wonderful beings made me that.. something I wished for my whole life. Just like everyday, you want to remember how lucky you are to have healthy and happy kids. But Mother's Day for some might seem like a Hallmark holiday, but when you're a momma, you want to celebrate it. You want people to fuss over you. You want your children to give you hand-drawn pictures and wish you a "Happpppppppppy muther's dayyyyy!" And you want your husband to roll over early in the morning to tell you that you are the most wonderful mom in the world.

I hope everyone had a great day and enjoyed all of your glory as mommas, even though you still had to tend to filling up sippy cups of milk, changing poopy diapers and maybe, maybe-- even fighting a two-year-old to go down for a nap.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Happy St. Patrick's Day from the Irish Twins Momma herself! :)

Just as we were all walking through Safeway, I realized-- we should really live up this Irish holiday, even though there isn't an ounce (okay, maybe half an ounce) of Irish in any of us, since we in fact have Irish Twins!

So cheers to new traditions! Where do we start?!

Better late than never

My Christmas pagent, Christmas Eve and Day have been on my memory disk... until now! And I shall share what a magical holiday season we had this year! Having an almost two-and-a-half and one-and-a-half year old made this past season exciting, memorable and amazing!!! It made me realize that I get to start my own traditions ... ones I grew up with.. ones Martin grew up with.. and new ones that I always wanted to do.

Happy love day!

Happy Valentine's Day everyone! No special post, except the fact that I have been wearing a special token from my Ava. Introducing my first-ever piece of hand-made jewelry from one of my little girls: a Valentine's Day inspired pipe cleaner bracelet.

I have been grinning ear-to-ear all day long, as a proud mama should!

Happy 2011!

We actually rang in the New Year together as a family-- all four of us. Two sick, but they made it! We are all hung over today on no sleep, snot, coughing and tiredness... while daddy suffers the same at work.

Happy New Year!!!

And thank you Ava for the best gift of 2011-- second day of dry sheets after a night of sleep! YAY!

Santa Claus is coming.. to town!

Sooooooo... the girls met Santa.

And yeah. They were cool with him until it was time to sit on his lap for picture time! :) When we approached the line, it was empty and Santa was standing at the front and was very soft spoken and gentle with his movements towards or away from the girls. Ava gave a soft "Hi Santa" and Emma stayed put in my arms!

Then it was picture time....

You are welcome for this laugh! Classic photo. Some parents are butt-hurt about these photos, but I think it's hilarious! Hilarious because they were okay with him until they were put on his lap for 2.3 seconds. We will laugh about this every year when we take it out of the Christmas boxes. :) My poor babies!!!!!!

The girls were even featured in a few local news media outlets, including: Danville Express, San Ramon Express and TriValley Views.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!!! I hope everyone has a great day with beautiful weather and delicious food!

Beautiful California weather mid-November.

Holiday cards already?!

Who else is thinking about holiday cards?? I am! I love receiving holiday cards and I love sending them out! I get all excited about the response that I will receive from my family and friends about the girls' cute picture I've enclosed. It's also an extra special feeling when you go to a person's home and see your holiday card on their fridge or mantel. Does anyone else feel this way?

My favorite holiday cards are the ones with pictures on them. In the past I have only ordered regular 3x5 pictures and put them inside a regular Christmas card. But this year I'm going to try and do something new. Life before kids, I can remember I ordered a bunch of photos and my husband and I with a cute little holiday border from Shutterfly. It worked and even my in-laws have that photo framed somewhere in their house!

There are many places to order your holiday cards, and in the past I've used Shutterfly, as I said before. With the options that Shutterfly offers, you can put a couple of different pictures on one card rather just one photo. And this is what I plan to do this year! Since from one of my previous posts about 'the picture perfect photo,' my children will not sit together and look in the same direction and smile.

If you are now thinking about your holiday photos (since Thanksgiving is JUST a week away!), I have given you the best gift yet-- a couple of links to Shutterfly's Web site for Christmas cards (for my fave, click here); holiday photos cards (for my fave, click here); a link for calendars (I like desk calendars); Hanukkah cards (my fave); and wall art (my fave). (Note: click on each highlighted group of text/wording to go to their Web site.)

And if you have never uploaded photos to Shutterfly, click here to get started! When you open a free account, you get 50 free photos just for signing up and other fabulous free services. I love that I can order photos at home before work and then pick them up on the same day at Target, Walgreens or CVS.

Well I better get started, as I hope to get my cards out before Dec. 2. What do you think about this example, 'Naughty or Nice?'

'Picture perfect' photos

So, you know those families that dress their kids to the T's with their cute matching/semi-matching holiday shirts. Hair is perfect. Nice camera in tow. ?? Well that's not me or my kids. I tried! I tried! I tried to get them to smile together widely at my camera earlier this week at the pumpkin patch. But it didn't work. And that's okay! I don't need to send just one picture in my holiday cards-- I need to send two! :) Two because I didn't get one shot of my girls smiling together on top of the hay barrels with pumpkins in their hands, proudly showing their matching T's. :)

But they are cute. I took some very cute pictures of my girls at the pumpkin patch! And a lot of them show their true personality which is probably way better than some professional, matchy-matchy, big smiles in the same direction, photo!

Enjoy!