Baby Jack!

On Saturday we headed over to the Cecchins to enjoy the pizza oven (again) and to meet Baby Jack!

Well, Olive made it a good year and 8 days as the youngest baby in our group but now we have adorable baby Jack! I think some of the baby weight that Katie lost and ended up finding itself in my face in this shot. Ha!

Proving that you can be a princess AND athletic...

Love that last one (can you tell Nikos was advancing?)

Marco, Brookie and Nikos ride a "horse" while they wait for pizza.

Marco and Avery (the Cecchin's neighbor.)

Olive waits patiently for her pizza.

Yum!

Boys 4 Girls 1

We fit in as many friends as possible on our quick trip back through LA. Sunday morning our family, along with the Becks, met up with the Villafana and the Mejias families at an awesome breakfast place not far from where Jayme and Beck live. (I definitely think they should add it to their list of Maternity Leave "long" walks after the baby is born!) Although a bit chaotic, we had a great time catching up, and of course I forgot to take pictures. Boo Heather. I think I was too busy mooning over my bacon pancakes. YES. BACON PANCAKES.

After breakfast the Romios family packed ourselves back into the car and started out on the long drive home. We hit a lot of traffic on the LA freeways (shocker) so it was perfect that we were able to stop at my friend Jennie's house (not far from the Grapevine) so that Nikos could run around and I could meet her adorable twins. So cute!

Here are some photos we took of the kids together - five kids under three years old! The twins are 8 months old, Olive is 1 year, Zach will be 3 in April and Nikos will be 3 in June.

Trevor, Dylan and Olive - Olive was NOT a fan of the grass (just like Nikos at her age!)

Add a blanket for O but then the twins get distracted by something in the grass.

Add in a clowny Zach to the picture and everyone is distracted!

We finally get a pouting Nikos in the pictures - as long as he can bring his bat!

And finally Jennie and I jump into the picture - just to try and even out the boy/girl ratio!

Great visit!

Vacation Videos

Nikos races around the water feature at the timeshare - warning, you will hear a few girl screams in this video...coming from Nikos, naturally.



Amusing himself while waiting for Daddy to finish bbq'ing lunch on St. Patrick's Day.



Who needs to go to the playground when Coach Beck is around?

Take Me Out (on a 14 Hour Drive) to the Ballgame

On March 13th we headed out on our first family of four roadtrip. And I mean ROADTRIP. On Saturday morning we left the Bay Area and drove down to Orange County - before you scoff at a 6 hour drive this was merely the first leg of our journey. The kids were awesome on the drive - especially since what should have been a 6 hour drive actually took 8. Yuck.

Saturday night we hung out with Jayme at the Beck's new and fabulous house in Yorba Linda. Taki's college friend Suzanne and her son Hunter (see previous post) met up with us and we had a lot of fun watching Nikos and Hunter wreak havoc in Jayme's living room.

Sunday morning, while Taki and Olive slept in (!!), Jayme, Nikos and I walked to Starbucks. After a leisurely walk back (where Jayme and I were left slightly scarred by Nikos' accidental slaughter of several rolly poly bugs), we were back on the road to Scottsdale.

Here are the kids on one of our stops.

Poor Olive still doesn't weigh enough for us to turn her car seat around (you need to be 22lbs and she's hovering around 17) so she had to face the seat the whole time.

Our view on the last part of the drive.

What followed next was a week of sun, pooltime and baseball - enjoy!

We were lucky enough to have the Grochols join us on Monday night - despite Olive's trepidation in this photo the kids all got along great.

We celebrated St. Patrick's Day while on the trip. I meant to bring green food coloring so I could dye our eggs but I totally forgot so we had to settle for yellow eggs (and bacon.)

Nikos enjoys the kids water feature by the pool.

We finally got smart and, instead of putting Olive in the crib in the timeshare for her nap we had her fall asleep in the stroller and then parked her by the pool.

After a long pool day we celebrate on our balcony with leprechaun shakes (some with more alcohol than others!)

More pooltime...Ready to go cheer on the Giants.

The Grochol's before their drive home.

We went to two Giants games - one Friday and one Saturday (before the drive to LA.) The kids did pretty well, we left the games in the 6th and 5th innings respectively.

Go Giants!

Peanut, Peanut Butter

Good news! It looks like Olive passed my peanut allergy test. Phew! I wasn't too worried, but I did make sure there were some firemen in the yard across the street before I gave it to her. I mean, why else would I be checking out the firemen across the street...right?

Hmm - not sure she is a fan...

Pizza Pizza

We invited ourselves over to the Cecchin's to be among the first tasters of their brand new pizza oven.

Love this pic!

Marco and Olive amuse themselves while they await the taste test.

And Nikos approves!