Little League Opening Game

I know, it's hard he's not wearing a Giants uniform

At the dugout

A serious third baseman

Homerun!

Memorial Marathon

Jim ran a half marathon at 4:00 this morning. It had to be that early as you can imagine the weather in Qatar by 6am would be too hot to run a 1/2marathon. His stats 13.2 miles in 1 hour 37 minutes! Not bad for a young man of 41. If you look closely, the run even drew blood. The safety pin holding his number chaffed his skin so much that he bled. Well--the marathon was called Bataan Death March memorial run. ..in honor of those young men who lost their lives in Bataan during World War II.

Go Tigers!

Ronan had his first koosh ball game yesterday afternoon. His team did so well! I think it helps that most of the kids on his team goes to the same school as he. They play twice a week for the next four weeks, and one practice night each week. He's a pretty busy three year old. He had so much fun that during bath time he talked and talked about the game and how his friends did this and that. There were a lot of proud parents on the field!


A serious first baseman


Homerun!


Hanging out at the sidelines (with Sophie, Matheson, & Elijah)

" The Best Thing about Easter..."

We had a beautiful Easter celebration with a wonderful circle of friends at home at our annual Easter potluck. Although, not everyone was able to attend, we had a great crowd of 19 adults, 10 kids, 6 tweenies/teenagers! The kids had a great time playing and hunting for eggs. The "older" kids were hysterical doing a three-legged egg hunt. When I took this group photo of the kids I said "say Easter", and then asked "What's the best thing about Easter?" While the little ones said Easter bunny, Patrick exclaimed " JESUS!" ..which pretty much sums the reason for the season. It is also on the last page of his favorite Easter book.


"Oh yes! I like easter eggs, and I like Easter candy and I like soft furry bunnies and fuzzy baby ducks, and I like getting all dressed up and being together on Easter Sunday. BUT...the BEST thing about Easter is Jesus! "

"This is what Love is: God loves us and sent His Son." 1 John 4:10

The boys look so happy and fresh here because I didn't have to wake them up early for Easter service. We would have had to be in church at 7:00 to get a seat for 8:30 mass. But we did attend the Easter Vigil last night ( ohh...which lasted 1 hour 45 minutes) . They loved going inside the dark church, each carrying a candle. I too loved that part of the vigil. Patrick was really into it that he sang along during the litany that KC led with the choir. I did wake up at 4:30 am to finish cleaning the kitchen and preparing the ham. I saw parts of the Easter service at St. Peter's Square at the Vatican on TV. It was raining in Rome...pretty symbolic.



EASTER CELEBRATION SLIDESHOW
Turn off Dolan Island Tunes by clicking the pause button on right column
Then CLICK on the bunny below!

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Little Jackie Chan

Almost two years ago, we enrolled Patrick in martial arts. About a month ago, he was promoted to Phase I (from Little Dragon to Beginners). Usually a student has to be at least 7 years old to be considered to begin Phase I. Once he moved from Little Dragon to Beginner's class, his teacher thought he could move up to Phase I immediately. He was only in Beginner's class for 4 weeks instead of 4-6 months. I was a little nervous as the kids in Phase 1 were a lot older. There was only one kid who is 7, the rest were older. The class also is an hour long (instead of the 30 minutes Patrick was used to) and the last 15 minutes is spent sparring. Last week, Patrick received his safety gear and two days ago sparred for the first time. He surprised me and the other kids. Antonio who is the most experienced in his class (and the one he's sparring on the video below) told Patrick that he's got a mean round-house kick. I think Ronan would agree. I could not believe he just took off and had no fear going on the offense. Jackie Chan watch out!
En garde

Front-side kick!



Patrick sparring with Antonio who is eleven years old.
This is just his second sparring session--feisty little six year old!

Puddle hunting

It rained all night and all morning. Three of Ronan & Patrick's friends were over for a playdate. We really wanted to go to the park but it kept raining and raining. Until...it finally stopped at noon and then we were OUT!! woo hooo--free. We decided to go puddle hunting. The largest puddle we found was in our backyard. Andrew claimed it can be a pool! We also hunted for worms..thank God we didn't find any. Mannn! it's great to be a kid. .
When was the last time you went puddle hunting?

Hot Wheels Valet Boys











Shake it Will !











Has it stopped raining yet?











Woo-hooooo!












Puddle #2











Puddle #3












The biggest puddle of them all!

Dancing with the Stars!

Between Patrick's T-ball practice twice a week, martial arts twice a week, Tball games, Ronan's Koosh ball practice and game schedule..we don't have much time for TV night, which is a good thing. But last night, our favorite family show "Dancing with the Stars" opened its season. This is one TV show the boys love to watch with me. Patrick's favorite dance couple is Mario (an R&B singer) and Carinna. I'm favoring Kristi Yamaguchi and the very cute Mark Ballas. Ronan get excited when he sees a commercial of the show. It's fun to just hang out with them and watch ballroom dancing and I re-live my "salsa dancing" days. And of course more fun to pretend to do the foxtrot with a six and three year old during commercials. Who knows, this may be the only time they'll actually enjoy watching ballroom. So we're having fun.

St. Patrick's Day Parade

We celebrated the boys' Irish heritage by finally making it to the Biloxi St. Patrick's Day Parade. Our friend, KC, who is a very active member of the Hibernia Society had been dying to make Jim be a Grand Marshal of the parade as he is probably the only Irish national in all of Biloxi but Jim's been deployed or out of town each time since we've been here. She was in the Hard Rock Cafe float when she saw us on the sidelines. A bonus! she threw us a couple of Hard Rock T-shirts. The boys had a blast!! They love parades and they know what to do to get beads and toys from the floats. "Throw us a bead mister!"...no exposure needed either!. One float was passing out cabbages!! It was also the same day as the Biloxi BBQ fest so we got to enjoy both southern bbq and the parade. And I should add...the weather was fantastic! a very nice 70 degrees!
BBQ on the Green


Leprechaun or Troll...you decide but whatever it is, Ronan didn't see her!


Waiting for the parade to start.


Finally!! and wouldn't you know, they're playing my song "Wild Rover"


Throw me a bead mister!


Oh yeah!



201, 202, 203...


Fun day indeed!!!

Egg Hunters

Patrick's Class' Easter Party! The siblings had as much fun hunting for eggs. The kindergartners had to search for eggs with their names on it. Mrs. Drake is a loving teacher who makes school fun for the kids. Even Ronan wants to stay in her class.


Ronan and Grant


Mrs. Drake with Patrick

Eggs! Eggs!

Elderly multigravidarium

Hysterical...that's the ICD 9 code the clinic used today for the rationale for my visit at the University of Southern Alabama High Risk Obstetrics Clinic. So I was expecting a lot of older moms in the waiting room, don't know why I thought that. Turns out, I'm the oldest one! a lot of young African American pregnant ladies--with sickle cell, hypertension, diabetes and other co-morbidities. They took some blood work and yey another ultrasound. The machine they had is a little bit more sophisticated than the one at the Air Force Base. If you squint while looking at the photo you can see the baby's face and his/her little hand. So cool...not bad for an elderly multigravida.

150 beats per minute

Had my 13 week prenatal appointment today. Ronan got to see our little baby! It was pretty exciting. It is incredible to see his/her rapid growth in just the last 6 weeks. Our first ultrasound look like a little peanut with a heartbeat. Now a very active little one...stretching his/her arms and kicking his/her feet. This ultrasound shows the baby's head and butt!! got a big butt like me. And the straight wave across the top is the heartbeat. When Ronan saw the picture he exclaimed "cool mom!". Never mind that while taking a shower this morning, the mere thought of taking my prenatal vitamins made me vomit. A first for me..geez. Anyway...seeing our miracle in progress is worth all the nausea, heartburn, and backaches! Tomorrow, I cross the state border line to Alabama to get some more prenatal testing done..usual stuff for the "geriatric" moms. Next week, glucose tolerance test! yuck! more stuff to stimulate the emesis center. Keep our little baby in your prayers that he/she remains healthy!

Blast Off!!

I woke up in the middle of the night to see the shuttle Endeavor take off. ..well not "live" but on TV. It was pretty awesome! When we visited the Kennedy Space Center in January we were able to see part of the working area where the engineers from different countries are building different pods to go in the International Space Station. We also saw a prototype of Dexter, the robot. Sadly the shuttle program will end in 2010, before I can get on one and take off.

My other car is a ...

------------CAMELUS DROMEDARIUS--------------

Grand Prix Connection

Patrick slept most of the day--only waking up to have a drink of water or go to the bathroom. I was on the phone with Jim when Patrick woke up and Jim was talking about seeing a motorcycle race and taking a video of it. I thought it was little town race show. Well, Patrick had the TV on the SPEED channel and 5 minutes after we got off the phone with Jim--the Grand Prix championship in Qatar came on. Turns out it's the same motorcycle race Jim was talking about. He and a bunch of other guys were in Doha watching it LIVE and they even went to the Ritz Carlton!! Not a bad way to spend their one day off a week. Patrick & I were jealous. Patrick wished he was watching the race with his dad, and I wished I was at the Ritz having a rose water bath and massage.

Two Sick Bears

Boo hoo! both kids have a temperature and a bad cough. All they want to do is sleep, cuddle and watch TV. We all survived the 3 day no-TV sentence . At least they got sick after the ban. They're supposed to get their Easter pictures done today, so I'll have to reschedule that. My plan to install 3 toilet paper holders, 5 towel bars and 1 shower curtain this weekend is now put on hold.

Video Calls

Some of you may already know about this website. A couple of weeks ago I signed up for Skype.com video phone call. Unfortunately, Jim is not able to access it because of military security. Last night, I got my first video phone call from Chris. It was so cool. I was about to check my email when my computer "rang" and when I answered the phone call, there was Chris, Marshal, Bill and Julie--live on video. We have a webcam on one of our computers. If you don't have a webcam it will still work, you'll still be able to see video if the person you're calling has a webcam otherwise you'll just hear the audio. Domestic calls are free and international calls are minimum. If you decide to sign up, put me on your contact list by searching for me using my yahoo account or my skype name: nursereyes
Skype website is: www.skype.com

Transform this

The other night, one of my friends, KC, gave the boys 3 bins of legos and assorted action figures. The boys were thrilled! They love legos and will spend a whole evening or afternoon creating different things particularly spaceships. Ronan was so excited that the bins contained some transformer figures. He loves loves loves tranformers but they're a little too complicated for a 3 year old to transform---heck it's complicated for a 42 year old to transform. It took me a good five minutes to tranform this autobot (picture above) into a race car. Once done, I tell him "now keep him in the race car mode for a while". Well, it does not stay in the race car mode for too long--a few minutes later I hear him "mama....transform this!".
Call me nurse transformer.

Filipino store in a box!

Yet another surprise came in the mail today --this time from my friend, June! A huge box full of Filipino goodies!!! YUMMMOOO!!! Patrick jumped up and down when he saw the dried mangoes. My melodrama side (or maybe it's the pregnancy hormones) nearly cried when I saw the hopia and mamon from Goldilocks bakery and the pan de coco from Elite Bakery. We are going to enjoy all the goodies June! You even included the paper bag from Pacific Supermarket...waaaaaa I miss San Francisco! Patrick and Ronan's favorite was the box the snacks came in. It was a really nice surprise! Thank you June!!! and in the words of Sally Field --"you love me!! you really love me!!" Salamat !

Mail us back to San Francisco!

USPS Surprise

A special treat came in the mail from the Rosarios today! One of the boys' favorite thing to do is to check the mail. Ronan is the only person I know who gets excited about junk mail. When they saw the box at the front door, they came screaming inside the house "mom, there 's a present for us!". I had to tell them that they can't open it 'till after naptime. I knew that if we opened it right away, they'd be too excited to nap. No fighting over the contents as Chris got them exactly the same thing and a very special home cooked treat for all of us! We just might save some and send to Jim. Last time she sent us these cookies, I ate more than half by myself!. The coloring books and crayons came at the right time as this is day one of the NO TV sentence.
Thank you Chris, Marshal, Erin and Lauren!!