Bye-Bye Binky's!!!

Some of you know how utterly and disgustingly attached Maddox was to his binky. It drove us crazy sometimes!
So, for the last 2 weeks, Maddox has been binky free!!! I was SO afraid for this transition. I had talked about doing it for months and months but we were always going somewhere or he had gotten sick or something. Finally, a few weeks ago, a woman in the nursery had totally (somehow) pumped Maddox up about saying Bye Bye Binky and being such a BIG BOY. So, we went home from church and thought, what the heck!?So we just jumped right into it. Nap was fine (probably because he was just so tired). Night time was a little difficult. He may have cried for like 20 minutes before Tommy couldn't stand it any longer and went in a snuggled him. The hardest part was just getting him to calm down enough to settle into bed. But, he did it! The first 2 days were probably the hardest (even though they weren't NEARLY as bad as I was expecting). He still asks for it sometimes if we are in a store and he is really upset or something like that but, he will never see them again! I am so PROUD of him. Silly what makes us proud huh? But, you will NEVER see this face again!!!!

(See what I mean by utterly, disgustingly attached?)

Maddox is TWO!!!!

Wow! Time has seriously FLOWN by! I cannot believe my baby is two!
We went to the doctor today and here are his stats:

Height: 34 1/2 in. (53%)
Weight: 28 lbs (51%)
Head Cir: 49 cm. (59%)

So, all in all we have a super healthy, average kid! :) Tommy had the doc. determine how tall Maddox will be. She came up with 6'1, give or take 2 inches! Ha! So, he did great with his shots, only cried for a half a second and then was fine!

Onto the party!!!
So, we had some friends and family come up for Maddox's birthday party. We had a "Cars" theme because he is obsessed with that movie (for the time being). We had Qdobas food (similar to Chipotle) and it was delicious! I made his cake which was a lot of fun. We cramped quite a few people into our little place but we all had a good time!

Maddox's 2nd Birthday "Cars" cake

Birthday Boy!

Mr. Q trying to give Maddox his gift of squishy reptiles!

M taking a quick time out for a bite to eat :)

Check out my new ball and glove!

Family!

Quintin chowin down on some cake!

After the pinata broke... Look at Maddox's face... there is nothing better then candy falling from the sky!

Maddox and Kennedy making sure to stuff their goody bags with all the candy they can get!

As you can see, we all had a great time! Thanks to all of our friends and family for coming, and thanks to those who didn't come but still thought of Maddox on his special day!

Pizzeria Bianco

So, we love pizza. We thought we would go try some of the BEST PIZZA IN THE U.S.!!! This place was on Oprah and we have heard amazing things about it. Now, Amazing things come at a price. Tommy picked me up from the airport and we rushed over to this place. It is only open on Tuesday through Saturday from 5pm to 10pm. As we arrived at 5:08 we were welcomed by a nice loonnngg line. So we stood in line and waited to put our names down. It was us and a few of our friends were on their way after they were done with work, etc. So, we put our name down and she said it would be a 3-3 1/2 hour wait!!!! We expected as much. So.. we waited, and waited, and waited. We were able to let Maddox run around and have some fun.

 

  

  

  

  

  

  

As you can see from the photos above.. the building is tiny! There is a bar you can sit at and there were only a couple of tables in there.. which explains the wait! :) But we had an awesome experience and we are glad we could share it with our friends! I think we will go back again with reservations and babysitters! :)

Stacey's Birthday

My dear sister in law turned the BIG 21 a few weeks ago so we headed to California to celebrate! For her birthday, her mother got tickets to go see the Ellen DeGeneres show at the Warner Bros Studio in Burbank. Along with going to the show, we took a tour of the studio which was AWESOME! We had a great time together!

While we were in Poway, we took Maddox on a train ride at Old Poway Park (where Tommy and I had our reception). It is beautiful there and we had so much fun on the "choo choo"!

This is while we were waiting our turn to get on the train. This is his "Cheese" face.

 

  

 

Alright.. On to the birthday festivities. On Sunday night we drove up to Hollywood and went window shopping on Rodeo Drive....

 

Now on to the tour. It was sooo cool to see where some of our favorite shows are filmed. I was able to see the Gilmore Girls houses and town square and Luke's Cafe. We saw the set for the Big Bang Theory. But the BEST part was ....... FRIENDS!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

 

They have moved the set to the museum but it was so fun to see it all!

 

Stacey and I in front of WB Studioes

 

Thats right... We had SO much fun at the Ellen show. But can I tell you its a work out!?!?! For like 45 minutes before the show started they had us DANCING for like FOREVER!! Stacey tore it up.. She has moves like you have never seen before. At the end the MC told her she was the BEST! BEST DANCER, BEST GIRL!! So, she got a t-shirt :). Anyway, we had a blast! Oh, and did I mention that this was the FIRST time that I was without Maddox for 2 WHOLE nights! Maddox went home with Tommy and enjoyed going to play at his friends house while I got a LITTLE BREAK!!! Ah, it was glorious. Unfortunately, as hard as I tried to sleep in, I couldn't.... but I did lounge in bed and watched grown up shows while I could! :)

Stacey, thanks for turning 21! It was soo much fun!!

Adventures

Well, you know us, always going somewhere. All the girls in my ward have begun to joke about us being inactive and are always asking when and where are we going next. It is true.. We do love to travel and see our dear friends and family! A few weeks ago I was blessed with the opportunity to go "surprise" my mom in Texas. I guess she knew we were coming but just didn't know when. It was so funny for her to walk in the door and all she saw was Maddox walking around! As always, we enjoyed our time there. We were away from all of our responsibilities of life and it was wonderful! My brother and his girlfriend came up for the weekend from Austin to hang out.. It was nice to spend time with them. I was able to see my pregnant little sister... AND I was able to see one of my greatest friends, Lauren and her son Addison! (Lauren has been living in Germany for the past few years so it is super hard to coordinate being in the same place at the same time! She is also the person who introduced Tom and I). Oh, and even though we didn't see them, I promised a shout out to Cameron B!! (there ya go Cam!) So, anyway.. we enjoyed our time there..

 

Here is Maddox playing balloon with Addison..

Lauren and Addison :)

I ended up staying in Texas for a few extra days due to some difficult family circumstances, but because of that we were able to make it to my step-sisters sons birthday party at Chuckie Cheese. This was Maddox's first Chuckie Cheese experience....

He enjoyed playing some of the games...

 

But he mostly enjoyed the cake :)

 

(I just had to put this picture on here! Think you got enough buddy?)

So, that is our Texas trip. We love and miss everyone back there!!

Now, since we have been home, I am continually amused by this little boy:

If you haven't noticed, he has some pretty entertaining faces.

 

Ahh, the balls. I wish you knew how many of these little balls are all around our house :) I finally had to put half of them into this bag because Maddox and his friend were always throwing them down the stairs and I was not going to continue to bring 170 balls upstairs. I love that Maddox decided it would be a comfortable chair though :)

"Mmmm... It's Goooooood"

The other day I let Maddox help me make cup cakes...

This is the "before" picture

"During"

 

 

After he had that first bite of batter, his eyes were on the spoon non stop. He kept asking for more and after every bite he would say "Mmm, It's Goooood"

Christmas Happenings

I know I have been SOO bad about keeping this thing updated! I promise to do better! We were just very busy over the holidays. I have a lot to cover but I will try to make it short and sweet!

Before we left on Christmas break we all went to "Zoo Lights". It was so fun and beautiful and really helped us get into the Christmas Spirit. I know you can't see from the pictures, but they had beautiful Christmas music playing throughout the park.

My two FAVORITE BOYS!

Alright, so then we packed ourselves up and started a LONG journey to Texas. Yes, we drove to Texas. No, it wasn't as bad as we thought it would be thanks to modern technology = portable dvd player, and the BEE MOVIE.  Anyway, we had our whole family together in Texas which was just wonderful! Aside from celebrating Christmas in Texas, we also were able to celebrate my little sister Casey, and my cousins wife Helena, are both pregnant so we were able to have a shower for them. I am so excited for them to welcome their little bundles of joy in a few months. Anyway, we ate a lot of food, the boys played a lot of pool, and we made many, many trips to Central Market. We were so blessed and surprised on Christmas Eve to have SNOW in TEXAS!! It was the best Christmas present I could have asked for- a white Christmas!

Maddox on Christmas Morning

 The whole gang Christmas morning

 I told you we had a white Christmas...

So, we were in Texas for like 9 days I think and then we started our drive home. We arrived at our house, did not unpack, slept in our own beds, and then got up and left again the next morning! (go ahead, call us crazy!) But what would New Years be like if we weren't in SAN DIEGO!?! So, we made the drive to Tommy's parents house. We did a little Christmas there which was wonderful! Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures of the family :( but we did a lot of hanging out with each other and Maddox just LOVED hanging out with Stacey and Grandma and Grandpa.We did not go out on New Years Eve, we stayed in and watched movies and then watched the ball drop. It was nice to have a nice, quiet evening. On New Years Day we went to the SD Zoo with one of my friends and her two kids. It was so fun to see how they have grown and Maddox loved playing with them!

This is Maddox in action...

 

So, that was our three weeks in a nutshell. We are VERY happy to be home but we do miss our families. We hope you all had a wonderful holiday season and took advantage of the things that are most important to you.