MELT my heart

These boys melt my heart. I tell them often. Today, Zach asked what it means. I told him that it means I love them so much that it makes my heart feel funny. He thought for a minute, then said: "Oh. You melt my heart mommy!" I rest my case. I love everything about my boys.

I love how they love each other....

I love how happy they are to be outside....

I love their silly personalities...I even love how they have meltdowns...

I hope they always know how much I love everything about them!

A nice day for a walk

Tyler walking Reba... Zach on our neighbor's snow mountain... Cute boy...King of the mountain in our front yard... Brothers...

Happy Birthday Zach!

Happy birthday to our four year old boy. Daddy and mommy and all your friends and family love you so much and enjoyed sharing your birthday with you! Every day you grow older and wiser and just warm our hearts so much. Happy happy happy birthday to our amazing and perfect four-year old. This is going to be a very special year.

Chúc mừng năm mới!

We celebrated Tet last night. The Vietnamese New Year. We had friends over whose son came home from Vietnam about a year after Zach. Garrett is a year younger than Zach. I made my first Vietnamese meal. We had chicken Pho for dinner and coconut rice pudding with mango for dessert. It was a lot of work but so worth it. We all had a blast! They stayed until close to 9pm and the kids were awesome the entire time.

Tet means the first morning of the first day of the new year. Like in China, the Lunar New Year is one of the most celebrated holidays in Vietnam . The Vietnamese do not celebrate birthdays on the day they were born. Everyone turns a year older during Tet. Preparation for Tet starts weeks before New Year's Day. Homes are cleaned to get rid of bad fortune associated with the past year. Families paint their homes to give it a new look. Everyone gets new clothes and new shoes. Debts are paid and differences are resolved between family and friends. Food is cooked in advance for big meals that are to be eaten during the seven day celebration of Tet.

Ready for our guests...

Eating Pho with chopsticks...

T used chopsticks, too...

Eating and chatting with friends...

Many Days of MESS!

Playdough...Dot Markers...Mixing paint colors...Snow...More snow...Rice...Shaving cream...More shaving cream...Flour...

Too busy to blog

I guess we've been too busy enjoying ourselves and not busy blogging about it. Thanks to a friendly reminder from Grumpa, here is a little update...

Our boys are doing very well. They both really enjoyed the holidays but Zach obviously got it more than Tyler. We decorated our house with lights and a one of a kind holiday snowman 'tree.' I think our snowman tree will be a new yearly tradition. I remember feeling left out when a lot of my friends had Christmas trees growing up. I like the tradition of picking out a tree and decorating it with your family. I wish it wasn't called a Christmas tree. Why couldn't it just be called a 'Holiday' tree? Maybe next year. Anyway, we had a nice 8 nights of Hanukkah. Zach was in charge of lighting the candles every night. Then, he got to pick one present to open each night. He got a lot of big kid toys. I felt like he really needed some new things. Tyler, on the other hand, didn't really need anything b/c he has all of Zach's old stuff. So, Tyler got books. You can never have enough books, right? Next year will be different, I'm sure, because Tyler will understand more. But he really does like books. We spent one night of Hanukkah with Mimi and Grumpa, one night after Hanukkah with Grandma Ros and one night with Adam and Sarah. The boys were spoiled! We spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with the Hodess family. Our boys got to wake up at their house on Christmas morning to a bunch of presents under the tree. It was fun for everyone! Both Zach and Tyler got presents in their shoes on Christmas morning, which is a tradition in Vietnam. I explained to Zach what some people believe about Santa. The Hodess family expanded on what I said and by bed time on Christmas Eve, Zach was officially freaked out that there was going to be a random man in the house delivering presents while we all slept. Ha! But when it came time to open presents in the morning, he was very surprised that Santa knew he liked M&Ms, space, dinosaurs, motorcycles and numbers, etc...

During this holiday season, we have been trying to teach Zach how fortunate we are and that it's nice to give to those less fortunate during the holidays. I think it's really important for him to grow up knowing this. He has been putting money in the red Salvation Army baskets at the super market and every time, it sparks up a conversation about how lucky we are to have what we have. And how it's nice to give to others. I hope it sticks in that brain of his.

We plan to spend New Year's Eve with friends this year. It should be fun being with four or more other families with kids for the night. Sleeping should be interesting.

We had our first big snow storm of the season. Zach LOVES being outside in the snow. For a kid who gets cold so fast in the pool, he is a champ in the snow. He can be out there for hours and not complain once about being cold. He went sledding a little today in our neighborhood. We plan on bringing him sledding down a real (small) hill this week while Chad has the time off. He is going to love it. Tyler likes being outside in the snow but isn't a big fan of actually being down in it. He took a little ride on the sled today, too, and seemed to like it.

Here's to more blogging in 2011 :)

Happy Halloween!

Well...day after Halloween. We've had a great couple of weeks celebrating Halloween. We went to a fun event at the Ecotarium, Boo at the Zoo, a couple of parties and trick or treating of course. Zach got to show off his homemade costume a lot. I was proud that most people knew he was a space ship. Tyler didn't get much out of it this year but I think he'll be into it next year. He did enjoy seeing all of the pumpkins and decorations and he also had fun carving the pumpkin. We spent Halloween night with the Barans in their neighborhood. It was fun. The boys were so excited to go out trick or treating. Zach had a hard time at first. He didn't really understand that he was not supposed to be eating the candy as he got it. He soon got the hang of it, after eating a candy bar and a tootsie pop. Tyler was just along for the ride. No treats for him.