In Honor of Two Great Fathers

This past Father's Day weekend, we enjoyed a little time "up north," as we say in Minnesota, with my parents and my brother Jordan and his wife Tara. We had a lot of fun swimming, playing at the beach, eating, coloring, playing lawn games (or, in Mateo's case, anything involving a ball), golfing, and even relaxing a bit in between all the fun. It was nice for Agustin and I to have four more sets of hands to help with the kids. And Emilia and Mateo loved all the attention. In honor of Father's Day, I'd just like to say thank you to my dad and my husband for both being such great fathers, each in their own way. Here are a few pictures of our fun.

A Weekend Away

Agustin and I recently enjoyed a much-needed weekend away without kids. My parents were kind enough to watch Emilia and Mateo (thanks Mom and Dad!) while we headed to Madison for the wedding of two friends (we'd barely been back since moving away from there four years ago). We spent a day/night in Madison, where we visited all our old favorite places and watched the U.S. vs. England World Cup game at a popular sports bar, then headed out to farm country, where the wedding was held on the couple's property. It was a beautiful and very fun wedding, and we partied into the wee hours of the morning with old friends and new before retiring to our tent and camping out right there on the property. A big congratulations and best wishes to our friends, newlyweds Chris and Stephanie!

This is the first in a series of photos of Agustin dancing (a sure sign he's having a good time) with the sister of the bride (and her scooter). The others were a little too racy to post.

Mateo is One!

Little Man Mateo is now officially one year old! We celebrated his birthday at the beginning of the month with a small family gathering. As is to be expected with a first birthday, the birthday boy was as enamored, if not more so, by the wrapping as the gifts themselves, the older sibling was more than helpful with unwrapping said gifts, and the man of the hour was not quite sure what to think of his first experience with cake. But fun was had by all and our baby is turning into a little boy right before our eyes. He's trying to communicate a lot more with sounds and hand signals (and banging his head on the floor when he's tired and wants to be held), and I have decided that his first official (i.e. intentional) word was ball ("ba!"). He also loves putting Emilia's headbands in his hair all by himself (in the picture above he has one around his neck); I think he's trying to keep up with his ultra-fancy sister.

Mateo models the poncho Tio Jojo and Tia Tara brought him from Chile

And here are a few more pictures from the past few weeks:

Emilia models one of her many homemade costumes; I forget what she was supposed to be here, but take note that she's wearing puppets as slippers

Enjoying a warm day in the backyard; Mateo isn't a big fan of the big pools yet, but loves the bath and the little plastic pool

Although Mateo took his first steps several weeks ago, he has preferred crawling as his primary means of locomotion until just recently. Now he takes as many as 8-10 steps at a time and enjoys showing off his walking skills. He still looks like a drunken sailor most of the time, but our cheers and laughter just encourage him to keep practicing the walking. I'll bet it's his preferred way of getting around within a week or two.

With Yaya and Grandpa at a different birthday party (note Emilia and her doll are wearing matching outfits--the result of shopping with Yaya)