Beautiful faces in my life

r E a L i T y

What can I say.... sometimes bed time is not as smooth as I would like it to be. 

I love my family.... my biggest treasure.

Capturing little moments, frozen in snap shot for me look back and remember how luck I am to have these two in my life.  (Sam is need of a serious good hair cut lol)

-Francisco 

Meet Cohen

Cohen Timothy came into this world at 8:48am on Saturday April the 5, 2014. It all started around 5am that morning. I woke up and heard a little pop-like noise. I thought, Hmm. That sounded like when my water broke with Luke. But I didn’t feel anything. I decided that since I was awake I would go to the bathroom. When I got back in bed, a little water leaked out and I knew my water had broken. I was 37 ½ weeks along. So I woke Francisco and started making phone calls to have someone come stay with the boys. We got to the hospital about an hour later. I had only 1 or 2 contractions during that time.

At the hospital we were brought to a teeny tiny room for triage? Or something. Just to make sure I was in labor. I told the nurse that I wasn’t really in labor, but my water broke. I (and Francisco) also kept mentioning that my labors were very fast and that I needed the antibiotics for Group B Strep. They moved me to a delivery room and after what seemed like forever, started an IV. She checked my progress and I was dilated to 6cm. I decided that I would get an epidural in hopes that it was still early enough in labor that it would actually work.

By the time I got the epidural (maybe an hour later?) contractions were coming about 4-5 minutes apart. The nurse checked me again and she said something like, “Nope.” And Francisco replied, “No, like she hasn’t progressed and is still a 6?” and she replied, “No, I can’t feel the cervix at all. You’re complete. Let’s get a doctor in here.”

Even though my OB, Dr. Downey was the doctor on call that weekend, he still wasn’t the one to deliver Cohen. The hospitalist that was already at the hospital, Dr. Levy was the one to deliver him. He was nice. The epidural worked well and I was happy that it was enough to take away the pain of the contractions but I could still feel my legs and enough pain to motivate me to push harder to get Cohen OUT and get it over with! I was also able to get up after delivering to go to the bathroom.

He was 6 pounds 13 ounces and 19 ½ inches long. He looked a lot like Luke when he first arrived, but once the swelling went down, he didn’t look quite as identical. He was healthy.

I delivered at Methodist of Richardson. The hospital stay was fine. It wasn’t as luxurious as my stay at Medical City when I had Sam, but it was better than Mountain View Hospital when I had Luke. 

We are home now and recovering fine. 

Written by Luke Darquea

Monster Ghost

Written By Luke Darquea

Transcribed by Mommy (The only thing left out was the word "and" in between every sentence!)

Once upon a time there was a monster and he had a friend who was a ghost. And there was a turtle in the sea who was going fishing where dinosaurs live. One of the dinosaurs came to the pond because he was thirsty. He saw the turtle and he ATE the turtle. The turtle didn’t have any food to eat. So, the another big dinosaur came and ate the other dinosaur. There were 1000 balloons. There was a box falling from the sky.  Then there were two elephants passing by and they got the dinosaur wet. Last night, there was a ghost outside where the dinosaurs lived. There was an owl flying to the moon. There were 1000 dinosaurs on the island. Every single dinosaur was eating everybody’s eyeballs. 

Tulips were growing and it was never raining. There was a fox on that island and the fox was wearing a ton of underwear. There were 1002 strangers and they were wearing parachutes and landing on every single dinosaur’s head. There was a Ms. Emily. There was a sam and there was a luke and there was a baby Cohen and there was a Francisco and Abuelita.  There was a train passing by and it was dancing and whistling and it was picking up people. There was 1000 strangers on the train. The ones on the train had green eyes and were good. The ones with the parachutes had red eyes and were bad. 

There were dinosaurs passing the train. They were squishing the train and there were kisses falling from the sky. The next night there were rabbits eating the big carrot on the train and the carrot was as big as the train! The next day there was Halloween stuff falling from the sky. The bad strangers were falling from the moon. They had flown up to outer space to the moon. The good strangers were wearing earrings and there was a baby cohen who was dancing and running away because there were dinosaurs. He had a magical magic and made the dinosaurs turn into stone.

The End

My baby Luke

Halloween Video

I don't know why I haven't post this video. I think Luke is the best spider ever and the little roar is awesome. Love having boys! They are so much fun.

-Francisco

Sam playing piano

So cute.

Christmas in Florida!

This year we made the drive to Florida for Christmas. It was a really good vacation and we were so happy to see all of Francisco’s family. I was pretty anxious to make a 17 hour drive from Texas to Florida, but it actually went quite smoothly. We decided to leave at 3am, which worked out because the boys just kinda sat/slept for the first few hours and we were able to stay in the car until breakfast around 8am. We weren’t sure how far we’d make it on the 1^st day, but ended up driving farther than we thought we would. (Which in the end, we were glad because the 2^nd day was MUCH harder than the first!) The 2^nd day of driving was only 5-6 hours, so we left after breakfast, but that 5 hours felt the same as the 12 hours we did the day before! So on our way back home to Texas, we decided to go as far as we absolutely could the first day (14 hours) leaving only 3 hours for the next day.  Not as bad, even though the last hour still dragged! But the boys did well. They are good travelers. They watched some movies and we listened to Hunger Games “Mocking Jay” on CD. We actually haven’t quite finished it yet!

So our trip was awesome! Here is a myriad of photos for your enjoyment. 

 We went to the beach twice. The water was freezing but that didn’t stop Luke and Francisco from enjoying the water. Sam’s favorite part was chasing the crazy seagulls that will literally snatch your food as you’re putting it in your mouth!

A funny fact; I didn’t realize how warm Florida would be in December (thinking it would be similar to Texas) so I did not pack any shorts and very few short sleeved shirts for me and the boys! We made due and we were fine, but several days were in the 80s and we were dressed in long sleeves and pants! Whoops!

We were able to visit with all of Francisco’s siblings, even his ½ sister Victoria who lives in Florida came to spend Christmas Day with us. Catherine and Tim flew in from Utah and Victor recently moved to Florida. I love having family in Florida because it is an awesome place to vacation!

We had a gingerbread house decorating contest. Several people had never decorated one before, so we laughed because Luke's actually looked better than some of the adults houses! My house officially won(top left--the roof was the coolest part, which you can't see in the photo) (according to our judge, Dave, Amanda's dad) but it was close with a few other houses.

Luke just wanted to eat his after decorating it! haha. I love how he chose to eat it by taking a huge bite out of the top!

 Luke and Sam LOVED playing with their cousins and it was so nice for them to have friends and playmates around all day to play with. They played really well together.

We went to see the manatees that naturally go into this bay of water every winter because it is warmer there. That was pretty cool. We also went bowling with everyone as a gift from Catherine and Tim and had a date night with the adults to see a movie and eat out without the kids. On my last day there, I went and got my very first pedicure with Amanda. It was fun!

We got very spoiled for Christmas and we are so grateful for the generosity of our family. 

Things we need to post about. .

Emily is 27 weeks, and we need a new picture

I just think this is a cute picture of Sam

Our Christmas vacation in Florida! ;)