winter strikes phoenix

It's been a while since we posted anything. I guess we have been pretty busy with life, and raising our two adorable little munchkins. Lots of growth has been happening in the past two months. They are both bigger, Ella is crawling and pulling up on everything, Sam is clapping and giving out high fives when the mood strikes his fancy. We have been going for daily morning walks, but it's gotten cold recently, quite cold the past couple of mornings, so their walks are on hold. Instead it's dig through the closets for appropriate clothing gifts which showed up back when it was 115F outside and we hardly imagined it possible that they would ever get worn, but now they are perfect (and perfectly cute!). So, for today's clothing, thanks to the Margheim troupe for their La Serena purchased South American garb.  Warm, stylish, and, amazingly, perfectly sized for our over-achieving little miracle-gro munchkins.

Oh, and I know many of you are wondering what "quite cold" really means in the context of phoenix. It means a couple things: 1) I actually both swapped my shorts for trousers and wore a sweatshirt this morning and 2) Our overnight low was ~30F which constitutes a hard freeze in our garden. I guess it's a good thing we don't have any basil growing because if we did, it would now all be wilted and gone.

More bathtime fun

Jaime shot a video of last night's bathtime hilarity using her cell phone.  Ha!
Ha Ha.  Ha Ha he he he he ha.

simchat torah services

Simchat Torah was this past wednesday evening & thursday. We took the kids to the evening service, which Jaime helped to lead.  During the service there are seven hakafot, seven times when the torah scrolls are paraded around the sanctuary.  At our service, each hakafa was led by a different grade school class.  The first of them was led by the pre-schoolers, and we carried Sam & Ella as part of the procession.  Here are some videos of the celebration:

Passport Photo Shoot

We are planning a SuperFunWedding (tm) Reunion in Mexico this autumn.  That means it's time for the kids to get their first passports (and there's barely enough time to get them...).   We did a home photoshoot with a white sheet backdrop to get the pictures.  Here are the pictures we chose to use: 


It took a while to get the right pictures and the kids didn't always enjoy the process perhaps:

But I'm sure they will enjoy the end result when they get to play on the beaches of the yucatan.

School Pictures

The kids got their first ever school pictures last week. Perfect for slipping into your wallet to show off to all your friends. Enjoy.

Good Sit!

It's been a while since we updated things, and yes, I know we failed to post much from our trip to Austin. Let me just say that it went very smoothly, and the kids did great in the airplanes. I might still get a picture or two from the trip up on the blog this weekend, but I actually didn't snap that many pictures, so I have to see if I have a good one to choose from.    We are back at home in Phoenix now, and the kids are making several advancements:   1) They have pretty good head/neck control, and can now sit up in chairs, kiddie jumper exersaucer things, and their non-baby-seat strollers;  2) We think they have both started the teething process, based on their fussiness level and exorbitant drool production, though we haven't seen or felt any teeth coming through the gums yet;  3) They are becoming excellent swimmers.  Well, not swimmers actually, but pool visitors as we bring them in there for about 5-10 minutes each evening, and they float on their backs (with head support from mom & dad and of course extremely careful supervision), "swim" on their fronts (we hold them under the armpits with their heads out of the water, but their lower torso and legs in the water, and they kick as we pull them through the water), and even take a quick dunk completely under (which doesn't bring on crying nearly as often as I though it would; also babies have a breath-holding reflex so they don't try to breathe when they are underwater).   It's been a fun week. 

To celebrate their new found abilities, we've been setting up some of the great gifts we got back at the baby shower which are only now becoming relevant, such as high chairs and swim toys.  We set up two chairs at our table yesterday, and the kids seem to love them:


What fun!  Have a great weekend y'all.

Hup Holland!

The gang's all ready for today's world cup semifinal. We'll be rooting for Holland to beat Uruguay and make it to Sunday's final game against either Germany or Spain. We aren't sure where we'll be watching today's game, but we'll probably find a nice sports bar here in Austin to root for the Oranje.