It's Been a while....

Well its been a while since you all heard anything from our small part of California, and for that we apologize. But we are back and hopefully on track to get this blog rolling again. I will start by saying that we are all doing fine, Rebecca continues to light up our life on a daily basis. We can't wait for the next addition to the Birmingham Family to come next year. But first, lets close out 2008.

With that in mind, I wanted to share a quick rundown on our first family Christmas in California. Up until 2008, we have been heading to Memphis/Mississippi to celebrate Christmas. This year we went to Tennessee for Thanksgiving because we didn't want Susana traveling during her third trimester. Luckily we were able to be joined by Granny Birmingham (out in Cali for work), Tio Ofilio (from the bay), and Capt Joe and Caroline Nason (Co-worker of Irving)

A good time was had by all as we each got to play with a few new toys, of course Rebecca made out the best (as it should be). Though the big kids got a chance to play some Guitar Hero with Drum set on the Wii as well. Rebecca even got her own guitar that she could rock out with. See the video below for some of her strumming! (Granny is on the phone in the background)

All in all it was great Christmas Holiday. Best wishes to all of you in the New Year.

Memorial Day trip

This is just an example of the planning ahead we do....

We received a call at around 10:30am, Papa, Rebecca and mommy were all outside "gardening" (ie: making wholes in the back yard) when Daddy says "Want to go out today?"



Of course Mommy says "yes!"

Daddy "We have twenty minutes to get ready. Will you make it?"


Mommy looks around, Rebecca is brown with dirt, hair has little rocks in it from digging, and then looks at herself, and looks the same as Rebecca. But she also looked around and saw that she had two choices, 1- stay home and do some "gardening" with Papa or 2- go out have fun with family and friends.

Mommy quickly replied "Yes! we can make it in 25 minutes."

An hour and 45 minutes later we were in Truckee, Ca. sitting and having lunch at our friends' pub the Half/Half with eight other friends and two, 2 yr olds. We ended up at a little beach shore, were and walked across to the Safeway and had some good Starbucks.

We were all freezing. On the way home, we encountered rain, snow, and a beautiful wintery road.

Thanks Daddy for driving us out and giving us a great day to remember.

Is this Gardening?

We had a date with Papa today.

He wanted to do something called "Gardening" in our back yard.

I don't think Rebacca understood the idea behind this activity.

Mommy calls going out in the back yard "weeding" we tend to pull everything the grows back there, out. Papa wanted to make wholes and take rocks out all day. What was that about?

All weekend, Rebecca has been preparing herself for this date with Papa. Today, she picked out her clothes, as you can see, she picked a skirt (not what she would wear for weeding) and was ready to go when Papa got here today.
To her surprise, they headed out back, grabbed different tools than what mommy uses, and started "gardening."
I really don't think Papa was prepared for what he found back there. We do live in the city of Rocklin and it has that name for a reason. the ground here is all rock.

Irving says 'it was a rock quarry before the houses started being built.'

I think he should have spoken up sooner.

At the County Fare

Our very first County fare!

I have to admit, this was sooo much fun. We invited Rebecca's best buddy Jordyn to come along.

I think they started to get a whiff of what having a large pet is like on this picture.

Here they are by the stables eating waffle cones (no ice cream:

Rebecca does not even know what ice cream is yet.)

Rebecca cannot believe how big cows are in person. She was so happy to have seen baby caff as well. It took me 15 minutes to get her out of the 4-H club section. She wanted to see everything, from cows, to bunnies, to chicken and ducks, we saw sheep being sheered and pigs being pigs.

She loved it. And again, we had a great day, and this time she was so tired she didn't even want to get out of her stroller when we got to the car on our way out. She walked all day.

Trip to FairyTale Town

Fairytale Town

is the place where all the fairy tales come to life.

Here Rebecca is sliding down the Jack and the Bean Stock slide. We had just come from visiting Eeyore, and Owl, who as you may all know, are great friends of Winnie the Pooh.

This was a trip we took with some of our Mamis from Mami Latina. Rebecca is the one with the green Coconut Tree sun glasses, her best buddy Jordyn is styling the pink sun glasses, and the two boys are just going to hang back the rest of the day.

This was only a two hour event, and they were all exited and terribly exhausted by noon.

It was a great day.

Side Walk Fun

We are here again in the middle of three digit weather.

This time we are waiting for Daddy to come home for dinner. So we were in the front lawn, under the shade of out big oak tree.

The great opportunity came along, and the neighbors sprinklers started to water the lawn. Of course, Rebecca found it very opportune and decided to make the best of it.

I think I have also mentioned this, that Rebecca does not like getting too dirty, or messy.

Here she is sitting beside the sprinkles, with her juice beside her, enjoying the spray of the water while staying just out of the main sprinklers' way.

There are some of her ingenious ways of getting cool, staying clean, but getting the most out of her fun all at the same time.

Did I mention what a genius Rebecca is?

Lunch with Daddy

On the rare occasion, Rebecca and Mommy go to Beale Air Force Base and actually get to visit Daddy.

Today was one of those days. We visited the PX, The Airman's Attic and got Rebacca a couple of shorts for this wonderful weather we have been having.
But the best part was that we actually got very lucky and were able to have a great lunch with Daddy at The Pub.
So now Rebecca knows that Daddy works at Beale, and that he is working there til he comes home for dinner.
She is still trying to say Beale A.F.B., but comes out as Bill ABC.

A Great Day

We enjoyed a great day today. Thought the temp was triple digits again, we stayed cool the entire time.

Here we are at the Nugget Market yet again. This time we needed a few lemons for tonight's chicken dinner. But if anyone is familiar with this grocery store, you know that they have wonderful food too.

Mommy is so smart to have scheduled the day just so, and we could enjoy a great noodle lunch at The Nugget. Rebecca is enjoying her fresh squeezed lemon and Orange blend. Nice and cold just perfect for the walk back home. The pictures with the noodles are never going to be seen in public. Sorry but we are trying to teach Rebecca that being sloppy and gross is not what we do.

(But they are pretty funny, so you can always come see us in person if you ever want to see any of "those" pics.)

We were still enjoying the day even for dinner.

We had our Mami Latina group come for our monthly meeting. Rebecca was so excited to have her friends over, she kept opening the front door and saying "Come in, Please!"

We see all the kids playing in Rebeccas' play room. the biggest surprise here is that she is actually enjoying herself and not being terribly sad about everyone grabbing and playing with her toys. She was actually being a great host.

The kids seemed to have forgotten their moms were present at all, and were having the greatest of times. Of course because it was a late meeting, all kids that attended were asleep before arriving home.

The kids were well aware that Irving was present. He was in fact the person who cooked for them and was supposed to be watching them while us moms discussed the group and future events. Rebecca seemed so proud of her Daddy, that she continued introducing him to everyone. But of course he is the one next to the Blue M&M man.

On this night, Rebecca slept so well, she didn't wake up till 7:30am the next morning.

Did I mention it was a great day?

Working in the Garden

We had great weather for doing yard work today. Rebecca and I got an early start to beat the three digit temp. As you can see, Rebecca is a pro at this now. She is ready in her sweats, gardening shoes and blue gloves. As is her usual, she heads straight to the flowers, so she can smell them.

But as we can see in these pictures, she is not a light weight. Rebecca is not known to shy away from hard and heavy labor.

But just so everyone knows, she is using the proper lifting technique. She is lifting with her knees, not her back.

But in case you are worried about a two year old doing heavy lifting, this is not a full bucket, and she does have a smaller one she uses to fill with weeds and rocks.

Here we are after a well deserved bath, very hungry and eating fresh, juicy oranges. On this day, Rebacca actually ate everything on her tray. She had chicken taquitos and milk juice and of course orange slices.

Walking the Nature Center

A wonderful Mothers Day Trip to the Effie Yaew Nature Center.

Here we are, my mom and I with Rebecca in between having had enjoyed a nice walk and some great warm weather.

After having maneuvered our way down to the lake over so many rocks.
Tireless Rebecca and Daddy staying on the path back to the Center.

It could not have been a better day for this trip.

Thanks Daddy for an unforgettable day.

Hanging out with TiTa

Today we had a great time with Tita.

Since we are now spending all our afternoons with Tita, we decided to do something a little different. Instead of going to her apartment, we decided to bring her home with us instead.

Rebecca is trying to look like Tita in this picture. As we can see, she is doing a good job at it.

Because we were all feeling so great after nap time, which we all took part. We decided to go for a walk, one mile each way, to our closest market and get some great fresh fruits and veggies for snack.

Rebecca of course had a great time at the Nugget. She ran and tasted everything on all the fresh produce isles and tired herself out by the time we got to the check out counter. From the looks of Rebeccas' stroller, you can see we grabbed more than we could carry. So really it was a great workout for Tita and myself, since we started taking turns pushing Rebecca home.

Gymnastics Class

Rebecca is going to gymnastics now.

Here she is going through an obstacle course. There is lots of jumping, tumbling, going through and over things. She is learning to walk on a balance beam, do the double bars and all that sort of thing.

Here we see Rebecca doing part of the obstacle course. She had to go through the giant donut, into the ball pit, and next she is to crawl around the flat donut.

This next part, she is working on her arm strength. She also had to balance and pull herself towards the next obstacle.

Green Day

Today was all about Green for us. Rebecca decide early today that she was going to wear this very green dress her Tio Ofilio brought her all the way from Nicaragua.

After a day with Tio Ofilio, to show him that Rebecca loves his present, Rebecca decided to practice her pedaling.

She is concentrating very hard, trying not to drop Bunny and ride at the same time.

As soon as she saw the camera out, she started to pose. this is the shy look, the over the shoulder glance, I think, she has perfected. There were a lot more, but there is only so much space we can use.

Discovering and trying to keep her discoveries in her pockets.

Today Rebecca is pocketing everything the color green, leaves and other little objects that can fit in her two little pockets.

Just something new she started doing. Mommy gets to find all sorts of things, some yucky, some indescribable, some living and others not so much alive.

Meet and Greet

This weekend we attended the Official Introduction of Lucca Binotti to the world of other kids and adults.

Here we see Lucca and hid Daddy having a snack. Being the center of attention is a hard job, not everyone can do it.

But then, he's lucky to have Irving, who can teach him a thing or two. Or maybe they are discussing trade secretes and technique.
The kids were having a great time playing and monkeying around on the living room floor.

Irving and Rebecca enjoying a great get together in more ways than one. Did anyone notice how the dads in these pictures all match their kids?

Celebrating Summer

Rebecca's legs finally reach the petals!

OK, so it was a bit cool out today, but we still wore short.

Rebecca decide that today we were going to attempt to use the petals on her tricycle. This is the first time her legs actually reach and she is trying to move forward by using them.

Now all she has to learn is to pump her legs and guide the front wheel. But most importantly, she needs to learn to stop.

Of course, she could not leave her white bunny behind, so we have him sitting on her basket.

Outings with Mami Latina Group

Rebecca and I have joined a Mami Latina Playgroup, which I organize and schedule events and activities for. Of course this is great for us because we get to do just what we want. Mommy tends to plan activities around what Rebecca is into. You are welcome to check out our group and see even more pictures of what we are up to.


Here we are on out way out to the Explorit Science Center in Davis. Rebecca is ready for a fun and sunny day. Again she choose her accessories for the day. Don't ask me where she gets her sense of style.



As soon as we got there, she was attracted to the microscopes, but we spent most of the day in the puzzles and building blocks room.














We had so much fun the first time we went that we invited our group to enjoy the center with us the next month.





This time, there were different things to see and do. Here we see Rebecca petting a Boa Constrictor. She was so happy to have done it she got patiently in line two more times just to pet it again.

Dance Class

Rebecca in her Dance for Tots class this weekend.

She has really enjoyed going. Here she is practicing her ballerina arms during her stretching exercises.

Celebrating Summer

The First 80 degree day in Rocklin.

Rebecca chose to wear a blue tank and yellow short. She was very insistent on those two colors.

The day gave us the chance to try out some of the fun presents Auntie Camille sent Rebecca for her birthday. The bubble making cow is a total hit. Once Rebecca figured out how it worked, shes been using it every day.

Thanks Auntie Millie!

Now all we have to do is keep up with the supply of bubble liquid.

Meet and Greet

Rebecca was visited by the newest member of the Bainotti Family, Lucca! He brought her a cute clothes for her birthday. He has great taste, but of course his mommy is Hamraz.

After opening her present, Rebecca could not keep her big brown eyes off Lucca. She wanted to touch him and see what this little person was all about.

Lucca in turn could not keep his cute little eyes off Rebeccas big fro.