Rita had planned to come to SF to visit her daughter Jeanne and her family and we thought it was a great excuse for a road trip! We love going to SF and were very excited to see Rita, Jeanne and family and our friends Chuck, Jessica, and Malina.

Our trip started off a bit rocky when we learned that our flight was a few hours behind schedule. This was a quick weekend getaway so we weren’t happy to have our time in SF cut short. While we waited to board the plane, we sat in the airport and watched the flights arriving. Gabe licked the entire window clean (yuck!) and both he and Zara were in great moods. Hopefully we are raising kids who like to travel!

Things started looking up when we got upgraded to first class! We even had an extra seat so Gabe took full advantage of the legroom.

We had a really fun visit with Chuck and Jessica. It was so fun to see Malina at 2 and imagine how hectic life will be when Gabe & Zara are walking and talking and have opinions! Gabe and Zara played in the sand on the beach for the first time. Gabe ate 3 handfuls of sand and would have gone for more if we had stayed longer.

We also met up with my former roommate’s brother and sister in law, who happens to live in the same neighborhood as Chuck and Jessica. It was nice to finally meet someone I had heard about for years!

We had a great visit to the Academy of Science. Gabe and Zara love birds so the Amazon exhibit was really great for them. There were butterflies and birds everywhere. The kids were so sleepy but had so much to keep them busy! They also got a kick out of the penguins exhibit.

We finished off our weekend by spending the day at Jeanne and Spencer’s house visiting with their children and Rita. We had an amazing day and a quick but yummy meal on the grill before heading off to the airport.
Seattle has been quite rainy this year so it was quite nice to be outside in some beautiful weather and it’s always nice to be in SF visiting friends!

View our San Francisco photos.

Posted in Friends & Family, Gabriel and Zara, Travel 780 Comments »

Gabe and Zara continue to grow and are starting to explore everything!! We often sit across from each other and have them walk to us. They still aren’t trying to walk on their own. Their favorite activity is standing at the glass patio door and looking for birds.

I learned this month that I must shake my head when I am saying “no no no” because Zara started shaking her head when I said no to her. It was actually pretty funny and hard not to laugh when she did it! They’ve also started purposefully dropping food off the side of their trays as well. When you tell them “no no no” Zara shakes her head (and continues to drop the food!).

This month, both Gabe and Zara started saying mum mum mum and da da. I’m pretty sure everything is a mum mum, but it still melts your heard when they say it!

View Gabe and Zara’s month 12 photos.

Posted in Friends & Family, Gabriel and Zara 101 Comments »

We’ve had a busy few months and the photographer was a little slow in getting the pictures ready for publication. Sorry to keep you waiting. There are 4 new albums below!

It’s hard for me to remember everything that happened over the past 2 months and given that I don’t remember what happened two minutes go, I’m sure I’ll leave something out.

January started off as a good month. Rita came back to help us after Christmas when Willow went on vacation. We had a nice New Year’s Eve dinner and as always enjoyed her visit!

On a very sad note, we found out in mid-January that Roller had been taken by his owner to another town and when he was left outside, he never returned home. Roller was a great cat and we both loved him very much. It’s strange to pull into our driveway and not to see him or walk past the front door and not see him standing on his back legs looking in. There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think of him as I pull into the driveway. I keep holding out hope that he’ll find his way back here but it’s been several months and he was a 3 hour drive away so it’s unlikely that he’ll ever return. I just hope that he found another home that loved him as much as we did.

We found more month 9 photos on our other camera that we didn’t include in the initial 9 month post so here are the missing month 9 photos.

In February, Zvonimir had another work trip this time to Europe so he was able to extend and visit family. While he was gone, our friend Judy and her mother who live in Portland visited for a long weekend. It was so much fun to catch up and especially great to have extra help while Z was out of town!!

Here are some highlights on Gabe and Zara from the past few months. Gabe and Zara have been cruising around the furniture and exploring everything. They’re especially fond of our computers and phones! Any time the computer is within reach, they’re pounding on the keyboard or trying to tear the keys off! They aren’t walking yet but they will stand on their own from time to time. Zara is more interested in trying to walk than Gabe is. Sometimes she’ll take a step or two but most times she just dives towards you. Gabe is too busy to consider walking!! They both continue to do the army crawl. I think it’s just more efficient for them. They know how to crawl the right way, but it’s much slower on the wood floors.

We started spending more time at the local park swinging and going down the slides. We have an amazing park that was just renovated at the end of our block so it is very convenient! Zara now has 6 teeth and Gabe has 4. Gabe still loves to give big open mouth kisses but ever since he bit my cheek mid kiss, I’m a little worried about receiving his kisses!! Zara learned how to blow raspberries and spent the good part of a week blowing raspberries every time you looked at her. Zara has really come into her personality and although she’s still the more serious one she has started giggling more recently. Zara likes to study things and figure out how they work. She’ll sit with a shape and try to figure out which hole it goes into for a long time. Gabe on the other hand cannot sit still. He is the goofy super-explorer. He’s almost always smiling and always getting into something. He has this geeky/nerdy laugh that makes you laugh too!

They both still have reddish hair and Gabe’s hair is getting super curly (I think it’s time for a cut soon!). They both eat well but Zara is becoming a little more picky. They have a lot of fun feeding themselves. We bought them bibs with pockets to catch the food and they love to pick food out of the pocket. Their favorite food is blueberries. We go through a pint a day!

View Gabe and Zara’s month 10 photos.

View Gabe and Zara’s month 11 photos.

We recently celebrated Zara and Gabe’s 1 year birthday. We rented a large room so the kids had lots of space to move and play. The kids enjoyed pushing their favorite lion toy across the room and playing with their friends (ok, stealing toys from each other is playing at this stage!!). The kiddos ate their first piece of cake and they weren’t as excited about it as we had expected. They liked it but they weren’t stuffing it in their mouths like some kids do.

It’s hard to believe that a year has gone by already. We love you Gabe and Zara. You make us smile!

View Gabe and Zara’s birthday party photos.

Posted in Friends & Family, Gabriel and Zara 79 Comments »

We also celebrated Christmas in Seattle. We had a very nice Christmas dinner with our friends Sara and Quang. The day after Christmas, Rita came back for a visit and to help while Willow was on vacation. We cooked a feast for New Year’s Eve and had a lot of fun during Rita’s visit.

We took a trip to a river in the north where eagles come to eat the salmon. It was a beautiful location and amazing to see so many eagles in one place!

Gabe and Zara are doing great and have been really happy and giggly babies! They’re sleeping and eating well . While Gabe feels much heavier than Zara, he weighed 20 lbs and Zara weighed 19 lbs at the last checkup.

Ever since Z went to China, Zara has been very clingy to me and cries every time I walked out of the room. She’s also been a little jealous if I’m giving any attention to Gabe! She and Gabe started crawling on top/over each other all of the time. Last week she climbed on Gabe’s back like he was a horse then turned to me and smiled…this did not go over very well with Gabe but it made me laugh!

Both Zara and Gabe have their 2 front teeth now and have started standing (holding onto something) within the last few weeks. They still have red hair but it seems to be getting a little darker.

View Gabe and Zara’s month 9 photos.

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We wanted to get a family portrait done this year. There were so many new things to see that the kids wanted to get down and explore. Unfortunately, that meant their attention span was limited but we were able to get a few good shots.

View our Olan Mills photos.

Posted in Friends & Family, Gabriel and Zara 94 Comments »