I love Daddy Nerd Pride Moments. Today, Arwen turned on the Wii, Loaded the Wiimote into the Guitar Hero Guitar, put in Guitar Hero: World Tour and started playing. So awesome. Yesterday night Arwen chose, out of all the DVDs in the RedBox, Super Mario World cartoons. She had wanted it the last couple times we rented but it was checked out. She was so excited, when we got home she watched the whole thing twice. Earlier today she told me New Super Mario Bros Wii is her favorite game. Success!

Wow! I still can not believe another year has come and gone. Arwen has just turned 5. Bobby and I have reminsced about how 5 years ago I lay in the hospital shaking and in pain, but with this beautiful little girl by my side. It has just gone by soo fast. POOF! I watch videos shot in the hospital and when we took Arwen home and they make me teary eyed and long for those days again. We had a great Birthday Party for Arwen at Vinces Pizza. Everyone had a great time and we had a great turn out. She got some great "loot". Lots of new clothes and lots of toys. Thank you thank you thank you to everyone that came to celebrate this milestone in Arwens life. Now Christmas and New Years is right around the corner and Arwen is anticipating a visit from the Big Guy himself. :-) Hope everyone has a happy and safe Holiday season.

It has been such a long time since I have posted any updates on Arwen. She has been doing very well, growing leaps and bounds. A few not so good things happened to Arwen this summer: She was bit by a dog while looking at houses one day with my realestate agent. That wasreally horrible and scary. She then was afraid of ALL dogs. She has gotten alot better, but there is still an underlining apprehension when it comes to dogs. Arwen also had a bout of strep throat and a raging ear infection in the beginning of summer. Her throat and ear were hurting her so badly. I have never had to give ear drops before, she didn't care for that one bit. Ended up she had swimmers ear. She spent a great deal of time swimming this summer. We also went Cherry Picking. She enjoyed that for about 10 minutes. LOL! She got to eat as many cherries as she could possibly hold in her tummy. It was wierd for her though, to actually be allowed to pick something off a tree and then to be able to eat it. We also spent a great deal of time going to Magic Mountain. She loves all the rides that she can get on and can't wait til she is tall enough to go on the rest. She has absolutly no feat or apprehension about going on any of the rides. We went camping with my extended family, which was a blast as usual. Arwen loves to go camping. She got to try her hand at fishing. Also to round out the end of summer she has started soccer. [Read More!]

I was telling Arwen about something the other day and mentioned it was Wax. She looked at me and said "Whacks, like [/facepalm] whacks?"

We have signed Arwen up for AYSO soccer. She will be starting practice and weekly games in September. We made sure to ask her multiple times before we signed her up to make sure she wanted to dedicate herself to practice and giving it all shes got. Each time she gave an enthusiastic "Yes" (except the one time she was in a bad mood and would have said no to an ice cream sundae if we asked). I am going to start teaching her about the game. I want her to watch some games on TV and I am looking into taking her to a Galaxy game. I'm looking forward to being a proud soccer Dad and referring lovingly to Cheryl as a Soccer Mom.

Using Popcap Games Zombinator Arwen and I created our family as Zombies!

Mommy	Daddy	Arwen	Alex

Well Arwen had her "Big" Dental Appt on Monday the 27th. She did EXCELLENT!!! A whole lot better then Mommy did. LOL! I was just beside myself with anxiety for her. I had to sit down and Daddy watched over the whole procedure. They did give her a sedative (HA! Just reminded me of Young Frankenstein) to help her relax. Im guessing it helped her a little bit, she seemed pretty normal to me. They ended up putting her on a table and strapping her down. Now that I think of it that sedative had to of relaxed her....there is no way she would of tolerated being strapped down if she wasn't relaxed. Anywho...they strapped her down and put this little contraption in her mouth to keep it open, and just went to work. The dentist, Dr. Grace Jung was fabulous. She is kind of a small lady, Asian, very non threatening. She really got down to her level. Talked to her about the "bugs" in her mouth and about farting....which you know, you talk about farts with a little kid and they giggle. Arwen had 7 cavities in her tiny mouth. None thankfully were bad enough for numbing. Dr. did them sooo fast. I couldn't even believe that the appt was over that fast. I don't even think I have ever had a filling be that quick. The whole experience, I don't think was tramatizing for Arwen. Thats the one thing I didn't want it to be. I love the dentist and so does Alex, so I definitly wanted to pass that along to Arwen. I really think that the next time they will not have to do that. She came out of the whole thing with 7 tiny silver fillings, a necklace, a tattoo, a balloon and a big smile on her face. Couldn't ask for more from a first time filling visit. Yay Arwen!!

Arwen had another dental visit yesterday. This will be her third visit now. This time she was referred to a specialist who specializes in dealing with little kiddies. Poor little lamb has a total of 7 cavities that need to be filled. They pretty much range is size from very tiny to possibly needing baby root canals. I was bombarded with questions about her diet and what she drinks to how much she brushes a day. We do fail most of the time with brushing before she goes to bed (which we will do from now on) but we do brush every morning. Arwen will brush first then I will brush after her. I am pretty much at the point where I feel this is all my fault. While Arwen doesn't drink soda or eat alot of candies, she does drink alot of juice. Even though I still dilute it with water, it is too much for her little teeth. So from now on she is only allowed 4 ounces of juice a day. Measure it out, its a tiny amount. I will still dilute it with water (50%), so she will get 8 ounces of "juice" a day. [Read More!]

Mom: Arwen kicks so much --- at math. :-)

Dad: Duh, did anyone ever question why Dale Earnhardt Jr was good at racing? ;-)

I can't believe another year has come and gone. With that another Birthday for Arwen. I will not bore everyone with the "I can't believe she is already 4" stories! Seriously! I sometimes wish that I could have a cam corder going to record our day to day lives. I feel at times that I am losing those all too precious memories. Arwen is just growing and growing and there is no way to make it stop. It seems like on any given day she just comes up with new things that will absolutely floor her daddy and I. What may seem like a minor mile stone to some, is a huge leap to us. From me not knowing that she knew what apple sauce (bopple hauce) was to me not knowing that she knew who the Jonas Brothers were! Her amazing tales of her and her cousin Jaydens adventures as a baby turtle or a baby owl are chalked full of imagination and detail. From being chased by the blood monsters to flying to the moon. Ask her one day, she will be more then happy to share. [Read More!]

Arwen was a flower girl at Michael and Vanessas wedding.

I will remember today for many reasons. The one most relating to this website is Arwen had her first Dentist visit today. Cheryl took her at 9am per her appointment. Cheryl kept me updated throughout the visit. Arwen did very well. I told Arwen about it yesterday to start preparing her for it. Explained what the Dentist is and what he does. She has always been good at all her doctor visits so I had no doubt she would make it through this unscathed. I admit it has been a while since I have been to the dentist but there has been many many changes in the relatively short time. They had an LCD screen for Arwen to watch as she was getting her mouth looked at. She watched Shrek 2. She was very good through everything except the cleaning. She seemed uncomfortable and "eh.. eh!"ed a lot (Thats the best I can do to describe that sound) as they were cleaning her teach. She told me later when I asked her about it, "But I liked the bubblegum toothpaste."

She has a couple of cavities. I don't know what to say about that. She really doesn't eat that much candy. She rarely has a sip of soda and she brushes her teeth every day. Such is life. She has another appointment in Dec to have those filled.

We also came to an end today, the end of our shot to buy the house we have been in escrow for for 3 months now... [Read More!]

I closed that thing and all the dishes fell down and they broke and Daddy spanked me and I had to go to my room....remember Mommy, remember?" About 6-7 months ago Arwen had an "accident". In our kitchen we have a small cart that has a side that lifts up and has a leg that comes out to support this side. Well I was cooking dinner one night and I had set up all the plates with the food on them on this cart. Arwen for some reason came along and pushed the leg so the side came down, slamming to the side and dropping all of the food and plates to the floor. Shattering one plate and almost ruining dinner. Needless to say I was livid. Of course she started crying and carrying on. I honestly dont remember Bobby spanking her, but I do recall her having to go to her room. I also dont recall it being horribly tramatic or anything like that. To her though I think it may have been. [Read More!]

I think the thing I love about this website is being able to go back and read our thoughts at the time. Exactly two years ago in August 2006 we were frantically moving into our new home. We were renting a house, quite a step up from the apartment we were in. It was all new and exciting. We loved our house. We had some awesome times in this house. I just read through the posts in Aug 2006 in the archives. The "You're Welcome" story is one of my favorite memories that I have shared on this site. Aug 3rd I posted "A Place To Grow Up" and boy has Arwen grown in this house. We are now buying a house and moving out in September! Exactly two years later, another major move in the works and an even bigger step up in our lives, I can't wait for another two years to go by. Now Arwen will grow up in a house that is Truly Ours.

Life is crazy as Bobby stated below. So many plans are in the works for what seems to be the remainder of the year. With working, moving, vacations and business trips it seems we dont have much time to spend as a family. We have implemented Date Night and Family Night into the time slots that we do have. Which is really nice, it gives me and Bobby chance to have alone time and on Family Night it gives us all a chance to do something together, whether its going out or spending time at home playing with Arwen and Alex. Right now Arwen just wants to go swimming. We have a couple blow up pools of different sizes that we fill up and she will spend all day out there playing. I will invite her friends to come over and play with her, as she has discovered what boredom is. She has come to me on several occasions to tell me that she doesnt know what to do. She gets lonely with no one to play with. Breaks my heart. I play with her as much as I can....or can handle :) But with all kids they can just go and go and go. I think siblings come in handy sometimes. They always have a constant playmate. However I dont have to deal with the bickering and fighting that comes with that. :) [Read More!]