The Maielli Family

Merry Christmas!

2008-12-25T12:02:00.001-08:00

Viewmasters Rock

2008-12-25T11:58:00.000-08:00

Stocking Stuffers

2008-12-25T11:57:00.001-08:00

Good Morning!

2008-08-19T12:11:00.000-07:00

Gianna asked to hold her brother this morning, and I thought it was too cute how they were all piled on the couch together, so I took a picture to share. Hope it brings a smile to your face!

Mystery box!

2008-08-18T22:22:00.000-07:00

We had a day full of bad behavior today. A mystery box came for Nick today from Grandma Cathy, so that will be fun for him to open. Nothing really eventful happened, but I do want to update Nicky's wish list...he also likes the Planet Heroes series of toys. Anyway...hope all is well!

Pasta!

2008-08-18T12:18:00.000-07:00

Anthony made pasta on Saturday and the kids were having a great time eating it. Nick was slurping his noodles happily and it looked too cute so I grabbed the camera!

Birthday Alert!

2008-08-17T19:01:00.000-07:00

Nicholas is turning 2 on Friday! We are planning on having a small get together at our house to celebrate. We took him to Toys R' Us to get an idea of what he is interested in, and he was enthralled with the "Imaginext" and "Geotrax" action toy sets from Fisher Price. I'm so glad they finally came out with some action toys for chunky little hands. It seemed like there were just toys for under 2 and then the action figures for older boys. Check them out here if you're interested. These kids are growing so fast I can't believe it. :(

We're back!

2008-08-16T16:37:00.000-07:00

We want to apologize for the lapse in blogging. Quite a bit has happened since we last made an entry...where to start?

We got a Rottweiler puppy, and we named him Maximus. Rescue ended up not being the right avenue for us with the young kids. We love our "puppy" (He's huge!), and he is great with the kids.

Next, Grandma Cathy came for a visit to meet baby Anthony for the first time ever! We all enjoyed her visit, and the grandbabies love to be spoiled. Hmmm...speaking of spoiled...

Gianna turned 3 on May 11, and we threw her a Dora the Explorer party that she really enjoyed.

Then we moved to a new house in a peaceful neighborhood...sorry no pictures of this yet. We like it alot, and we will probably be in this one for awhile. The homeowners association has a community recreation area that even has a 1" kiddie pool and a playground. The kids love it!

Now we are working on getting the toddlers into school, because they have way too much spunk and need to be challenged. We're still waiting for the next step in Anthony's process, so in the meantime we are planning to go back to Jr. College. Kelli is also looking at some options for part-time employment.

We are concerned about the strong possibility of a deployment in May, and how that could gravely affect us. Please keep us in your thoughts and pray that things will change come November. Our friends Meghann & Joe are also getting married in Cinque Terre, Italy at the end of July 2009, and we really hoped to find a way to be there with them.

Well, I think that's about it for now. We hope all is well for everyone, and as always we welcome your comments!

Moving

2008-04-21T22:03:00.000-07:00

We are moving May 15th to Spring Valley, we found a cute house for rent in our price range. Our credit has also improved some, which is encouraging. We're looking forward to leaving the bad memories of most of 2007 behind. Our new landlords are allowing us to have pets, and we are applying to adopt a 5 month old Rottweiler puppy from San Diego Rottweiler Rescue. He is housebroken already, and loves kids! We are going to meet him this week. I enjoyed visiting with my dad and my grandma today, and was bummed to hear some unexpected and disappointing news about a family member. It reminds me to not take certain things for granted that I tend to. I hope things will improve for everyone later this year.

Next up...Zoo pictures!

Family Pictures

2008-04-12T23:32:00.001-07:00

We finally took some family pictures...Enjoy!

Easter Bunnies!

2008-04-12T22:40:00.000-07:00

Craziness.

2008-02-22T19:29:00.000-08:00

Things are pretty crazy around here right now with 3 kids. The house looks like a junkyard/the result of a tornado, and we are trying to remember to be thankful for our blessings. Luckily the kids like their little brother, and we haven't had any major jealousy issues. Gianna has a bad attitude lately and both kids are doing bad things regularly each day for attention. I had Gia potty trained, but we have gone back to Pull-Ups for now because she has been refusing to use her potty for the last week. I guess it's an attention thing. Anyway...here are some new pictures. Enjoy!

Introducing...

2008-02-12T18:26:00.000-08:00

Anthony Alexander Maielli
February 3rd, 2008 - 11:09am
7lbs 2oz - 19 1/2 inches
Healthy and handsome!

Christmas Day Pics

2008-01-12T22:42:00.000-08:00

Christmas Eve Pics

2008-01-12T22:34:00.000-08:00

Holiday Cheer

2007-12-28T21:38:00.001-08:00

We are having a great holiday season. Anthony took some leave, and our kids and myself are very happy to get to spend some quality time together with him as a family.

We kicked off our Christmas plans on Sat. the 15th with a visit to my grandparents house for some yummy holiday snacks and to watch the kids open their presents from their great grandparents. The kids had a great time playing with their 2nd cousins Mattie and Melanie, and it was nice to spend some time with the Buchanan's/Wilson's.

Then we went to visit my mom and her boyfriend and his family on Sun. the 23rd to help bake and decorate cookies. We ended up chasing the kids around most of the time, but we decorated a few cookies and had a great time chatting and getting to know people. We even braved some karioke later, and I took some cute pictures of the kids enjoying themselves.

Christmas Eve we had a "get-together" at our house with some of our friends and family. Anthony cooked a delicious batch of stuffed peppers, and some pasta that were both excellent. We watched the Chargers win their game, and exchanged a few gifts. It was very nice to catch up with everyone and let all the kids play together. After everyone went home, Santa came and filled the stockings dropped off the gifts under the tree, and finally crawled into bed super tired.

Christmas morning was great...we love watching the kids open their presents. They were so excited and even started ripping open packages that didn't belong to them. I was really excited to get a new digital camera, even better than the one I put on my list for Santa. I'm sure I will be taking and uploading pictures much more often now. Anthony made a really delicious traditional meal, and my sister's boyfriend Damien, my nana, and Anthony's dad came over to eat with us. We were so tired all day from all the festivites. I am planning to upload and post the Christmas pictures tomorrow hopefully. Hope you enjoy them.

Thank you to all our family and friends who celebrated with us and contributed to our great Christmas. Hope yours was great too!

Nicky's New Haircut

2007-11-27T10:02:00.000-08:00

Anthony was headed to the barbershop to get a haircut, and we decided to take Nicholas too. He got a high speed haircut like his daddy...now no one will ever say he looks like mom again!

Sick Nick

2007-11-12T21:35:00.000-08:00

There must be a bug going around...Anthony hasn't been feeling good, and when I woke Nicholas up from his nap late this afternoon he was burning up. He wasn't acting like himself...he looked drugged and he was whining while he attempted to eat a PB&J sandwich (one of his favorites) so I knew something was wrong. His temperature was 102.3, so I give him some Tylenol and he seemed to be feeling a little bit better. I'm going to call his doctor in the morning and see what they want me to do. Hopefully Gianna and I don't catch whatever it is.

On a happier note, Anthony and I replaced our cell phones the other day, so we should be much easier to get a hold of now. Also, the carpet people came today and replaced the carpet in the hall closet and the padding in other areas that was removed when the downstairs bathroom flooded. I feel like I can finally go about things normally now without worrying about stepping on carpet nails. They just need to finish up the linoleum in the bathroom so I can attempt potty training with Gianna again. We think the dishwasher might be leaking water now, so that's fantastic...and we are still waiting for the valve on our sink sprayer to be replaced so the faucet will stop turning itself off. I'm not really sure what's left to fall apart downstairs! Knock on wood. Anyway, off to bed...sick baby duty is quite exhausting. Love to everyone.

Big Changes

2007-11-07T23:49:00.001-08:00

It has been a long time since we updated our family blog, and since then we were surprised to learn that we are expecting a 3rd child...a boy due Feb. 20, 2008. His name will be Anthony, and we are undecided on his middle name at the moment. Unfortunately, since we weren't planning on having any more kids, we sold most of our infant stuff in a garage sale. That left us with no boy clothes from 0-9 months, and some other important baby things. Today we registered at babiesrus.com so anyone who cares to know can find out what we need. Thank goodness we didn't get rid of it all.

As you probably noticed, we decided to change things around a little bit on our blog. We have a new page design, and we discovered a way to easily share our latest photos through our family blog. Below this post are our Halloween pictures, so enjoy!

Love to everyone!

Halloween Pictures

2007-11-07T23:30:00.000-08:00

But, it's not all bad...

2007-06-30T11:22:00.000-07:00

She can be very good when she wants to. The day that I took this, she was coloring nicely with her brother in a coloring book on the couch. I have been doing digital scrapbooking, and the pages that I have done can be viewed here. If anyone wants copies of the layouts to put in scrapbooks of their own, I found a site that will print them 8x8 for $1 a sheet, or 12x12 for $1.50 plus $6 for shipping and packaging. It's definitely the best deal around. Let me know if you are interested so when I have mine printed I can also have them print copies for you and get them shipped to you.

The twos, they are terrible

2007-06-30T11:14:00.000-07:00

Gianna is a little blonde burst of rage when she doesn't get her way...and she hasn't been very nice to her brother lately. The other day she turned off the tv in spite of the fact that we weren't putting on Boohbah for her, and I told her she could either turn it back on or go in time out...she chose timeout and walked herself into the corner! Sometimes I think she is too smart for her own good. This picture is an example of the current behavior standard.

The baby powder incident

2007-05-31T07:38:00.001-07:00

A couple days ago, I had just put the kids to bed and 20 minutes later my sister called me saying to come upstairs. So I began walking up the stairs, and I looked into the kids doorway...Gianna was looking at me with a guilty look on her face. She was completely white from head to toe, and there was baby powder all over her entire room. I was angry, but it was really hard not to laugh...so I went out to the garage where Anthony was and told him to go see what his daughter did. He brought her downstairs and I snapped a pic, and then he took her upstairs to have a bath. She is being such a troublemaker!

Shrek 3

2007-05-22T21:43:00.000-07:00

We took Gianna to see Shrek 3 today, and she was actually really good! The theater had booster seats, and we picked up a ring pop at the candy store so she would stay quiet. She was watching intently while holding on to her "Wilber" (from Charlotte's Web) beanie baby and munching on popcorn. Puss-in-boots was her favorite, she meowed appropriately when he would come on screen, and she informed us that the little shreklings were "babies". Halfway through the movie, she decided it was naptime, and crawled onto my lap. I wouldn't say that the movie was as good as either of the first two, but she made it worth our while.

Gianna's 2nd B-Day Party

2007-05-20T13:38:00.001-07:00

This year we did a Backyardigans themed party for Gia on Sat. May 12th @ 3pm. It was alot smaller than last year, and we did it at home this time...much less stressful. We had some snacks and cake, and Gianna got some really cute things for her birthday. Her 2nd cousin Mattie came, and her friends Emme, Matthew, and Gavin were there too. They had alot of fun playing with a Backyardigans beach ball, and bopping around the balloons. Almost everyone we invited was able to make it...we have some really awesome friends!

New Blog!

2007-05-20T10:27:00.000-07:00

We have been terrible about sending out new pictures and updates, and we are sorry. We hope that this blog will solve the problem! We are still working on getting a new camera, but we will do our best to get pictures up until then!