2013 New Year's Resolutions Re-cap

It's that time again! Time to see if I succeeded or failed miserably at my New Year's Resolutions! In case you forgot, here they are again along with my updates:

1. Take a photo every single day in 2013. Yes, that's right, a photo every.single.day. Why you may ask? Because Scott bought me a new camera for Christmas/my Birthday! Also, because I am insane.
Yeah, that didn't happen. Long story short, Scott's father passed away unexpectedly in February and I didn't feel like picking up the camera every day after that. I tried to at least do some photos every month though.

2. Lose weight. I won't be specific about my current weight, but I will say my goal is 15 pounds lost by May 1st. Hahahaha! I'm pregnant. So obviously this did not happen.

3. Try to cook one "real" dinner a week. Ok, some of you may be saying "What?!". Let me let you in on a secret - I do not cook. Scott does the cooking in this household. This year I am going to make a concerted effort to learn how to cook real meals (i.e nothing frozen or pre-packaged involved). I may or may not share these cooking attempts on my blog. Depends on how well it goes ;)
Nope. Didn't happen. Sorry Scott.

4. This is annoyingly vague, but I have a couple of specific bad habits that I do not want to point out for fear of other people noticing them, but I am going to try to stop this year. Like for real. And no, I am not going to tell you what they are even if I do manage to stop said bad habits.
Some yes, some no. I'd say 50% improvement in this department.

5. Last but not least - THIS will be the year I stop cursing so much! I hope.
Let me tell you - Rocco repeats EVERYTHING now. So I have made great improvement in limiting my cursing. I say limiting because, hey, sometimes things are worth cursing about.

Stay tuned for my 2014 resolutions!

Merry Christmas!

We celebrated Christmas this year at our house, hosting both of our immediate families. This is not only the best photo we have from the day, but basically the only photo we have from the day - whoops. We were too busy having fun, eating, and enjoying each other's company to take photos - the way it should be!

Christmas Eve

Twas the Night Before Christmas....

Look how much he has grown since last year!

Christmas Cards 2013

Now that everyone has had time to receive our Christmas cards - here's the online version of them!

Front:

Back:

Mintz Family Photos 2013

We took these photos back in late October, but I didn't want to post them online until our Christmas cards went out for the year. Now that they have been mailed, here's some of my favorite photos from our photo session:

Wild West Christmas

Rocco's class had a Christmas performance with a Wild West theme (odd choice, I know). Scott and I both thought that a room full of mostly strangers was going to freak Rocco out, but we were pleasantly surprised! He actually LOVED being on stage, was shrieking in joy at times, and did a pretty decent job of singing along with the songs and the rest of his class. We were very proud!

A Christmas Rhyme

Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells,
Jingle All The Way,
Oh What Fun It Is To Announce,
A Baby Is On The Way!

Little Pepper Mintz or Spear Mintz is due to arrive May 25, 2014!

Sea World Santa

Scott, Rocco, and I went with Scott's mother and his brother's family to Sea World to enjoy their Christmas themed decor and shows. Rocco especially loved the Sesame Street Christmas show.  However he did NOT love meeting Santa.  Originally we tried to take a photo of just him and Santa but he was having none of it.  Since this Santa does not sit down, there was no way to keep him in the photo without one of us holding him.  Since I had the camera, Scott was the lucky one haha!

So much for "Santa's Helper" ;)

BFFs!

My friend Pooja was in town visiting us from Oct 30 - Nov 3.  We had fun going to a Michael Buble concert, trick-or-treating around my neighborhood, shopping at the mall and outlets, getting mani/pedis, and just having fun chatting and catching up!  I made sure to grab a photo with her before she had to leave to go back to Tallahassee on Sunday, seeing as we don't have any recent photos together which is just a tragedy in my book!

Halloween 2013

This year we decided to go with a 'Wizard of Oz' theme for our family Halloween costumes.  Rocco of course was the cowardly lion.  Very fitting because even though he knows how to say 'roar' and 'trick or treat' he refuses to say anything at all around strangers. So trick-or-treating consisted of us saying it for him as we went door to door around our neighborhood. Our friend Pooja was in town and Scott's mom, brother, sister-in-law, and nephew also joined us for the festivities.  I have to say, it was the best Halloween yet!

Here's a photo of Rocco the Lion on the 'Yellow Brick Road' we found near Scott's office:

And a family photo from Halloween night:

First Haircut!

I finally had had enough of Rocco's crazy hair.  Yes, he finally has enough hair to warrant a haircut!  The back and especially the sides near his ears have just been a crazy curly mess lately.  So off to the hair cutting place we went!  He actually did great.  They had bubbles and videos to distract him so he sat still in his little firetruck car thing while the hairstylist cut and styled.  He looks like such a little boy now, but I think his hair looks a lot better.

Before (and no, we did not purposely do anything to his hair to make it look this bad - it would look like this every time he got out of his car seat):

During:

After:

Pumpkin Patch 2013

It's that time again - pumpkin patch photo!

I can't believe how much he has grown compared to last year!

Legoland!

My sister Misty won 4 free tickets to the Legoland theme park, so four adults and three children all went for the price of only one adult ticket purchased - pretty sweet!

For a new theme park, I was pleasantly surprised by how many rides they had. There were of course a lot of Lego displays throughout the park that were very impressive in both their intricacy and size.  They also had a trick-or-treat event going on while we were there which resulted in Rocco having more Smarties candies than could be possibly consumed by two grown adults, nevermind a two year old child.

We really enjoyed visiting Legoland but I don't think we will be going back anytime soon due to the fact that it is REALLY far from our house (relatively speaking compared to the other 42 bajillion theme parks in the Orlando area). Perhaps if someone we knew was visiting there we would make the trek, as we really did enjoy it, but otherwise I think we will stick to theme parks closer to home.

Rocco on a Lego camel

Scott and Rocco in front of a Lego pharaoh statue complete with ankh and cartouche, I was impressed! Also, this was in front of the funnest ride we went on (in my opinion), it's very similar to the Men in Black laser ride at Universal if you have ever been on that

Lorelei looking adorable, per usual

Ken and Kieran on the Lego safari ride checking out a baby elephant (huge mama elephant not shown in this photo, but it moved and sprayed water on people through it's trunk)

Scott and Rocco also enjoying the ride

Rocco's 2nd Birthday Party!

For Rocco's 2nd Birthday party, the theme was Sesame Street.  Rocco absolutely loves all the characters and probably has about 15 Sesame Street board books. Granted, he has only seen a couple episodes of the show itself and loses interest in it pretty quickly (can't sit still for that long!). However, he does love a couple Sesame Street YouTube videos, especially Elmo's Song and Elmo Ducks.

Here's the invite we had for his party:

Back

Front

The party decor:

Birthday Banner

Table setup

Backdrop for photos

View of the room

To go along with the theme we had Elmo and Cookie Monster cupcakes made. They were not only cute, they were delicious! Even Rocco agreed - you may recall that he wanted nothing to do with his birthday cupcake last year.  Definitely not the case this year!

Birthday Boy loved being sung the Birthday Song!

After eating his cupcake - he looked like he murdered cookie monster!

We really enjoyed having both our families celebrate his birthday with us! Here's some photos of the party attendees with the Birthday Boy:

Scott's brother and his family

Scott's sister

Scott's mother

My parents

My sister and her family

Please ignore my hair (it was the end of the party - it looked better and was not in a ponytail previously, I swear!), also Rocco was OVER picture taking at this point, also you cannot tell my shirt is Cookie Monster in this picture.  Oh well!

Happy 2nd Birthday!

Two years doesn't seem like a particularly long time in the grand scheme of things, but when you have a child, two years is 730 days filled with hugs, giggles, cuddles, crying, sleepless nights, and the greatest joy I have ever known. So happy second birthday Rocco, you are loved more than you will ever know!

Lifegaurd Rocco

Rocco spent Labor Day hard at work as a lifeguard at New Smyrna Beach. He'd be great at his job if it didn't require going into the ocean - he flat out refused to do that!

Beach Day

While we have not gone to the beach a whole lot this summer, I have brought my camera every single time. And every single time I did not take a single photo - until this weekend. And of course Rocco would not look into the camera for a single one of them! At least not today anyways.  At least he wore his cute hat.

Birthday Party Playdate

Rocco was invited to Abby's 2nd birthday party.  Abby is a friend from daycare and most of the kids were also from daycare.

The Birthday Girl - Abby

Rocco and friends enjoying some bubbles

I just love this shirt for some reason

This is what Rocco did the majority of the time - poking sticks through holes in the playground floor. Toddlers.