Year: 2017

After we got back to the house we saw an event for the Phoenix Art Museum, a free day. It was during the week but since we had the week (and month) off, we decided to go. It honestly was a lot cooler than I expected. Here are a few photos from that day. The first photo looked like it was exploding (so naturally Arabella made it like she was Neo from the Matrix and was controlling everything). Then we entered a dark room with what looked to be a ton of lights. It was called “fireflies” and to be honest pictures do not do it justice. It would have to be seen and appreciated in person. Finally, we have a silhouette of Arabella in the Sunset and by one of the art exhibits.

Towards the middle of the month, we took a weekend trip and went about touring Route 66. We went all over, we took as much of route 66 as we could. Some classic Americana was seen. There is still the longest stretch of Route 66 still intact in Arizona (which we saw). Along the way, we also stopped in neighboring states Utah and Nevada. The little boy had already been to more states in a few weeks than Arabella had been to for a few months of her life!

Since we were up in the Northern reaches of the state we also went to Horseshoe bend near the east rim of the Grand Canyon. It is beautiful, but in June very hot. I also think that it wouldn’t be enough to talk about little baby E if you didn’t have at least one picture of Elijah upset followed by one with his orange tiger “Cheeto” which he ended up naming later on.

Being at home afforded me some great opportunities to bond with Elijah and to enjoy and give some extra attention to Arabella at this time too. A bulk of the rest of the month we spent at home. Up above are photos of Elijah decked out in Cardinals gear! Then Arabella would occasionally try to breastfeed him- it was super sweet. He would be crying and she would come over to him, lift up her shirt and try to feed him. After sending a picture of the baby to some people at work we also got this nice gift, “Future CEO” which we had to have a photo with him. It was still big but we wanted to ensure that we took a photo with him looking very dapper.

Shower times were fun – imagine getting out of the shower and being faced with this. I’m sure this is one of a zillion reasons Arabella is so in love him with. Another baby photo I thought was cute as he was yawning. It almost looks like he had a surprised look and his hand covering his mouth. (Side note: I still have those shorts/shirt) Around this time we also took lots of photos of Elijah sleeping, on us, on his own, didn’t matter. This is one of the ones. Look at Arabella’s face, it tells the whole story.

Arabella tuckered herself out from playing and would always end up in the one place her toys should have been/use to be (photo above). We had an offer for free baby photos and so we went to JC Penny at the Superstition Springs mall, because free is free. I know they do it so you buy photos – we didn’t love most of them, but there were a couple of good ones. So we ventured out again towards the end of the month (think 4th of July) and it is not as fun when it’s 110 outside – so we went to the City of Angels. At this time we were trying to find a baseball team we all could go for (My wife being a Red Sox fan and myself a Yankees fan) and with the rest of my fam going for the Yankees it made it difficult to watch games and not feel like a fight would ensue. For the good of the order, we tried out the Dodgers for a little. Next up is July!

just Pray

note: this post was published on 07/28/22 but moved the publish date back to the end of June 2017 to keep chronological order.

MAY 17th is finally here. We were so excited to meet our new baby boy.

After taking a photo outside of the hospital we made our way inside. They checked us in (felt like check-in at a hotel except with a much-much-much-much larger bill).

I had to change into my scrubs and Maryia was prepped. We really liked our nurse. Silly maybe, but they were big fans of Grey’s Anatomy and they even had the scrubs from Greys. haha, it made us relate a little more. They also let us know that it was a good thing that we came in because she had just started labor. Ironic as we had picked out this date – I suppose it was going to happen either way on this date!

Storytime! Not such a fun story, at least not for me. I was in the room with Maryia a minute or two before they were going to bring the baby out. She started feeling very sick and for some odd reason, I also started to feel very nauseous. Due to this, they had me wait outside of the room until they had delivered our baby. I was soooooo upset about this. I wanted to be in the room that very first instant. It turns out Maryia had gotten sick thereafter and as for me the feeling had passed after a minute or two. Such a different experience from the first time around.

Okay, so we finally met this little human that had been hiding out in mama’s belly for the last several months. Here are a few photos:

We had this cute little hat for him to wear (above). Then it was on to finding names. Yes, we knew that we were having a boy. It did NOT make things ANY easier with trying to get a name. The first time around we had a boy’s name picked out but not a girl’s name. The second time around, we agreed on a girl name (ironic, but just happened as we talked over time about having another child) but did not have a boy name picked.

We narrowed it down to three different names. We wanted to keep the “ah” name like Arabella. We also looked up all the different meanings of the names as well and wrote them on a whiteboard that they had in our room. We finally decided on a name! Elijah Skie. We probably had a good 20 different name sites up and one of them had Skie name meaning “arch over the heaven” which was the best out of them all, plus it was a direct tie to the wife.

Below are the photos. Our standard “Hello my name is..” photo along with the first time Sister met her brother. Then a few days later having a little baby and Arabella snuggled up next to me. I loveeeee doing that. Mommy and Arabella were taking photos with Elijah too.

We also have a candid photo of me vacuuming the house while holding the baby and having Ara “help” 🙂 We took a trip to the beach soon after he was born to give him some good sun with cool temps (May temps in AZ are scalding). And finally, we will end with a precious photo that I personally love. My baby boy wrapping himself up in my jersey.

We ended the month with a trip to go see some Route 66 sights. Arizona has some of the best sunsets to be found. Our car (Sharkie) also looked very good.

just Pray

note: this post was published on 07/27/22 but moved the publish date back to the end of May 2017 to keep chronological order.

Hey!! It’s gonna be MAY day. Or at least it was. I always think of the Justin Timberlake song.

Leading into this month we had gotten a destructicon. This time it was in the shape of Arabella. She was upset about having to be in her room if memory serves correctly. When we checked on her we found that she had completely destroyed the blinds in her room. This was after her painting with lipstick was still fresh in our minds. (picture below of the destruction. Knowing that life for her would soon be changing forever, we tried to take it all in stride (not sure how well we achieved that) but hey – we at least kept it in mind.

She loved to clean up with mom and dad’s tools, so we would let her help out every so often. The picture of her on the bike was the night before we went into the hospital. We had considered getting this for her as she really LOVED pink. Everything was pink, and Purple (since that was Grammy’s favorite color). She was also very excited to meet her new baby brother. If you couldn’t tell, just look at the photo above.

Oh! Also in between work and travels, we found time to re-do our primary bathroom. The picture above shows the before and after of the changes. Not totally pictured in the first was the horrid old lighting they had. Anyway.. we were happy with how things were coming along with the house.

The last day before going into the hospital?!?! what?!?!?! How could this happen?! Time has been moving so quickly. Here is a fun bit of information: American Express offered parental leave for moms and dads who were having a kid or adopting a kid. All paid leave, for up to 5 months. I had checked with my manager and I qualified for it and then took advantage of it. This was an exciting time – never would I ever have thought that I would be afforded all of this time with my new baby. When we had Arabella I was only able to take 1 or 2 days off (which were my vacation days) and then went back to work. What a change this would be!

I remember logging off from work and posting on Facebook about how I wouldn’t be logging back into work until many months later. It felt surreal.

just Pray

note: this post was published on 07/27/22 but moved the publish date back to the Middle of May 2017 to keep chronological order.

April! So we are nearing the date of the birth month. It is expected to be in May, right now slated to be May 17th.

What should we do before that? Why not go to LA and take some photos? We took a trip to see some filming sights and another time to go take pregnancy photos.

Around this time we had watched the whole season of Day Break. It had one of the people from Private Practice on it so we figured we would give it a shot. The show starts by showing the house that the main character comes out of. I grabbed a screenshot of it. Anyway – we tracked down where it was and gave a little visit.

I like when you can visit the actual places where these things were filmed at. It makes it cooler to me and then you can walk the streets that the characters walked.

We had also finished the HBO Series Big Love. It changed my viewpoints on things. I thought it was a great show and it caused me to look into FLDS more as well. There is some really creepy stuff with that. However, we found the neighborhood that was used for the 3 houses (Nicki, Barb, and Marge). Our white rental is parked in front of the house. Across the street is the same house where the crazy neighbor lived and who shot Bill. Needless to say, we liked this little trip.

As was normal, before we had Arabella we tried to go places and take photos. We did the same thing here except we also had a little girl who wanted to be in the photos too!

Finally, in the last month of Arabella being an only child, we found random places to take photos of her. The blue image above was kind of amazing as it almost perfectly matched what she was wearing. The second photo shows her combing my hair. Ironically she still likes to do this to this very day.

What is with the white photo thing? That is a photo of the ultrasound that we had. I usually never like those images as they don’t really have many defining features and watching it live can be a little creepy. Anyway, this is the photo of the baby to come!

I also had to mention that at this time Arabella was trying to wink. Can you see her attempting to wink?! She did pretty well, but it was still cute. And finally, we went to YCS Mongolian BBQ. It is realllllyyy good food. Plus you always have enough for maybe 3 days of meals. On this rare occasion, we ate INSIDE. Why is that rare? Well.. you can go to the line, fill up your bowl and get it to go. If you do, you can pack enough food to feed a family of 7 or 8, or a smaller family multiple times. Why not just do that and eat inside? Ah, well that is the kicker. No sharing is allowed when dining in. Anyway, all this to say that we splurged and ate at the restaurant. Still as good as ever.

Next month is the birth of the baby boy!

just Pray

note: this post was published on 07/27/22 but moved the publish date back to the end of April 2017 to keep chronological order.

March!

We kept going with Arabella’s birthday theme for the first small part of March (as her birthday is at the very end of February). We were able to go see Dobbins lookout in South Mountain Park (if in Phoenix, it’s worth a visit) to see some city lights light up the night. A few days later, we took Arabella who always liked Belle (pronounced Bell-e, or Belly) from Beauty and the Beast to see the new movie. The new edition was live-action (vs cartoon) and she was yet again a fan. She did however mention that the cartoon was probably better.

In the bottom photo, you can see when we played some games, including pin the tail on the piggy (as part of her birthday shenanigans). The next photo is something that I wouldn’t normally post but I find it to be comical. I did a face swap with Arabella on one of the photo apps. She use to love doing this with me but now for some reason, now she’s like “uhhhh dad that’s weird.” The last photo seen is our silly girl wearing one of those padded envelope mailers as a hat – because why not?!

We also took some time to go to another Blazers game, this time back in Phoenix. If you look at the photo of the screenshot image of a recap of the game, you can actually see us! We had pretty good seats. One of the reasons I didn’t totally mind seeing Blazer games in Phoenix was that the tickets were almost always pretty affordable. You can see Ara with her Blazers bear at the game in the photo below that.

This month also saw Domi (Sky’s childhood friend) come to visit us for a week. We took her all over town as much as we could and even to places out of the city like Sedona.

If you look at the photo of Arabella giving me a flower you will also see she is holding a VTech Chicken. Why? Well, we were in Goodwill.. (by the way the Goodwill’s in Arizona are far better than I’ve seen anywhere else in the country) and they offer a different percent off each weekend for their items. On some weekends they have items that were 90% off! Well anyway, we ended up getting that toy for pennies and she just adored it. She kept it for years – to be honest. We didn’t get rid of it until some time later. It was so well loved that the next kid even played with it for a while!

The last row of photos are Domi and Ara in Sedona, Ara posing near the Fountain Hills fountain, and finally, a photo that was sent to us on March 15th! Emily and Nam had their baby, a sweet girl who they named Breanna. What an adorable moment that was shared with us.

just Pray

note: this post was published on 07/26/22 but moved the publish date back to the end of March 2017 to keep chronological order.