Kena's birthday, first massage and Phoenix Zoo

Kena turned 2 a couple weeks ago and Joe moved here just in time to go to her birthday party! Joe didn't care too much about the picture with all the ladies, the pinata had just been broken and it was his first time collecting candy!
Could he be any more of a cheeser? I just love him, he got the motion down a little bit more the second time he got to swing.

He didn't understand why if he wasn't allowed to hit anything/anybody, why he could hit this? So he was just tapping it softly hoping candy would fall out!

First massage with dad at Kohl's while mom was trying to do some shopping

Heather took me to the San Francisco Zoo for my first time a little less than a year ago, and she took it upon herself to take me to the Phoenix Zoo for my first time. We got to go for Kena's birthday and had a blast! How cool are the leaves in this picture?! Joe loved the tractors and had a hard time giving them up to other kids.

I told Cowboy Joe he needed to get on his horse and ride it, this was his ok mom I will please you picture.

Another tractor in the farm/petting area

Joe actually liked petting and brushing the goats, I was very surprised. He wouldn't stop pulling this one's ears. It finally had had enough and jumped up scaring the crap out of Joe and I and left us.

Joe and Kena playing in the kangaroo's pouch, followed by the cactus slide and a bunch of tunnels. Once I get those pictures from Heather I will post.

Thanks so much for the fun day! We love you guys! Happy Birthday Kena!

Grandma & Grandpa Jurca came to visit

Thank heavens Joe doesn't like to really explore too much because this is our back patio. Hello cactus! Unfortunately his friend Kena put her hand on one that pricked her with tiny fine orange splinters. Now every time we see a cactus, it is ouchie Kena.
Ah winter in Arizona, Joe enjoys the swimming pool, french fries and chicken nuggets. We have been taking him to the spa at night and he loves turning on the bubbles when they go off.

Grandma & Grandpa made the trip to see us while we have been at the hotel. Steve and his parents woke up and did the Camelback hike one morning, it's about a mile straight up, sounds really fun :) We had a good time eating, swimming, and hanging out. Joe loved his grandma Bev and only wanted her to hold him on our long walks! This is the only picture I got of Grandpa and Joe swimming. Steve's parents were great and took Joe to the park one morning so I could get ready, it was so nice to take my time getting ready!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I feel like I am totally lagging on this blogging thing and taking pictures. I know there are 15 pictures on this one post, but usually I am taking pictures more frequently and not just on holidays.
Joe and Joe checking the pool to make sure every thing looks right

This is what Joe was doing on Thanksgiving...

While the rest of us were doing this...

and this....

but he is a boy after his mama and woke up for this! My mom does such a big Thanksgiving with tons of food and I was glad to finally get to pitch in and make 1 pie. Chelsea was able to pitch in too and make a pie...The rest were made by Sammy's mom and they were phenomenal as always, I love it when I hear she is coming for Thanksgiving dinner. Thanks mom and dad for having us all over!

My fab sista sista. She is so great, she knew how much I liked this sweater she brought from Banana Republic that she "accidentally" left so that I could borrow it for a little bit. Chels, you are the best!

Daddy and Joe after 4 hours of playing flag football. What a wonderful way to start off the day and really get in the spirit of Thanksgiving!

My brother, Dan, in his cool Steelers jersey...Thanks for getting the ball rolling Dan!

The peanut gallery enjoying the game (dad, mom, Grace and Jack)

Emi entertaining Joe

The McKeon Family Turkey Bowl 10:00 am and the ward one was at 8:00 am

JK, Joe loves you!

OK, how cute is this picture!? He was in motion running to Chelsea. He looks like a boy on a mission! Joe I just want to eat you!

Eating ice cream and loving a break from his mama!

My friend, Lora, took some wonderful pictures of our family! Thanks so much Lora for being patient!

I had so much fun with my family playing the Wii, eating, seeing Twilight, staying up late, wrestling JK and Ben, and just hanging out. I do have to write about this fashion show I got to be in at the Valencia Country Club, no there are no pictures, and no there will be no pictures. I got to wear some layers clothes, which the new collection is soooo cute! The other outfit I had to wear though, um not so cute. Number 1 the jean jacket was too big so I looked like a football player, number 2 there were these big diamond/rhinestone things for the buttons, number 3 there was a funny bright pink pattern on the sleeves and around the neck. I bet maybe a 40 year old mom would like it, but not a 23 year old mom. I wanted to crawl into a hole...until I saw that there were very few in the crowd and felt better. Fun day with lots of laughs.

I wanted to say a few things I am thankful for: (in no order)
my wonderful husband

our beautiful son

our amazing families that are so supportive

Steve's job

the gospel and the happiness it brings to our lives

our eternal marriage

food

a place to live (I'm loving that right now it is a 5 diamond resort that we don't have to pay a dime for)

clothes

music

chocolate chip cookies

Joe's laugh

good friends

my camera

watermelon

I'm starting to go into all of my random things so I will end this post!
Hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving!

We are coming home!

*A little preview of family pictures that we got taken, will post more later...
So Steve had to work Monday, Tuesday and a couple hours today. He had a couple different options of how we could make this work since he knew I needed to be at my parents for Thanksgiving. I chose the option of driving 6 hours on Sunday, leaving Joe with my parents, staying in Arizona Monday, Tuesday and driving back to Valencia on Wednesday. The point of me coming was to look at houses, kind of get a feel for the area, and relax....I have done A LOT of relaxing...It has been wonderful, the resort is absolutely beautiful. It is a very different feel from San Francisco. San Francisco was very professional and the hotel catered to huge groups like Google and Oracle and this resort is all about the guests. Monday afternoon I got to go with Steve, Kevin (Director of Finance), and Ralph (General Manager) to lunch at the spa. I cannot wait to have a day at the spa, or even an hour at the spa :) Lunch was so yummy, I had this shrimp pesto pasta thing with a raspberry rose cooler. I walked around with Steve to get a feel for the resort and then relaxed in the room. Monday night we met up with our friends, Ben, Heather, Kena and Benson for dinner. It was fun and it was hard to believe that 6 weeks have gone by since they moved here. Tuesday, once again I relaxed and then went to dinner with Steve at this outside area they have here. There are lots of chairs, sofas, fire pits, and a band playing. Such a pretty night, great food, excellent dessert. This morning I got french toast for breakfast which was another treat, and now we are getting ready to go see our boy. We are so lucky that Marriott is putting us up with such a sweet deal. We have 2 connecting hotel rooms, funny that Joe has his own, and they are double or triple the size of our apartment.
Joe, on the other hand, is having the time of his life with his Grandma...He will not talk to me on the phone, my mom puts the phone up to his ear and he says "Grandma" with as much enthusiasm as he possibly can. Well that didn't take too long for her to replace me! He's somewhat used to his dad being gone, so he will talk to him. The first night we were gone he woke up at 2, 4, and 6:30 for good. Anyone who knows Joe knows that is insane for him to be up that early! The second night, my parents automatically woke up at 2 and waited for him to wake up. My dad turned on the golf channel, preparing for his window of sleep to be interrupted and Joe proved them wrong sleeping until 7! I'm sure they didn't wait up too long, but the fact that they woke up expecting him to wake up, made me laugh.
Thanks so much mom, dad, Chelsea, Ben, JK, Ben, & Dan (he did tell me that you taught him vroom vroom yesterday) for taking care of him while we took a little getaway. I know that he couldn't have been in better hands and that is probably why I was able to go. Sorry mom if the kid's energy has exhausted you, but that's what you get for being the most awesome mother ever!

Last Girls Night

The thing I will most in San Francisco are the friends that we made. I feel so blessed to have met so many wonderful people. My friend, Hillary, put together a dinner at Left at Albuquerque for me. She had a baby 6 days earlier, and was still able to get this together. I love her! Thanks to everyone who was able to make it on such short notice. It was a fun night with yummy yummy food. Love you girls!

Joe's hello to Will and goodbye to Sarah

Gotta love modern day technology...
Poor Joe is going to miss all of his friends so much. He loves Sarah, loves to play with her, loves to pull her hair, loves to fight over toys, loves to kiss her, loves to eat with her, and most of all loves to share precious moments with her like this one where they babble and laugh and understand each other.

Thank you baby Will for coming 11 days early so that our family could meet you! We have been super excited for your arrival and were hoping we wouldn't miss it by just a couple of days.

You are such a cute little peanut, welcome to the world! xoxo

We will miss you Hilly, Roges, Seerah, and baby Wull!

I'm a big girl now...

As most of you know, I am a baby when it comes to even thinking of staying by myself. I have never stayed home alone...If Steve has had to go somewhere, I have rushed home to my mama and papa, or once I forced Chelsea to come stay with me and baby Joe (Franklin) as Chelsea liked to call him. Well Steve needed to fly to Arizona for lets say um roughly 192 hours. AH! What is a girl to do?! I of course would have loved to go home, but with the move so close and wanting to have some more time with friends I opted to stay here and try to take care of Joe and I...I begged Chelsea and Grandma to come, but both have TONS of stuff going on during this time. Surprisingly enough we have done ok. We have had a party every day. We have played lots with Seerah (Sarah), Hilly (Hillary), Roges (Roger), & Kenzie(both Kenzie and Kenzie's mom, Stephanie is too hard to say). Last night we stayed up until 12:30 and watched August Rush, yes Joe watched the whole thing and even clapped when there was applause. We both got in our jammies and cuddled on the couch. Tonight our party included watching Toy Story and eating pretzels. Joe deserved a medal for today. He went with me to a friends baby shower dinner and sat in a high chair or big boy chair for the 2 hours we were there! There were no other kids and yes he did need attention, but I couldn't believe he lasted in a grown up restaurant, I was extremely proud. I know I am biased but when my friend Kristen walked in, Joe started saying Uke, Uke (Luke) wondering where Kristen's son was...Impressive since we don't see them all too often. Then to Mithona it was Eav, Eav wondering where her cute little girl was...Impressive as well since we have hung out with Eav just a couple times.

Lovey love! I love you! Thanks for being such a good buddy to me the past couple days. It has been very fun to just be a mom and only worry about you and playing kiddy things...Tomorrow let's make the bed and actually make dinner and do dishes and tidy up, maybe :)

See he loves just having 100% attention on him...Some of my favorite things he says (which are pretty much everything he says) are: noyce (nice surfer style), I'm cowbee Joe (cowboy Joe), I'm funny, bus, daddy, airplane, train, tractor, big truck, motorcycle, cow, horsie, ducky, Grandma, Grandpa, Chelsea, Bee (Ben), JK, Jamie (he has this funny thing with Jamie Krommenhoek, maybe it's because he knows she is too nice and will let him be in control when she babysits), booty (pirate's booty), shark, froo snack (fruit snack), prayer, and the list could go on and on...He talks a lot during the day. I love it when he occasionally puts his little arm around my neck and kisses me on the cheek. A couple mornings ago I was blow drying my hair and my head was flipped over, he walked in and moved my hair and kissed my cheek and said hi mom. Joe you are the sweetest, don't change. Always love your mom

Now that I've gone on and on about how fun the past few days have gone, will my sexy other half please come back! I've proven that I can do it, but we want you home. So hurry up with the training stuff and get on the airplane. I missed teasing you about the football games on today and didn't know what to even watch on a Saturday. I didn't even have to put up a fight to rent August Rush. The bed is cold. I'm running out of energy and am only half way there. Joe needs someone to really wrestle with, he was trying to take a purse with him when we left today. I guess I can take out the trash by myself. Thank you for not choosing a job that makes you travel, I couldn't have handled it. Life is so much easier with your help. Thanks for being the sweet, motivated, gentle man that you are. As Joe would say it, daddy hold you hold you...We miss you! Steve, you are hot!jgjgjdfgkxkkdlkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkoidijdsiskiiidskeeeehet ee love you dad-Joe

Happy Halloween!

Hope everyone had a Happy Halloween! On Friday, we picked dad up from work and went to Kohl's and had an excellent dinner at BJ's...We were waiting for our church party on Saturday to trick or treat. Since there are mainly apartments in San Francisco, there are only a couple streets with houses that actually hand out candy that we know of. We decided to opt out to the big crowds and wet weather.
This was the before the party face when I was dressing Joe. He loved his costume when we bought it, but not so much when it was time to wear it. I told him I was leaving him if he didn't put it on. He pretty much jumped inside but still was whining.

O weird, the second he got into the hang of things, he couldn't get enough, we were even able to put a cowboy hat on him. I think the legs of the costume look so funny, like he's a little midget.

Cute cowboy Joe! When he got home, he just kept saying I cowboy Joe. He called his grandma's and grandpa's and his Auntie Chels and said I cowboy Joe. It helps that his favorite book right now is about cowboy Joe going to the rodeo.

We held the reigns to the horse, since he is too young to do the whole gallop thing and when we weren't holding this was how the horse was resting. :)

Joe and Kenzie getting their sugar high and Kenzie taking care of the horse. They had so much fun getting candy and getting to pick it out themselves.

Cowboy Joe and his proud parents. Fun Halloween for us, we are absolutely loving this stage! Don't grow up Joe!

Some Prop 8 stuff! I look absolutely horrible in this picture, but I guess that is what happens when you are up at the crack of dawn in the rainy cold weather walking for a good cause. This is me with my friends, Jamie and Courtney getting ready to put some flyers on doors. I was so thrilled to get to go out with Steve and get some work done. I can only hope for the best. Oddly enough, I have lost a few good friends because of this. I have found it weird that while I have sent nice text messages or emails, just plainly saying please vote yes on 8, that people who I thought were my friends have written back and really let me have it, as far as to say, never talk to me again...What happened to freedom of speech people? Please yes on 8! Happy voting!

Pumpkin carving

We had a lot of fun decorating our pumpkins...Joe and I did the little pumpkins, dad did the big one. I know, my drawings look great, but it is a little hard to draw a face when your kid is trying to draw too and moving the pumpkin all over. All in all fun family home evening.

Such a cutie, couldn't get in a comfortable position to color his "pumky"

He loved this pumpkin until dad cut it open and scary stuff came out of it! He wouldn't touch or help or get close, I guess it made it seem alive or something.

Lemos Pumpkin Patch

I was soooo excited to go to a pumpkin patch with Joe. I kept bugging my friend Hillary & her daughter Sarah to come with us. The night before we went, I was so excited I could barely sleep. Pony rides, train rides, pumpkins and a petting zoo! Awesome! I couldn't wait to see how Joe would act around all the animals and activities.
This picture was at the end of the day and Joe was having a heart to heart with the ponies. They were at a good distance.

This was Joe's favorite goat in the pen for 2 reasons: 1, it didn't try to mall him for food, and 2 it kept copying where Joe was looking. I wonder what they are looking at.

Pretty mellow goat, just like my son is starting to become. Yes he does have his moments, but he is pretty good at following me and just going with the flow. O yes, he hated actually feeding the goats and would make his arm go stiff so that the food would fall all over the ground.

Sarah and Joe waiting so patiently for the choo choo train on a rocking horse.

Still waiting for the choo choo train I decided to try and get a couple of pictures. I found out that if I tossed hay at my child he would smile and laugh uncontrollably. So if you see a family photo of us and some object is flying through the background, it's only so we can get a smile out of Joe :)

I love this boy so much, I really enjoy the toddler stage when they start to find their words. A couple days ago in the car on the way to get Steve we had a little conversation that went like this:

Joe: Hi mom!
Me: Hi baby!

Joe: Mama, hand

Me: Does your hand have an ouchie?
Joe: No, hand

Me: Do you want me to hold your hand?
Joe: Yes, hand

And that was it, driving down Mission St with my arm twisted to hold his little hand I thought this is what my mom has meant when she said, "life gets no better than this." He held my hand the whole way to get Steve and if I started to adjust he would patiently take my hand and get the perfect hand hold before getting comfortable again.

Never did I think 50 cent rides at the mall would be amazing, or that a pumpkin patch would be so exciting, or that the first time down a big twirly slide would be like conquering the world, but I guess when you are seeing it with your own child, it does mean everything.

Joe really likes reading about horsie's and saying neigh, so of course I thought he would love riding the pony. He liked talking about it and waiting to ride, but that was the extent of it. Getting all buckled in, you can tell he is rethinking this big boy pony thing.

One time around the circle, if you notice his hands are in his lap, he refused to hold onto the reins/saddle, but he is still acting content. When I got his attention for a picture, the eyes started to water, lip started to quiver, but still no crying...tough boy, then he tried leaning off the pony. Hillary and I tried to reaffirm him and luckily the worker took him off soon after. I was very proud, that has got to be kind of scary for a baby, and he did way way better than he did with Santa Claus, so I couldn't be any more proud.

Thanks Hillary and Sarah for the company! We love you guys!

*****************Can someone tell me how to get my picture centered at the top? That will bug me so bad if I can't get it figured out!