House Under Construction

My house is under construction...

PRO:

I got to take even MORE time off work

CON:

I took MORE time off work to deal with insaneness

PRO:

I get to spend EXTRA quality time with Nick and Dannika

CON:

We don't have a comfortable place in our house to spend it.

Dannika's room is currently demolished.

My living room will be completely demolished tomorrow.

Since we can't do ANYTHING in our house.

It's not even safe to be inside of it due to mold and asbestos...

yes...

MOLD

AND 

ASBESTOS!!!!!!!!!

While the plumbers were pouring concrete in Dannika's room today, Nick took her outside to play.

I got this fancy camera lens for Christmas along with my fancy DSLR.

I have never used it because I was still learning the ins and outs of shooting on manual.

I decided to experiment with it today while they played.

I must say, the pictures turned out waaay nicer!

27 Feels So Great

Can ya believe, I am 27 already?!?!

My birthday was Friday (the 25th)

I was extremely blessed that my husband got back from mountain warfare training on Thursday evening!

I was so excited to get to spend my birthday with him.

I feel pretty fabulous at 27, but I've decided that next year, I will be turning 25 again.

Just getting on a treadmill at the gym and having to type in "2-7" for my age is weird to me.

As for making my birthday special...

Nick always comes through :-)

We dropped Dannika off with our neighbors, Joanne and Mike for the evening, and Nick took me out to a romantic night out in downtown San Juan Capistrano.

We are SO LUCKY to live in such a cool city.

Our house is literally walking distance to downtown.

He took me out to eat at the Vintage Steakhouse.

The restaurant is so cool cause it's actually an antique train that they turned into a restaurant. 

Even cooler...

A really nice family that was having dinner right next to us bought our dinner for us because I'm assuming they saw Nick's Marine Corps tattoo on his arm.

So nice to know that there are such nice people out there in a world full of chaos.

The rest of the evening, we went "bar hopping" in San Juan Capistrano.

I put quotation marks around the word bar hopping, cause we only went to two bars that were actually restaurants that had bars in them, and we didn't get all crazy. 

We were responsible adults...I mean, we had a child to take care of after the night was over.

It was crazy busy because it was the day before the Swallows Day Parade in San Juan Capistrano.

It was lots of fun though.

Thank you Nick for making my birthday so special.

OOOHHH...

And for my birthday, I got a Fendi watch and an IPad 2....

I am one lucky gal!!!

Before leaving the house.

In the parking garage in downtown San Juan Capistrano. The camera battery died right after this picture. I'm so mad that I didn't get better birthday pictures!!!!

ANNND NEXT...

THE SWALLOWS DAY PARADE!!!!

Last year, it was just Dannika and I at the Swallows Day Parade since Nick was in Afghanistan.

I remember thinking the whole day how I couldn't wait till next year when we could all go as a family.

I had so much fun just alone with Dannika last year, that I knew it would be 10 times more fun this year with our whole family.

You can read about my experience LAST year here.

This year, we invited the Yubeta family to join us.

It was so much fun...

exhausting...

but fun.

The kids loved it and so did the grown ups! 

Since we live so close to downtown San Juan Capistrano, we all walked from our house.

On the way back, we stopped at the park to let the kids run around and to wear them out.

I got to be a MOMTOG for the day since Kim didn't bring her camera. 

I had so much fun taking pictures of the kids.

Friends <3

Man...I can't remember the last time we had a family photo

I want a mini horse!

playing at the park

Kanoa and Dannika

Dannika, Devon, and Kanoa.

Kim and Sunny

The "Doctor" Is In!

My brother in law Aaron is a doctor.

He went to medical school at SUNY Upstate.

Before he left NY to do his internship in San Francisco, he got Dannika these adorable scrubs.

She was just an infant when he bought them for her, and almost a year and a half later...

THEY FINALLY FIT!!

Look how cute she is!

First Bow

I've spent well over few HUNDRED dollars on hair accessories for my daughter since the day she was born.

Yeah...

All those adorable little flowers and bows you see on her head...

they ain't cheap honey!

On average I spend anywhere from 15 to 40 dollars per bow depending on size, quality, etc. etc. etc.

I took some leftover ribbon I had in my craft box and decided to take a hand at making one of my own for Dannika.

Not only was it so much fun, but man...

I coulda saved us a lot of money!

FLASHBACK

I was just looking through old photos of Nick and I tonight.

They made me smile.

These were the days before Dannika.

Here are a few of my faves :-)

Our first Halloween at our first apartment in San Clemente (disregard Nick's cheesy smile...it's waaay too cheesy)

I made it to every single one of his platoon's boot camp graduations when he was a DI! I was supportive! I cropped myself out of this pic cause I was fat and pregnant and did not look hot.

Flying back from Vegas...the day after we eloped...just the two of us...and we wouldn't have it any other way.

First 4th of July as a married couple...Del Mar Beach on Camp Pendleton

This was my only time I've been to Alabama

I took Nick out on his 26th Birthday to a fabulous steak dinner at Dana Point.

My old boss, GySgt McCollum's wedding.

The day before I found out I was pregnant with the little one :-)

A Day in the Life of a Marine Princess

Meet Jackson Andrew Digirolamo.

This is Dannika's boyfriend (shh...don't tell her daddy), and THIS photo is going on their Save the Dates....lol.

Jackson is the adorable 13 month old son of my friends Becca and Steve.

He is such a ham.

Dannika's a few months older, so I guess that makes her a "cougar" to Jackson.

The first few times they played together, Jackson wanted to play with her so badly, and Dannika would not give him the time of day.

But she has matured, and she has quit playing games...lol.

He was over at our house on St. Patty's Day cause Becca had a doctor's appt.

These two just cracked me up!

They couldn't stop dancing together!!!

Dancin' fools

Follow the leader? Nick would be upset cause they are "out of step".

As for TODAY....

I originally wanted to take Dannika to Disneyland, but my mom and I both came to the conclusion that she's too young right now.

I also want to be able to take here there with Nick. 

It means a lot to him...and he's already missed so much.

So we're gonna wait till Jackson turns 2 next Spring, and we'll take them together!

I figured Chuck E. Cheese was more age appropriate, so we took her today.

While it wasn't as "age appropriate" as I thought, she still had a blast.

We got more compliments on how adorable she was than I needed!!!!!!

playing skee ball.

She actually just wanted to throw them everywhere BUT the lane.

future NASCAR driver...she was obsessed with the car games...and NO...She was NOT named after Danica Patrick

She was originally scared to death of the rides, but she warmed up to them.

Hungry baby.

And of course....

Her Gigi took her out in the backyard to play tonight...even though it was like 50 degrees with NO sun.

Dannika insisted...so Gigi complied.

NEW BLOG

We've moved!

http://romerfamilyof3.blogspot.com

Celebrate St. Patty's Day..and LIFE

I wrote "Celebrate" in the title to this blog.

It felt fitting.

Today I went to say my last farewell to Cpl Jordan Stanton.

http://www.ocregister.com/news/stanton-292594-school-church.html

I already wrote about what I thought about him (you can read about it here)

It took me a while to decide I was going to attend because let's face it...

I'm one of the most emotional people in the world.

I mean...I can't hold it together in the Lion King...like I literally sob through it.

But I knew I would never forgive myself if I didn't go. 

Luckily, I had a WONDERFUL Marine wife, mother, and friend (Allison Rubalcava) to go with me. 

I wrote the word "celebrate", because the on going theme in Jordan's memorial service was celebrate.

Celebrate life and live it to the fullest.

While my heart still hurts the most for his fiance, his father, his 3 brothers, and lastly...his mother...

I am trying my best to do what Jordan would want all of us to do.

Be happy. Celebrate life. Love our freedom. Love our country.

And of course...

In honor of Jordan....

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

This photo is in honor of another lost life....Baby Maddie...the daughter of the Staats family in Texas. 

My Day as a Crafter

So today, I went on a journey to Michael's.

I love that place.

I decided to make a homemade growth chart for Dannika.

Since she walks now, I figured it was a good time to start marking her progress!

I suck at doing craft tutorials, but I'll try and describe how I made this the best I can.

I bought 3 pieces of corkboard, and one of those pieces of cork that you can roll out and just stick to anything.

I used to sticky cork to hold the 3 separate pieces together (so i covered the top of the 3 with the roll on cork so I had a straight board)

*I chose to do corkboard cause I wanted to use cute thumbtacks to mark her growth*

Then I took it outside, and sprayed the spray on adhesive on it.

I put the scrapbook paper down on top of it as my background.

I border and the bows are made out of ribbon.

Her initials are wooden prepainted letters (like 3 bucks each).

The ruler on the side is actually a measuring tape used for sewing. I cut it at 11 inches (to hang it 11 inches high from the floor), and just hot glued everything on.

The numbers on her birthday are simply sparkly puffy stickers.

It was super easy.

Super fun.

It's divalicious. 

It fits Dannika's personality :-)

I cut the tags out of the leftover scrapbook paper and wrote all her stats on them and thumbtacked them in!

Don't let her expression fool you...she's actually really excited about it

Suprise!

This last weekend, I was invited to celebrate the birthdays and farewell of Dore, Gloria, and Kevin.

Kevin leaves for Afghanistan this week :-(

{{**(keep him in your prayers!)**}}

It was a SURPRISE party put together by their other 4 children, Melissa, Marty, Jake, and Jeff.

Marty flew all the way from New York!

It was an absolute success!

They had NO idea what was coming, and I must say the looks on their faces when they saw everyone.

They were expecting just a family night out at the the Whitehouse in Laguna Beach for dancing and drinks.

It was so much fun, and I wish Nick woulda been here for it!

This is Jeff...the second to youngest of the 5 Gilbert children.

Photo credit goes to Melissa Gilbert. She was like paprazzi! and that creepy guy in the back...that's Jake :-) The middle child.

the beautiful Melissa!

Today, I decided to take my mom to downtown San Juan Capistrano.

She wanted to check out the antique shops down there and just take a walk (we live a 20 minute walk away from historic San Juan Capistrano).

It was exhausting, but fun. 

Dannika enjoyed the sunshine and the really nice weather we had.

We stopped and had lunch at Ruby's diner before heading back home.

She was sitting in a big girl booster seat and not a high chair!

Yes, that is a corndog...but not a regular gross corn dog...it is made of TURKEY...AND she had sliced apples instead of fries.

She was tearing it up!

she's a good eater

Not the greatest expression, but look how cute her outfit is!!!