Even though we went to NY for the worst of reasons, the girls managed to bring sunshine and light to everyone each day. They were both so excited to go to Nana’s, and we enjoyed our moments spending time just hanging out with Nana and Kiki. They took baths with Nana (not every grandchild can say that- haha), hung out until the wee hours with kiki (typically they dont get to do this b/c she usually has work the next day), went trick or treating with all of us, walked around queens all together and played in the park, etc. It was great to spend time all together without people rushing off to work. This is what the kids will remember from our trip. This is what PaPa would have wanted them to remember. All was perfect in the most imperfect situation. Here are some pics from hotels on our travels, car rides, San Jose, Baltimore and NY :). They were absolutely fun to travel with the entire time. They kept me smiling when I didn’t feel like smiling. Their energy and love is contagious.

Well, I dont quite have the words or head for this post at the moment so this is just a short acknowledgement of the tragedy that we all went through since the last post on this blog.

In one of my last posts i wrote that I wish i could freeze time at that moment, and that couldn’t be more true now since that was written before PaPa passed away and freezing time would mean he would still be with us :(.

I am sitting next to Sophie as she is eating yogurt and watching Ipad so I am definitely in no position to be writing a post from the heart (aka bawling my eyes out) at this time. It is difficult trying to balance your emotions with your kids who are too young to need to know a sadness of this magnitude. Thankfully, they typically keep you so busy with their wants and needs that the focus is mostly off of you and your wants and needs (at least in my situation).

When we heard PaPa passed away, I didnt even think of how or when I would tell Sophie. I just said it. Sophie is pretty unique when it comes to these types of situations and we have already spoken about death before so it really just didnt even occur to me to wait and think about how to tell her. I guess I was right because she just looked at me and said “That’s Ok momma because he is still with us in our hearts. Plus we have pictures and memories of him so we won’t forget him”. I was like wow, why can’t i be as cool as you?! She is just so very special. Ugh. I thought that maybe this was her initial reaction and she would want to talk about it more later but she has maintained this ever since she first found out and the only new thing that she added was, “I told him to quit eating candy”.

Sophie then told Sabs. She said, “Sabs, Papa died”. For the next week Sabs walked around the house saying “PaPa died” randomly over and over. It felt like we were on some twisted sitcom and really none of us could help but laugh so it lightened the mood at least. Kids and our odd family.

I try to focus on the fact that PaPa was in really poor health and the life he would have been living was not how he wanted to live. I’m going to have to keep it at that in this post right now because anything more will have me a blubbering mess.

We all traveled to NY for the services and Will and I decided that we would keep focusing on the positive for the kiddos so their trip wasn’t filled with too much sorrow. I had moments throughout, (and I still do), that Sophie sees me crying and she will just tell me to remember that he is in my heart.

Overall, we managed to keep it as light as possible and mix in some celebrations with the sadness. We told Sophie that the services for PaPa were to celebrate the life that he had and our time with him. I also warned her not to run in dancing (aka celebration for a 5yr old) because other people might celebrate differently and she said “ok well i’ll be quiet and if i see people crying i will tap their leg and tell them it’ll be alright”. She is too much.

Anyway, everyone handles these situations differently. For us and our family to celebrate his life and focus on the positive has worked best. We made sure to gear up for Halloween, take the kids swimming, sing in the car, play games, and cherish each day as Papa would have wanted us to. Life is too short and precious and his passing is a heart-wrenching reminder.

He will be missed so greatly that words can not describe. He was not only a PaPa and a daddy, he was a best friend. He was stubborn, lazy,quirky (this is a kind word for his numerous ocds), and a little out of his mind at times, but in the same hand, he was funny, honest, easy to talk to, warm, caring, and one of the biggest parts of my life to date. He was the phone call to start my day. He was the recap phone call to end my day. This is the time where i try to focus on his poor health and life quality…instead of checking my caller ID to see the last time his number appeared on my phone and wonder how long it will be and how many new phone calls later until that number doesn’t appear ever again. Gahh, too soon for much more in this post. I will write when I am not sitting next to Sophie and a bit more stable to put emotions on here. Plus Sophie is freaking out next to me because Will pissed her off in some video game they were playing together and she will not stop telling me about it while i write this. I won’t be proofreading this so apologies if it doesn’t make sense or grammatical issues, etc.

PaPa you were the best Dad i could ever hope for. I am so thankful for the relationship we had and the life you gave me. You were the greatest Papa to my children that I could ever imagine. Your love for them was so immense and you let that show every single day. Though we were miles away you were always so in tune with all of our lives and made sure to not let distance get in the way of your involvement. People never understood how I could talk to you so long and so many times in the day. They will never understand. I always will. You and I never looked for words, they were always there. Which is so crazy because as I am trying to wrap this up, I can’t seem to find the right words. I feel like I cant quantify in words the love and appreciation I had for you and our relationship. I’m just rambling on because i feel like i have more to say yet I dont know what i want to say. Sophie just informed me that she is still mad at dada…she is now telling me for the 100th time why she is mad at him (apparently he built a portal in their video game and it is driving her bonkers). Maybe that is where I will leave this because that is the exact story i would be telling you right now if you called (right about now is when you would typically do an evening call) and you would be completely entertained by it and then quickly follow it up with the ever so detailed description of what you ate that day. Ooooh i miss you and will miss you more than I could ever describe.

Sissy and Dada are off with the crew kayaking (im sure i’ll have pics later), so it was just me and the wee bit this morning. We filled up the baby pool and played in the water, played fishing game, watched some Aladdin, and now she is finally taking a long overdue nap that she skipped most of this week. It was so sweet to be able to just lay with her for a while when she fell asleep on me. I used to do this all the time with Pookie but never really get to enjoy it with Sabs b/c i usually have to pop up and play with her big sissy or get something done that I can never get done when they’re both awake. Today I just laid there and enjoyed the beautiful, peaceful moment. I can’t believe how quickly time is flying by, really wishing i could freeze it NOW.

Look at her little hand holding me xoxo

Some pics of the peanuts eating their croissants at the beach with dada while i was at crossfit. Sabsy has learned how to do thumbs up and this is now her favorite new trick. I love how in these pics you can see her face looking at her thumb all amazed that it is doing what she wants it to do. lil quirky sweet pea. This was the only morning Pooks was around ALL week! She went to school EVERY single day this week. I dropped her off at lunch time this day so she could just have a chill morning because she went to yoga after to school the day before and then to the beach and didnt get home until after sunset. She is having a blast and it is so precious to see her flourish.

On this day she went to school at noon and then Sabsy and I went and picked up Sophie and Gaia at 2:30 and then all came back here for play for an hour and half before we headed off to take them to art class at 4pm. The whole quad ride home all i heard was uncontrollable giggles behind me from Sophie and Gaia joking around. It was so adorable. They played with Sabsy back at the house and then we took Sabs to the beach while they went to art class. Pooks didnt finish the day until 5:30pm and this morning her and Will had to be out the door at 7:30am to go kayaking with the crew. They still aren’t home yet but he called and said Sophie was having a blast and playing in the ocean with the older girls (Venus and Aria). He said she was holding on the their backs and riding waves. xoxoxo

check out Sabsy checking out her thumb- hahahaha

Lately Sabs likes to dump out all her characters from her bucket and then set them up like a live scene. This happens about 3 or more times a day. So adorable…and messy but mostly adorable.

Pooks and Momma went to get a haircut and after watching Pooks sit in the chair Sabs made a run for it as soon as she got down and propped herself right up in the little diva seat.

Jane was cracking up and set her up just like her sissy for a little pretend snip. We couldn’t possibly cut off the sweet little curls she is getting. Sabs had a ginormous smile on the entire time and was so proud of her little wee self. Throughout the day she kept pointing at her head saying “Sabi hair cut. Beautiful”. What a precious peanut.

Good thing she was so flipping cute during that b/c heaven knows she wasn’t when it was Momma’s turn and she didnt want Momma to sit in the chair, or leave Momma’s lap, or stop pushing the chair all around in a circle, or bang on the mirror…you get the drift. Needless to say my haircut may need a second visit for a few details b/c the precious little peanut in that chair, turned into sabzilla for my turn.

I texted Will to come retrieve the animal and he arrived with her favorite pizza. The happiness lasted until her last bite when she then proceeded to try and whack him until he let her back in to see momma. Oooh kids can really test u sometimes. Hahaha.

Sweet old Pooks was trying so hard to entertain Sabs and get her out of her monster zone that even Jane couldn’t believe how lucky Sabs is to have her as a big sis.

Here are the pics pre looneyville

Pooks loves her teacher so much that every night before she has school she asks to make her a card to bring her. Last night she said she wanted to write “You are the best teacher. I love you” and asked me how to spell it. I shouted out the letters to her and she wrote all this by herself. Ugh. So proud of the little nutball. She is writing letters like a champ and starting to read and recognize a bunch of sight words already!! Ashley said she couldn’t believe it the other day and all the kids tried to trick her to see if it was a fluke with all the words she knew but it wasn’t. She is awesome!

Ashley also sent me this pic yesterday saying Sophie killed it in math. Cutie pie.

Peanut had her first play date with Gaia yesterday after school. Gaia is 8 yrs old and speaks 3 or 4 languages…it is insane. Anyway, they had a blast. They played dollhouse, ate homemade ices, walked to the carambola tree and picked carambolas together (with the help of a super nice Tico since the good ones were all really high this time), walked to sunset beach and looked inside an abandoned hotel, and finally walked over to the beach across the street and played in the river for over an hour.

They were building boats from logs, sliding down sand mountains, creating some house with computers and what not out of big boulders, finding pipes for telescopes and who knows what else. I was watching Sabsy most of the time to stay out of their way. I tried to sneak some pics but didnt want to be the creepy parent so most are from behind (which might be even creepier).

Anyway, at the end of the play date Gaia was insisting on staying at our house and showering here, then wanted to stay and eat dinner over. I told her maybe next time b/c her dad was on the way and we didnt even have dinner ready yet b/c we’ve been out playing. She said her parents always say next time, and then next time they say next time. Hahaha, kinda had a point, but nonetheless i was sticking with next time. She wasn’t.

Her dad came and she started yelling down that she wanted to stay and a bunch of other nonsense in hebrew. She then threw a fit Sabsy style and thankfully it was all in hebrew b/c i have no clue what she was saying. He said she was basically cursing him out in hebrew. It was intense. Sophie was staring like what the hell is going on. She didnt get it at all. She was still confused as to why Gaia wanted to shower or have dinner at her house. Then they left and Will said, “Sophie what is the appropriate thing to do when you are leaving a play date?”. Sophie looked at him and said “Ummm. just say bye”. I imagine she is going to talk about this today in school. Hahahaha. Well, they had a blast and kids will be kids :).

My phone died after these two pics so I didnt have many others. Will came and met us at sunset so i snuck some pics with his phone though for some reason they are really small?