Happy Birthday Adriana!

We are so proud of our niece Adriana for graduating high school! She is a beautiful, talented, smart girl-- or should I say 18 year old lady!-- and we are so happy for her! We are excited to see her future unfold!

She had an amazing graduation/birthday celebration. The theme "Graduation Princess" fit her perfectly. Happy Birthday Adri!

This picture cracks me up! These two are impossible to take a good picture of together. One is always looking away- and in this case crying!

She is a rockstar!

Uncle Jesse and Uncle Jasen are talented musicians! Aubriella loves when Jasen plays his guitar or ukelele for her. She loves music! The other day they were nice enough to let her join them for a little Rock Band. They held her attention for almost 20 minutes with their dancing and playing! I wish I had brought the video camera because it was too funny!

Dugan's come to visit!

We were so excited that the Dugans came from Vista to spend Memorial Day weekend with us! We met the Dugans through Matt and Amanda and we got to know them well coincidentally Memorial Weekend 2007. That was the weekend Jose proposed to me while at Hume Lake. For awhile we were able to visit them often, but we hadn't seen them since Ava was a newborn! We had a blast getting to know Ava and to watch her interact with Aubriella. I know they will become great friends over the years!

Sunday was HOT at the AG Strawberry Festival. I was so impressed with what a good sport Ava is even after missing her nap two days in a row! How big is Ava? Soooo Big!

Too bad Amy bought the most expensive chocolate covered strawberries!

Pictures!

If you know me at all, you know I LOVE pictures. I used to get teased because I carried my camera in my purse and took pictures everywhere. I love looking through albums, my scrapbooks, and I am even known for looking at the computer screensaver picture slide show for an hour!

In the four months that Aubriella has been born we have literally taken thousands of pictures of her! I've printed almost 500! It amazes me how much she has already grown and changed and I'm so glad we have the pictures to capture all the memories!

Even though we take plenty of pictures, we decided that we also wanted to invest in professional pictures. It is great to see what a pro can capture of our baby! We choose Christina Landeros (Moments Captured Photography) to take newborn, 3 month, 6 month, 9 month, and one year pictures of Aubriella!

The day of her 3 month photo shoot Aubriella woke up fussy- a rare occurrence. I thought for sure her nap would help, and when she woke up 30 minutes before Christina got here I thought we were safe. Nope! 5 minutes into the shoot Aubriella was already yawning and tired. I was disappointed after Christina left because I knew that Aubriella hadn't been herself and was nervous that there wouldn't be any good pictures (Aubriella ended up sleeping the entire afternoon!). I am pleased and relieved to have the pictures back and see that Christina was able to capture the baby I know- even the serious tired side!

Curly Top

I LOOOOVE that Aubriella's hair is getting wavier everyday. When her hair is wet (or sweaty!) it gets so curly and has the tightest little ringlets! Throughout the day it relaxes a bit, and usually I can manage to part it or tame it down. Sometimes though (like the day of her 3 month photo shoot) there is no way to fix the mess of hair and it does what it wants.

For example....

Here is Princess Sleepyhead when she just woke up:

And Baby Burrito after her bath about to go to sleep:

Sometimes the best thing to do is wear a hat:

Or just let it be crazy and LOVE it anyway!

Daddy's Little Charger Girl

Is this not the cutest cheerleader you've ever seen?

Aubriella and I like to wait at the front window until daddy comes home. She gets a huge smile when he starts coming up the walkway! Today we decided to make him extra happy and try on her cheer leading outfit. As usual, she was such a ham smiling, which was hilarious since she had her 3 month photo shoot earlier in the day and all she wanted to do was fuss and sleep!

I had her propped up on the couch and she tipped over! She thought it was funny!

My little petite baby is chunking up! Look at those rolls!

It looks like she doesn't have a choice- she's a Charger fan!

Little Velazquez

Last week Jose needed to go out of town for work. Aubriella and I were able to join him and she did pretty well in the car!

She loved her first night in a hotel!

And she loved meeting her great grandma! Jose's grandma lives in Mexico but was in Los Angeles visiting. We are so glad we were able to work it out so that they could meet. Jose's relatives all said she is unquestionably a Velazquez!

We were even able to stop by and see Jose's dad! He just kept saying how beautiful she was-- and of course that she looks like a Velazquez!

Aubriella is so lucky to have 5 living great grandparents! We don't take that for granted. The morning after we got home, we decided to go have breakfast with Nino and Nina (Jose's grandparents). We love Saturday mornings with them because it is rare that we get them all to ourselves (not to mention I LOVE Nina's breakfast potatoes!). We took along our camera and video camera to capture the memories we are so lucky to make with them!