Pellegrini Page

We’ve been in the Christmas spirit here lately. I have been teaching Ava all about Santa, preparing her for snow, pointing out all the christmas tree lots and lights on the neighbors houses. There is so much to show and teach her, she is loving every minute of it. We have gone to the mall near our house about 3-4 times now to say “hi” to Santa. My hope is that this will help ease her into actually sitting on his lap. She doesn’t like most all unfamiliar men so I know that getting her to smile for a picture will be a challenge. So far she doesn’t seem to enjoy seeing him while we are there but as soon as we walk away she’s happily repeating his name. I am hoping to get a picture taken tomorrow or Thursday. I know that Elise will enjoy the experience but I’m almost as confident that Ava will not.

On Sunday we had Dana, Brad, Kallan and Anna over for a little Christmas celebration. They came over at 2:00 to spend the afternoon with us. Michael made a nice spread of dip, assorted cheeses, salami, veggies and crackers. We had red wine and hot cocoa to go with it. It was a fun few hours of sitting around the table, catching up and opening gifts together.

We attempted another Christmas skype session tonight, this time with Rita. Ava was not as cooperative as she was this weekend but it was still fun. Out of all of the gifts her favorite was a set of jingle bells that Rita decorated one of the packages with. All she wanted to do was walk circles in the living room ringing the bells. Elise sat happily in the center of all the action smiling and observing. It’s so great to be able to have those moments with family that is so far away.

Just a few more days of work for us both and one more assignment for Michael and we will all be on vacation. I am definitely looking forward to it.

Not to sound overly dramatic, but there’s been a bit of a void in my life over the past year. I don’t think there’s any question that the thing I miss most about San Diego is my Jiu Jitsu school. When we moved here I joined a school but never got the right feeling there and ended up leaving shortly thereafter. Since then I’ve thought a lot about Jiu Jitsu but wasn’t sure when it would come back into my life.

I mentioned in a post a while back that there’s a new school opening near my office. I’ve been in contact with the owner, so today I went in to meet him in person and have a grappling session. Since I already know I love Jiu Jitsu, the main thing I was hoping for today was to like the teacher. As it turned out, the owner Larry was exactly what I was hoping for. Really cool, humble, wise, and amazing at Jiu Jitsu. He’s been studying for over 15 years, got his black belt 5 years ago, and recently moved here from Denver to open his own school. I could immediately tell that this was the right place for me, and it looks like there are already several guys from Amazon who will be training there so I’ll get meet some new co–workers right away.

We celebrated Elise turning five months old today by having an early Christmas Skype session with Grandpa Rick and Grandma Chris. They sent us a huge box of presents yesterday so the four of sat in front of the web camera and opened gifts. Chris made two beautiful framed letters for the girls (A and E of course), plus they sent all kinds of great clothes, blankets, kitchen stuff, and a really nice shaving set for me. They’re always so generous, but the best part was getting to video chat so they could see the girls getting excited. Ava had a blast opening presents and Elise couldn’t stop giggling the whole time. Definitely a nice way to spend the afternoon.

Jessica is working tonight but is off tomorrow, so Dana, Brad, Kallan, and Anna will be coming over to do a little Christmas get–together. Anna is a teenager now so we’ll be celebrating her birthday as well. Next Sunday we’ll be doing something similar at Butch and Carol’s along with Rob, Mina, and their family, then leaving for Colorado two days later. Six more days of work, including the final week of the quarter at school, before our Winter vacation. I’m getting excited.

I had the longest day Wednesday due to my trip to Reno. I had checked the weather ahead of time and it said the high temperature that day was going to be in the mid 40’s. You can guess how surprised I was when we landed in 14 degree weather with snow everywhere. The roads were clear though, so I went ahead and rented a Challenger for our 45 minute drive to the fulfillment center. I’ve been wanting to drive one of those things for a while now and lets just say it didn’t disappoint. Not exactly the best winter car but everything was fine. To keep the holiday spirit alive we found a holiday radio station and rocked out to Christmas carols the whole way. I was a little embarrassed at how many of those songs I knew the words to, but it was fun.

Not much else going on around here other than getting ready for the trip. I’ve been planning on making dinner for everyone one night while we’re there, so today I decided to make seafood ravioli with pesto. I’ve never made it before but after the success we had on Ava’s birthday my confidence is pretty high so I’m going for it.

Tomorrow is going to be a pretty long day. I’m flying to Reno with a co–worker early in the morning so that we can spend several hours working in a fulfillment center. Our manager wants everyone on the team to experience working in a fulfillment center during our peak season, and he wants us to go to centers that we haven’t previously visited, which for me equates to Reno. I checked the forecast and luckily it looks like we’ll have decent weather. I hear its about a 45 minute drive from the airport so I’m glad we won’t be dealing with any snow. Normally a trip like this would be overnight, but this time we’re cramming everything into one day. At least I won’t be away from the girls for a night.

This is shaping up to be an interesting week at work. Today my team attended customer service training session, which included sitting with customer service agents and listening to actual customer phone calls. Listening in on the customer calls is really interesting, and sometimes hilarious. One guy insisted on ringing his door bell over the phone to prove that it works and that it wasn’t his fault that he missed a delivery. It was the longest doorbell ever.

Jessica has been working a lot lately. This is Gaucho’s busy season as well, so they’ve been needing her quite a bit. It’s all good though because we’re inside of two weeks from our trip to Colorado for Christmas. I haven’t been snowboarding in a long time and can’t wait to get out to Breckenridge. Seeing Ava play in the snow for the first time is going to be awesome, and I know Amy and Tom are excited to have everyone out. I’ll finish the fall quarter the day before we leave and will be enjoying a two week break from school while we’re away. Only two quarters to go after that…

Ava and Elise are both doing great. Elise is growing so fast its crazy. Our babysitter came over tonight for the first time in about 3 weeks and couldn’t believe how much bigger she is. Ava got a chance to play with Easton, our babysitter’s son who is one month older than her. I don’t get to see her play with other kids very often so it was good to see her having so much fun. When they left Ava stood there looking out the window saying “See you next time” over and over. It was pretty sweet.

No new pics for now but I’m sure we’ll have plenty over the next few weeks. Happy Holidays!

It seems like even the normal, average days around here have become uncontrollably crazy. Life with two small children is like living in an institute for people with bi-polar disorder. To be fair its not really life with two small children that feels this way; Elise is usually easy as long as you’re holding her in a standing position. It’s life with a two year old that tips the scales to don’t even look at me or I’ll cry, crazy.

Don’t get me wrong, we’re having a lot of fun, or at least attempting to have fun. It’s just that one minute is complete joy and the next minute anything is possible and I mean anything! The positive side of this is that every time we have an incident big or small, Ava seems to walk away having learned something. I haven’t been around many toddlers so I don’t know what normal is but the speed at which she absorbs new information is incredible. I love seeing the joy on her face when she figures something out for the first time. The flip side of that is the intense frustration she experiences split seconds later. I witnessed a perfect example of this exact phenomenon this morning.

I walked in on Ava playing in her room after breakfast. She was talking to herself, so I stood quietly in the door way. After a bunch of non sense she started congratulating herself on building a tower, “nice job”, “good girl”, “awesome”, “you got it”. She continued to build and two blocks later she couldn’t get a block to stay put at the top (it was upside down). I could instantly see the panic on her face and the heavy breathing started first then she punctured my ear drums with a scream, gave me a look as if I had sabotaged her just by observing and began to cry. The kind of crying that caused her fits of choking. All of this from one upside down block. I could do nothing to console her. It was a site to see, I promise. And all of this before 9:30, for us that’s a big morning. Happy Monday!

One year ago today we arrived in Bellevue after nearly 3 years in San Diego. First and foremost, we couldn’t have done that move without the help of Jessica’s Mom, Amy. Jess was in the early stages of her pregnancy with Elise at that time and we had just hosted a big party to celebrate Ava’s 1st birthday and Thanksgiving. That party turned out to be the last fun thing we did in San Diego, because the following week was nothing but cleaning out our house and loading everything into a moving pod. I remember we had the steepest driveway ever at that house and the pod couldn’t be left on the street so we had no choice but to keep it in the driveway. The downward angle ended up working in our favor when loading things into the pod, but then you had to walk out uphill. Good times.

One thing I’ll never forget about that move was the first day of driving. Jess and I have done some crazy trips before, most notably riding my motorcycle from Seattle to Reno in one day (16 hours), but this one was right up there. Jessica and Amy drove the Durango, which contained Ava, both dogs, plus everything else that could possibly fit inside, and they towed a small trailer rented from U–Haul, (tip: never rent from U–Haul) because we couldn’t fit everything into the pod. I was following them in our Accord, which was completely packed with stuff. There was literally no space anywhere in that car besides the driver’s seat. We pulled out from our house in La Mesa at 7:30am and didn’t stop until we reached Eugene OR, which is 1,000 miles north, at approximately 1:00am. Going through the pass at the Siskiyou Mountains that night was the worst storm I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s darker than night out there, you’re on a winding mountain highway, and the rain is coming down so hard that you can’t hear the stereo and your wiper blades can’t keep up even though they’re on their highest setting. In hindsight we shouldn’t have done it but we were determined to get to Eugene that night and we did.

Everyone was so relieved when we arrived at Dana and Brad’s house the following night. That was a special type of exhaustion. Amy had to be up at the crack of dawn the following morning for a flight back to Florida, but luckily Brad was also flying out early that morning and Dana was already planning on driving to the airport. That morning our little caravan pulled up to our new house and we were met by our friend Kim, who is a real estate agent and helped us get the house. We had only seen pictures at this point and had our fingers crossed as we walked in for the first time. We had already signed a year lease and I was starting work as a contractor at Amazon in a couple days so there was no going back.

We’ve already made some good memories at this house, including just last weekend with Ava’s birthday party, but hopefully it won’t be too much longer until we make one final move, into a house we own. As much as we hate the thought of moving again, we love the idea of buying something that we can stay in long–term. Once we get through the new year we’re going to sit down with Aunt Carol and get down to business. I think its safe to say that we’re staying in this area and I love the idea of the girls growing up near family.

After all the excitement we had last weekend celebrating Ava’s second birthday, the plan for today was to have a nice relaxing day at home with just the four of us. Last night we received the photos Leon took at Ava’s birthday party and we’re thrilled with how they turned out. Not only did he get tons of great shots of Ava, but he also got a lot of photos of the other little kids that were there. If you’d like to download the Hancock, Kipper, Klinger, LaFleur, or Lester family photos, go to: pellegrinipage.com/downloads

We went on a mini–hike this morning on a trail near our house. It’s been pretty ideal weather here considering the time of year, so we wanted to get out and enjoy it before gorging ourselves for the remainder of the day. We didn’t do a turkey this year but did make a ham, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, and veggies, followed by pumpkin pie with extra whip cream. We’re in a bit of a food coma now but its been a great day. I’ll be working tomorrow, and its a bit of an ‘all hands on deck’ sort of day considering all of the holiday shopping, but it’s also Friday, which is inherently good.

Nana got Elise some Thanksgiving pajamas and Jess was able to get a great picture of her in them. The rest of the photos were taken by Leon at Ava’s party.

Elise’s first Thanksgiving

It was a whirlwind of a weekend for all of us as we celebrated Ava’s birthday. We hosted a rainbow themed party at our house for 30 of our friends and family. It was a huge success and Ava had a great time. She truly seemed to know what was going on and ran around the house talking with everyone. I was a little afraid that she would be overwhelmed with all of the people in our house but she was a little social butterfly with most of the guests. Hands down, my favorite part of the whole day was singing Happy Birthday to her. I have never seen her look so sweet and happy. It is a moment of the party that I will never forget. I will willingly admit that I went a little overboard with all of the custom decorations and rainbow themed party flair, but I do not regret any of it. I think that everyone that joined us for the afternoon enjoyed themselves, and I know that Ava had a blast, and that’s all that we were hoping for.

Today is her actual birthday so I wanted to do a little something different for the day. I didn’t really have any specific activity in mind so after we said good-bye to Nana at the airport we headed into Seattle.

We started off with lunch at The Fisherman, a total tourist attraction but perfect for kids. Ava did unusually well at lunch, keeping happy eating both Grandma and Grandpa’s oyster crackers. They gave us free tickets to the carousel in the arcade next door so I took her on her first carousel ride. She did not like sitting on the moving horse but was thrilled to be held while spinning around so we just stood in the aisle between horses. After that we couldn’t resist the urge to ride the Seattle Great Wheel. I wasn’t sure if she’d like it but we figured it was worth a try. I’m so glad that we went. She loved it and kept saying “I’m in the sky” and smiling. After the Great Wheel we weren’t quite ready to head home so we took a walk through the market and ate some fresh roasted cashews and doughnuts. It was a fun impromptu afternoon.

It’s hard to believe that I have only been a parent for two years. I can easily say that becoming a mother is the most wonderfully, amazing thing that has ever happened to me. Ava is such an awesome kid. She is so funny, independent, smart, loving, energetic, adventurous and so much more. She continues to amaze me everyday with the little person that she is becoming.
Happy Birthday, Ava!

Ava loves her slide

Watching everyone sing Happy Birthday to her

Our little rainbow warrior

Yes, that’s cake on the walls

Visiting the market on her birthday

“I’m in the sky!”

Elise enjoying the festivities

Two years ago today Jessica and I became parents, and our lives were forever changed for the better. In one sense it’s hard to believe that it’s already been two years, but when I look back and think of all that has happened in that time. As the story goes, Ava was born on “Black Friday” in 2011. Leading up to her birth I was working about 80 hours per week between my two jobs. I was working days at Scrollmotion and bartending at night at the Tractor Room. Thanksgiving was going to be my first day off in over a month, and since Jessica was so close to delivery we decided to have a very low key meal at our home in Pacific Beach.

Shortly after Thanksgiving dinner Jessica went into labor. We knew not to go to the hospital right away, so we watched a UFC event, then went on a walk around the neighborhood with Bruno and Bella. We arrived at the hospital in the wee hours of the morning and began the roller coaster ride that was Ava’s birth. The hospital was pushing Jessica to have a C-section but we didn’t want that and held out as long as possible. As they were preparing the room for surgery, the doctor decided to give Jessica one chance to have a natural birth. After only a few minutes of pushing our sweet baby girl was born. I had never cried tears of joy before that moment, and I’ll never forget how special it was. Since then we’ve come a long way, including another baby, two moves, a job change, and me getting back into school to finish my degree. To say we’ve been keeping busy would be a major under statement, but that’s the way we like it.

This past Saturday we celebrated Ava’s birthday at our house in Bellevue with about 30 friends and family members. It was the biggest party we’ve ever thrown, and it was a huge success! Jessica did an amazing job decorating for the party, and I rekindled Gigi and Aunt Norma’s ravioli recipe, which was a hit. Although putting on a party of this magnitude was a ton of work, seeing Ava’s face when everyone sang Happy Birthday to her made it all well worth it. It was a look of pure joy and happiness, followed by a barrage of cake making its way all over Ava, her tray, and the surrounding walls and floor. My explanation can’t do it justice so keep an eye out for the photos to come.

Both of our girls were great all day and I think Ava had a blast opening presents and going down the slide we got her. She literally went down that thing at least 100 times throughout the day. Elise was so well behaved and content to be passed around by family members and close friends. My good friend Leon took tons of photos, which I’ll be getting later this week, and will be posting ASAP. I’m going to save the photos that we already have for Jessica’s post tonight, but I couldn’t resist recapping the wonderful day we all had.

Ava, you and your sister are the best thing that has ever happened to your Mom and I. You’ve brought a sense of joy and purpose to our lives that we never even knew existed. I thank my lucky stars everyday for having such an amazing family. Although you probably won’t remember your second birthday, please know that it was a very special day that was attended by so many people we love. Thank you for making me such a proud Papa; I love you with all my heart.

We got to spend last weekend and the first half of this week with Grandpa Rick. Everyone had a really nice time hanging out. We ate some good meals, watched some movies and football games, and most importantly, Rick got a lot of quality time in with the girls. As usual his visit flew by and before you knew it he was on his way back home. I’m just glad they were able to do some fun stuff like go to the zoo and get studio photos taken while he was here.

We were paid a visit by Kristy, Mark, Trinity, and Madi on Sunday while Rick was here. Jess and I both really enjoyed meeting Mark and Trinity. As soon as Rick found out Mark was a hunter they struck up conversation and hit it off. Madi wanted nothing more than to hold Elise the entire time, and she did such a great job. She’s a natural with babies and will surely make an excellent mom someday. Ava absolutely loved playing with the girls, and the rest of us hung out and enjoyed watching the Seahawks walk all over the Falcons.

We’re getting really excited for Ava’s birthday party next weekend. There are quite a few guests coming, many of whom haven’t seen each other in a long time. I started cooking today so that I wouldn’t be frantic at the last minute. Today I’m making beef and turkey chili, a marinara sauce for the ravioli, and the filling for the ravioli, which consists of veal, pork, turkey, chantrelle mushrooms, sweet onion, garlic, and spinach. Tomorrow I’m making the pasta from scratch and filling the ravioli. I’ve never made pasta before so I’m a little nervous but I’m sure I’ll be fine as long as I follow my Aunt Norma’s recipe. Since there will most likely be some vegetarian guests at the party, I’m intentionally making the pasta sauce without meat. We will have cheese ravioli available for anyone who doesn’t eat meat. There will also be lots of snacks and sides available, plus a rainbow birthday cake baked by Mom. It’s going to be a great day.

Elise turned 4 months old this week. Even though I see her everyday its easy to tell that she is growing fast. She’s so alert now and she’s developing quite the sense of humor. She enjoys being played with and is pretty easy to get laughing. Her vision is much better; she can make eye contact with you from across the room now. I don’t know what we did to get so lucky but we have two amazing little girls to be thankful for every single day. I’m actually writing this post with 1 hand because Jess is gone at work and Elise doesn’t feel like not being held. Happy to oblige.

We recently received the photos Leon took on their last visit, so combine those with the photos from Rick’s visit, and you’ve got a lot to share. Enjoy.

Elise 4 months

Ava in her car

Ava loves cupcakes

No boots are safe around Ava

Good times with Grandpa

Tonight Rick is arriving for a visit until Wednesday. We’re excited to have him out, and we have no agenda other than to hang out and relax. I’m glad he’s going to get some quality time with the girls, and I have a week off school starting today, so the timing is perfect.

School has been going well lately and I’m starting to learn some pretty cool stuff. It’s been requiring more time than ever, so I’ve been having a babysitter come over once a week just to get some un-interrupted study time. We’ve all been so busy lately and then suddenly you realize its November and Ava’s birthday is only two weeks away. Last year at this time we were getting ready to host Thanksgiving and then move back to Seattle a week later. Can’t believe how quickly this year has passed, but I’m glad because it means I’ve only got 8 more months of school.

Jessica just got approval to take Christmas Eve off so we’re buying plane tickets to go to Colorado that morning. We’re going to hang out at Amy and Tom’s place until the 30th; probably do some snowboarding and enjoy a white Christmas in the mountains. There’s a chance that I’ll be able to take an unofficial vacation the week between Christmas and New Years, which is what they did last year, but worst case scenario I’ve got just enough vacation saved up. Either way we can’t wait to get out there. Joel and Melanie are coming so I’m looking forward our annual night on the town.

I’m sure we’ll have some new pics and updates after Rick’s visit. We’re getting together with Butch and Carol on Tuesday so that should be fun. We’ve also got some pictures of Elise from Leon coming soon. I’m excited that he’ll be taking pictures at Ava’s birthday party. Speaking of the birthday party, I’m going to start cooking next weekend. This will be my first attempt at homemade ravioli; I’ve got to do my Aunt Norma and Gigi proud.