Birthdays Galore

This week was a busy one for celebrating birthdays. Our friend, Rob Deininger, and Amy's mother Bobbi both had birthdays this week. Another year wiser and more experienced....if you think of it this way instead of "one year older" it makes you feel better about the whole thing!:)

Anyway, we had a lovely lunch at the Deiningers today to celebrate Rob's birthday. Then, we came home and had our in-town family over to celebrate Amy's mom's birthday. Unfortunately Kelsey Gusso (Amy's cousin's daughter) was not able to attend as she was at Southwestern Adventist University competing in a basketball tournament (hope your team wins Kelsey!). Afterwards, we played the domino game "Spinners" and laughed ourselves silly!

On a final note - another event to celebrate is that we've now had two weeks in a consecutive row in which Zachary has sat through the entire church service without making a single scene. (The things that I find myself happy about now as a parent are the small things! :)) This feat takes much forethought and planning on Amy's part to be sure that we have enough things to distract him with, but we're happy to be able to sit through a church service without cringing as people give us dirty glares for not having a silent child (even though I will note that WE are the ones sitting in the pews that are reserved for parents with small children and I noted NO CHILDREN sitting with them! :)....but I digress).

Karis is making the trek tomorrow to Costco (his favorite place - why do I need 900 Q-tips you ask? Because they're such a good deal at Costco!!!) to purchase a playground set for Zachary. So hopefully next week we'll have some pictures to share of Zachary's new playtoy.

Picture below is of our Orlando family - starting from left to right - Rick Gusso (cousin), daughter Lauron, wife Millie, Aunt Louise, Amy's mom, Zachary, Karis, and Amy

It's a Boy!

I'm hoping by now that all of you have received the Zbaraschuk Christmas letter and descrambled the game at the end - if you have, you know that this Zbaraschuk family will be growing by one in 2008! Our due date is May 8, so we have approximately 16 more weeks to go - and we're counting each one!

We had a sonogram a few weeks go, and discovered that it will another boy. So, it will be Amy and the boys from now on! We are intending for this to be our last one, but Karis mentioned when we found out it was another boy that "we could always try for a third..." to which Amy's response was "Yes, under two conditions - Option 1: You bear it yourself (wouldn't that be a modern marvel!) or Option 2: You convert to Mormonism and take a second wife!". As it appears that neither option will be occuring, the Zbaraschuk's will likely remain a 2 child household. :)

We are excited about our new arrival, and began to look for new bedroom furniture this weekend (we're moving Zach out of the nursery, so need to purchase furniture for his new bedroom). We'll keep everyone posted with our progress - we have a finite amount of time, so we have to keep focused! :)

13.1 Miles and Counting

We've had the pleasure of a short visit with our friends Rhonda and Kevin Hicks who came down this weekend to participate in the Disney Half Marathon (or at least Rhonda did, and Kevin came to cheer her on!). This was the first time that Amy has ever been to watch a marathon of any length, and have to say that it was quite fun. The folks who run these things are inspiring (or daft....perhaps both!) - it makes a person think about getting back into running shape! We saw lots of people in costumes ranging from "the incredibles" to pirates, and even one scantily clad gladiator (the speedo was a bit much, but I digress...)

Rhonda persevered and finished the race, so now the rest of the weekend will be a hopefully rejuvenating, relaxing, fun time, with perhaps a bit of shopping (what woman won't make a gigantic effort to feel good enough to go shopping!)

Here are a few snapshots of Rhonda (she is wearing the white t-shirt, black shorts in the foreground of the picture) during the actual race as well as the celebratory shots afterwards.

Congratulations Rhonda!

Happy 2008!

This last week has been a whirlwind of fun - we started off the week by jumping on a plane last Saturday to fly up to Boston to attend an college friend's wedding in Stowe, MA. The wedding was lovely, but over too quickly and we boarded another plane the next morning to return home. Amy was very thankful that we managed to miss the huge snowstorm that arrived shortly after our departure as she really didn't want to be stranded up there! We travelled on Southwest, so didn't get to sit together on the way home, but Amy sat by the most interesting lady who was from Vermont, but had owned a silk-screening business down in the West Indies islands for 20 years. Folks have the most interesting life stories to share once you get them chatting!

Picture of Korey, Tony, Jenny & Karis

Arriving that same day from Boston (they had attended the same wedding) were Korey and Rachel (Karis' brother and wife). As many of you know, Rachel is also the sister of our close friend, Rob Deininger. So we had great fun this week visiting with them, and the nephews were delighted to have personal "play" representatives all the way from California! We did lots of fun things this week - ranging from going to see "ICE!" (Brr, it was 9 degrees in that exhibit of ice sculptures - very brisk!), Cirque du Soleil's La Nouba (sans children for that one!), and to SeaWorld. Karis had the week off, and Amy had half of the week off, so it will be a shock to our systems to be back at work full-time - if only we'd win the lottery....(I guess that would mean we'd need to play the lottery, but don't confuse us with details! :)

Picture of Rachel, Korey and Zachary

For the Canadians out there - a tribute to the Saskatchewan RoughRiders - who won the Canadian Grey Cup in 2007 (equivalent to the SuperBowl!)

Gifts Galore

Christmas has come and gone - all of the weeks of shopping and wrapping presents culminating in one exciting day of gift giving. We had high hopes pinned on this year's Christmas experience with Zachary - hoping that he would find the gifts more entertaining than the wrapping and ribbon. We were headed for disappointment :) - the unwrapping of the gifts seemed only mildly interesting, and once he arrived at the "toy of the year" - there was no more thought to ANY more presents. We actually have unopened presents still at our house as he was so distracted that there was little use. :) Sadly, we'll now have to shift our focus to NEXT Christmas as being "the one!" :) There were entertaining moments throughout the day, and I have included several pictures of the event. All in all, we had a wonderful Christmas and enjoyed spending the day with Amy's mom and watching the old classic "The Scarlet Pimpernel" on a lazy afternoon.

We wish everyone a Happy New Year!

Zachary - the human present

Zachary on "the toy of the year" - a motorized 4-wheel ride-on toy.

A Christmas picture of our group to remember the occasion by

Weekend of Active Fun!

This has been a packed weekend for Zachary - he started off the weekend going to "Monkey Joe's" with friends Luke Deininger and Ella Pellindini. Monkey Joe's is an indoor play area for kids where they have tons of play structures around the room - Zachary's favorite is the tall slide! It is a work-out for parents as well who run around helping the kids up and down the different play choices! I've included a series of pictures as Zachary slides down - notice the huge grin on his face!

Today, we ventured forth to Animal Kingdom. Karis and I are not known for going to the Disney parks, as we generally try and avoid the Orlando tourist traps unless we have visitors from out of town, but when you have the good fortune of receiving free tickets - why not go!? We were fortunate in that the weather was very nice for the most part, and Zachary enjoyed the safari ride (tons of animals out and about today!) and the petting zoo.

We wish everyone a very Merry Christmas - we've enjoyed getting everyone's Christmas letters!

AHS Christmas Party!

Sorry for the delayed post, but we went to the AHS Christmas party this morning, and I was hoping to have some fun pictures from the experience. There was a lovely brunch at the Disney Coronado Springs Resort, and the Mickey and Minnie Mouse characters dropped by, along with Santa! Zachary was very intrigued by Mickey, and tried to pull his face towards him to get a better look by grabbing his mask - poor Mickey - abused at Christmas! :) Later when Santa arrived, Zachary was engrossed in playing with his friends Anthony and Kiko - and was as mad as a hornet when we took him from their side to go up and get a picture with Santa Claus - note to self, next time just have Anthony and Kiko get in line with us! :)

We're doing some last minute shopping etc this weekend, and hope to have all of our Christmas errands completed. We sent out our Christmas letters late this week, so hopefully everyone will have them by this time next week!

Our post next week will most likely be delayed as well until Sunday as we have tickets to Animal Kingdom, so hope to have some fun pictures of Zachary enjoying the animals there to share with everyone.

Picture with Mickey & Minnie while Zachary grabs poor Mickey's face!
At this moment, considering selling Zachary off to the highest bidder! Any takers? (Just teasing!)

At last, picture with Santa - at least he's not screaming although he's definitely not sure what to make of this person!