Dominic nixes sand

It turns out Dominic really doesn’t like the feel of sand. There were several very humorous attempts to get him to put his feet in the sand. Each time he’d lift them so high that his bottom would touch before any part of his legs.

Playing in the sand

One of the kids’ favorite pastimes was playing on the beach. Our rental faced the ocean and this year’s beach was less rocky than last year’s.

Here’s Eliana playing with first base during a baseball game.


And here’s a photo of Sarah and Eliana proudly displaying their sand castle.

The kids at the beach

Here’s a photo of all the kiddies we had under one roof at the beach. This photo was taken, like the ones in the previous post, on Father’s Day at the San Juan Capistrano Mission.



Included in the photo are the Coglianese five, one of their cousins, Kate, and the Codella two. There was also a baby, Jane, who came with her mom, Megan, for a couple of days. But they weren’t with us on Father’s Day.

Perhaps now you can better imagine the mayhem that occurred each day, especially around mealtimes.

But this year was a good year: there was no sickness and no injuries except a couple little slivers.

Thank goodness we had nana and Grandpa big dog (Kim and Diane Grover; Amber’s mom and step-dad) because Nana was a great sliver remover.

Our trip to the beach

Our family enjoyed a relaxing beach vacation at Capistrano Beach last week. I’ll post a few photos and stories over the next few days to give a brief overview of how things went.

These photos were taken early last week. Dominic has developed quite a little personality lately. He’s mischievous and loves to look for a reaction before he does something he knows he shouldn’t.



Here Eliana was posing at the San Juan Capistrano Catholic Mission. We took quite a few photos of the beautiful gardens as we enjoyed a leisurely tour of the grounds last Sunday.



I had a great Father’s Day last week as I was surrounded by my great family and enjoyed the first full day at the beach. Vickey surprised me with an iPod for my Father’s Day gift. I had fun exploring its functions and listening to music on my rollerblade trips around Dana Point and Capistrano Beach last week.

Dominic and I are squinting in this family photo because of the sunlight in our eyes.

Photo sampler

Here are a few photos from the past couple of weeks.




Tonight in her prayers Eliana prayed: “And we love Angie, and help her when her baby comes out, and help her to find a name for him.” Isn’t that sweet?

So what is the name, Ang & Vin? Just a few weeks and counting.

Dominic has cut another tooth and now sports seven teeth with three weeks to go before he turns one. And he’s a quick little cuss. We had to install the gate on the stairs to prevent him from scaling them at every opportunity. Hopefully now we’ll avoid any accidents on the stairs and the tile landing on the main floor.

The smarshmallow cup

Vickey’s friend Jana suggested a couple months ago that we institute a reward system to praise Eliana for good things instead of giving her punitive attention for bad things.

At least since early last month we have given Eliana a marshmallow — she calls them ‘smarshmallows’ — for her good deeds.

Typically she’ll do something good, like actually go to the bathroom without prodding from her parents, then afterwards say, “That deserves a smarshmallow!” Sometimes we agree, and she gets one.

You can see by the photo that her cup doesn’t exactly runneth over.

She received one reward just before our cruise for filling her cup — a recorder. That was her favorite toy for 10 or 15 minutes. Speaking of toys, it seems to me that if we packed up half of her hundreds of toys and then brought them out again next year she’d be thrilled to death to have all the ‘new’ toys to play with. I think I’ll like it when the toys are traded in for more mature items.

The marshmallow cup is a good reward system. It’s just difficult to pull 5 marshmallows out every morning because Ellie wakes us up each night. Then she has to work all day to earn the marshmallows back. Thus, her cup since the first time it was filled has remained relatively steady at about 1/3 full.

Maybe one of these years she’ll opt for 8 hours of sleep like I so enjoy. Something to look forward to for all of us, I suppose.