he's official!

Today at about 10:00 am, our little Aiden became "ours" officially. He will now be known as Aiden Michael Matias Ramos or "Mo" if you ask him. He doesn't seem to notice any difference, but it's nice to have it done. We celebrated by going to Build-A-Bear to mark the occasion, and to lunch with Grandma, the aunts, and and some little cousins.

Waiting to be called into court.

Posing with Judge Nolan, Luca being his joyful self, and me looking pregnant (which I am NOT), maybe my shirt was a little too billowy?Aiden Michael Matias Ramos

this kid's a reader!

I love books. I love to buy them and read them. I love to read to my kids and I love when they read to me. And I LOVE that I have a son who seems to love reading as much as me. Luca loves books too. He always has. We've read with him since he was a baby and it's been one of his favorite activities as he's gotten older. And now, he is reading to me! He brings books home everyday and it's the first thing he wants to do when he gets home (after eating a snack of course, he's still a boy!). He even went to his English teacher and asked for a 2nd book to go home each night, he was only getting a Spanish one before. Hooray for reading!

Here's Luca at 2 1/2 "reading" his favorite book at the time, "Barnyard Dance".

sooner or later... though I would have preferred later

It seems that Aiden's dare deviling has caught up with him! Last night while I was at my primary presidency meeting, Aiden and his siblings (and a couple of friends) went upstairs to play in the gym. About 15 minutes later I hear Aiden crying and Anthony walks into the room with his little brother in his arms. He tells me, "Aiden jumped off the stage". Hands him to me and walks out of the room. When I set him on the floor, he took a step toward me and then collapsed. Luckily, one of my counselors is an orthopedic nurse, and she checked out his foot. She recommended we get an x-ray. We went home and waited for Ricardo to get home from his meeting, and then heading to Primary Children's Hospital ER. 4 hours, 3 x-rays, 2 doctors, and 1 bouncy ball later, we were on our way home with Aiden in a splint for the next 2 weeks and instructions to make an appointment with the Fracture Clinic for follow-up x-rays and a possible cast! Yes, the little monkey has a fracture (or maybe just a bent bone) in his right foot. The attending physician, after looking over his foot, and observing his behavior turned to me and said, "I don't think this is the last time we'll be seeing you in here". I am inclined (regretfully) to agree with her. What kind of 2 year old jumps off a 4 foot high stage? Ya gotta love that kid!

Photomax = not cool

I was going to say "= Evil", but it felt a little mean as a title. I am VERY irritated with them right now. For those who don't know, Photomax is an online photo storage/gift/developer company. I have quite a few photos stored with them and I realized yesterday that some that I have at Photomax I don't have on my computer, I'm not sure why. I was trying to do something and I needed some of those photos and when I went to Photomax to retrieve them, realized that they have nothing in place to allow you to access photos from them for things like blogs and stuff. I sent an email asking for some help to get the photos I wanted and received a quick response telling me there wasn't much I could do. So today I called. I was told that because I was a "free" member, I would only be able to access and download a limited number of MY OWN PHOTOS! My photos are being held hostage. If I want to get them all off, I'm going to have to get a membership! What's up with that? I'm trying to decide if I want to make a big fuss over this, or just hope that I was smart enough to make back-up copies of the rest of my pictures! Any ideas or suggestions?

Summer 2008, "Montaged"

I've become addicted to these photo montage things. I love showing off the family and by putting them all together like this, I can add a ton more photos! So here it is, the Ramos family's summer put to music. Enjoy!

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Our NEW extended family

What a great weekend! We spent Labor Day weekend in Green River, WY with the Brysons. When we began to foster Aiden, and later when we were given the opportunity to adopt him, we never guessed we would be blessed with such a wonderful new extended family. The Brysons are Aiden's biological family; his mom, grandparents, aunts, and uncle. We knew after meeting them that we wanted them to be a part of Aiden's life, we had no idea that they would take ALL of us into theirs! The kids love having more grandparents, and we love having such special friends.

The weekend was full of fun. The boys were really looking forward to riding horses and they had a blast! Aiden didn't want to get off and still talks about Hank the horse as being "mine". Anthony, Luca and Trinity were with each other from morning till night and played wonderfully. Ella could be found holding hands with Uncle Mike or sitting with Grandpa. We got to visit a dinosaur museum and spend lots of time hanging out and visiting (my personal favorite!) We can't wait to get back and look forward to a visit from them as well.

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