Good Things Come in Small Packages

On Friday, January 29, 2010 Kingston Paul Khoury was born. I was only 36 weeks pregnant at the time but because our doctors discovered that he was not growing in my tummy they decided to get him out early. As anticipated, Kingston's birth weight was only 4 lbs. After 10 days in the NICU to monitor his weight, he finally came home.

Maya and Sahara are such great big sisters. They made Kingston a welcome home sign. Each letter was made with lots of love, paint, glue and glitter.

Here's a close-up shot of the little guy.

Maya's maternal instincts have kicked in and she is always trying look after Kingston. If it were up to her, she would change his diaper every hour.

Here's a proud mama doing some Valentine Day artwork with the girls while Kingston naps.

Here's our Valentine Day tree. The girls decorated hearts and flowers then decorated our tree branch. Daddy brought home flowers for all his Valentines.

I had to include this great picture of Maya.


Here's Sahara showing off her little baby, Cloud.

We did some planting in the vegetable garden. Thanks to the girls we now have spinach, lettuce, beets and a bunch of herbs growing in our garden.

Gardening is a great excuse to play in the mud.

Here are the girls hard at work.

Lastly, Tata Rose has a litter of puppies that the girls have fallen in love with. I'm not sure, but we may have two new pets in the not too distant future. This is in addition to the dog, two guinea pigs and fish we already have. I'm not sure if I will be able to keep up.

Oh Mama !!!

It was my 37th birthday the other day. The girls had taken some money out of their piggy banks and asked me to take them to the store so that the could buy me a present. At the store Maya chose party hats and Sahara chose candles and they both got me a birthday balloon. This is what a 3 year old envisions as a perfect birthday gift. When we got home the girls made me a birthday cake. Once the cake was cool they proceeded to put all the candles on the cake irregardless of my age. When lit, the cake looked like it was on fire. The picture above was taken a second before they sang happy birthday to me. This had to be one of the best birthdays ever !!!

As you can see I look like I'm about ready to pop ! I'm 33 weeks pregnant in this photo. We are expecting our baby boy Feb. 24th, unless he decides to join us sooner. As you might guess, we are enjoying all the sleep we can get before his arrival. Maya and Sahara are anxious and ready for their little brother to come. They have already bought him some gifts and they kiss my tummy constantly and are always talking to him through my belly button. It's very cute. They are already shaping up to be great big sisters.

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

I'm happy to announce that Christmas was magical this year. The girls really understood the season and enjoyed every minute of it.


Here's the tree on Christmas morning. Can you see Bella, our dog, checking out the presents.

Here's Maya posing in her pajamas right before she tore open her gifts.


Sido Bulos played Santa again this year. Although the girls know it's their grandfather, it doesn't seem to diminish the excitement of it.

Here are all the cousins posing with Santa.



The girls had their own tree this year. They made most of these ornaments and had fun decorating their tree.

Here's a close up of some of their decorations. This is a stocking with a ridiculous amount of pom poms and glitter. We can't seem to keep glitter in stock in our house thanks to Sahara.

Here's an acorn dog.

On Christmas day Nader made us a feast. People were talking about his rib roast and ribs for days afterwards. I'm so lucky to be married to a man that loves to cook. The girls and I made rice crispy treats and sweet potato pie from scratch. Standing behind Nader is my brother Ken. The girls miss you so much Uncle Ken !!!


The girls made a ton of holiday decorations and I decided to bore you with a few. I realize that this is probably not exciting to see, but for a mom, each piece is like a Picasso. So please indulge me. This stocking was sewn with string then we glued old candy from Halloween along with raisins and cinnamon.

Snowman by Sahara.

Christmas tree by Maya.

Christmas tree by Sahara.

Snowman by Maya.

We hope that everyone had a wonderful holiday. We are looking forward to hopefully a better year. Nader and I are gearing up for our little boy to be born in just a few weeks. We are trying to catch up on our rest while we still can. Wish us luck !!

Precious Moments

The girls are anxiously awaiting Christmas, but in the meantime they are keeping themselves busy by playing with mud.

One difference between the twins is that Maya dislikes being dirty while Sahara feels most comfortable covered with mud and dirt.

Sahara, our mud princess.

Here's a great example of teamwork. Maya pours while Sahara mixes. In the end they made wonderful mud cakes.

We went to a friend's birthday party at Chuck-E-Cheese. It was the first time they met Mr. Cheese and they are now totally fascinated by him.

"The Three Little Bears"

Maya and Sahara read lots of books with mommy and daddy, so they decided to read a few books to their little babies. This is crazy cute. Don't forget to turn up your volume.

"The Giving Tree"

Holiday Cheer

We have been very busy hanging out in the snow, getting ready for Christmas and going to birthday parties. All happy things to be busy with. Here are a few pictures from our adventures.

We drove up to Palomar Mountain which is about an hour East from Fallbrook, CA. We have been getting so much rain / snow that we have been taking every opportunity to enjoy it. Here's a picture while we were driving. The trees were beautifully flocked with snow.

The ice on the trees looked like crystals when the sun hit it. It was crazy cold might I add.

We brought Bella with us for her first snow experience. She seemed to like it, but I couldn't really tell.

The girls can't seem to get enough of the snow. Look at their happy faces. The girls are asleep as I'm writing this, but they did not gently drift off to sleep tonight but rather tantrumed and cried until they passed out. That's what happens whenever they miss their mid-day nap. As you might guess, we try to avoid that as much as possible.

Looking at their cute happy faces makes me feel better after a night like this.

We took the girls to the Irvine Spectrum for some ice skating. It was their first time and they were all over it. I have to apologize, I only have pictures of Sahara. The camera batteries died before I could get any pictures of Maya. Bummer !


Here's Sahara going for it. She kept on insisting that her daddy let her "do it" on her own. So whenever he let go, she would start flailing on the ice. It was comedy.

Merry go round bliss with Sahara.



Sweet Maya smiles.


Here's our Christmas tree. The girls absolutely love decorating the tree. So we have been making a lot of decorations and are constantly adding to the tree. I will take a picture of the finished tree and share it with you later.


Here are the girls with their pet guinea pigs. They often pretend that they are the guinea pig mommies and are constantly cuddling them. It been a full time job for me though because I constantly need to supervise them so they don't love their guineas to death. Too much hugging and squeezing can be dangerous.


Here's Maya proudly showing off her baby.

We went to a birthday party at Air Time in San Diego where the girls got to play like crazy monkeys in their inflatable castles and obstacle courses. Here's a classic video of them in action.

Growing Like Weeds

The girls are 3 1/2 years old and they seem so grown up. I listen to the things that they say and talk about and I can't believe my ears. They constantly surprise me with their independent thoughts and wacky sense of humor. Here are some photos of the girls while on a few field trips.

Our future engineer building a tower at the New Children's Museum in San Diego.

Here's our future architect and Tata Rose busy building.

Here's Maya taking a photo with a Lego tourist at Lego Land.

They girls riding in Santa's sleigh.

Here's Maya with a lego mommy and baby.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow !!!

On Thanksgiving weekend we got some snow in our local mountains. So we packed up the kids and headed to Big Bear Mountain. We were able to find spectacular rates at Northwoods Resort, so we stayed until Monday. The best part was that it snowed all Saturday night so when we woke up on Sunday we were in a winter wonderland.

Family shot in front of a huge Christmas Tree in Big Bear Village.

Here's Sahara walking in the snow.

Check out this smile. Across the street from our hotel was the Elk Lodge which happened to have the best bunny slopes around. We were there playing in the snow three days in a row.

Here's Maya making a snow angel.

We couldn't keep the kids from eating the snow.

All in all I think we built three snowmen. The snow was so light and fluffy we couldn't get it to stick together so our snowmen were pretty short in stature.

When ever the girls saw some untouched powder snow they would drop on the backs and try to make snow angels.


Here's Maya at the Starbucks across the street from the Elks Club. She is waiting for her hot chocolate with whip cream.

Check out this video of Maya.