The LaBombards

Things are changing here in the LaBombard household. The biggest change is that Eva started preschool a couple weeks ago. Man, seriously? It seems like yesterday we were timidly driving her home from the birth center. I've been going through a lot if the kids clothes an finally letting go of them. Why have I been saving all this stuff?? I don't know. All that to say, she's growing up...fast. She's such a beautiful little girl and I feel blessed to be her Mommy. Her heart is so sweet and she brings such joy (when she's not exploring her, ah hum, independence).

Little Eddie V has been cruising down big boy lane. We brought Ed's old horse upstairs, you know, the kind with the springs. Man oh man does Eddie V LOVE that thing. At first we held him and he kind of sat there. Now, oh my, he rivals Eva for top speed. His smile, while riding, is the cutest thing I've ever seen. He can practically climb up himself but not quite yet. That aspect of his riding keeps some of his little boyness in tack. He's only 16 months old but when he's riding he looks at least two years old. Sniff. He is incredibly sweet and he easily melts my heart when he comes over and just flops on me with a huge, charming smile. What a joy.

The kids are starting to interact a little more when they play and that's really fun to see. The more words Eddie V gets under his belt, the more fun they have. Right now he mostly knows words that start with B, bubbles, baby, bath, ball, etc. We were out hitting up some yard sales a couple weekends ago and there was a little girl blowing bubbles. Eddie V pointed at her and just out of the blue said 'bubble'. We got pretty excited so for the rest of the day he kept saying bubble over and over...reeeeeaallly cute! I can't wait for his little personality to continue to emerge and to see the relationship between the two kids continue to grow and change.

What a blessed life I lead! :)

Posted in: on Tuesday, October 4, 2011 at at 9:37 PM 1 comments  

Busy busy continued right on into October.  Both Eddie and I have our birthdays in October.  Then there are all the traditional fall activities that we wouldn't want to miss out on.  We visited Cox farms for the first time and that was so much fun.  Eva had a blast trying out all their different slides.  There was even a little farmer area where kids could try their hand at milking 'cows', pumping water and gathering corn off of a conveyor.  It was a sweltering, hot day but that didn't spoil our fun.  Eva went trick or treating on Halloween for the first time with Eddie and some neighborhood kids.  It was a such a great time getting out with our neighbors and enjoying a crisp fall evening.  Eddie V and I handed out candy to those who visited our house.  I'm told that Eva was the most polite trick or treater out that night.  :-)

November crept up on us and brought about some sad news, the passing of Eddie's grandmother.  She was a wonderful woman who had a good, long life (96 years!!).  We headed up to NY for her funeral and stayed a little over a week.  We had already planned on visiting and then heading over to MA for Thanksgiving so we just extended our trip a little bit.  We were away from home for 2 weeks, the longest we've ever been away.  The kids were a little weary by the end of our visit, as were we all.  It was so good to be able to see all of our family though.  We enjoyed a lovely Thanksgiving at Mom and Dad A's house and we were joined by almost all of our northern family, on my side.  No sooner did we arrive home to VA then Mom and Dad A came to visit us.  They had purchased an amazing deal on airfare several weeks before we knew we'd be away from home for an extended period of time.  We loved having them around and the extra hands were so welcomed.

Posted in: on Thursday, December 30, 2010 at at 9:34 AM 0 comments  

Posted in: on Friday, December 10, 2010 at at 3:32 PM 0 comments  

Several people have been mentioning that I quit blogging. SO here ya go! :)

Things have been pretty busy here since we added a new member to our family. Edward James LaBombard V was born on May 28, 201o. He weighed in at 7lbs 15oz and was 20 inches long. He is a huge joy! Extremely handsome, is he, with blond hair adorning his, almost always, smiley face! I thought Eva was an easy baby but he is 10 times easier. We are in love and so happy to have him in our family.

Eva has been flourishing. She is just beautiful and extremely spirited, to say the least. In April, when she turned 2, her vocabulary exploded. She is very talkative and really good at it too. She speaks very clearly in sentences that surpass her years. Her grammar is pretty good, for the most part, but what fun would 2 year old language be without a cute phrase or 6? Her favorite substitutions are "for" instead of "to" (I'm thinking it's a number thing in her mind), "can't" instead of "don't" (such as 'I can't like that') and "are" instead of "do" (such as "are you want some milk, cat?" She's mostly potty trained at this point and has been since just before Eddie was born. Sadly, she's going through an accident phase. Not sure where it's coming from though. I pretty sure she knows she is 2 and has somehow heard the 'terrible two' stereotype from someone because she's doing her very best to fill each day with challenges. It's very tough to be consistent and keep her on track but thankfully the Lord provides new grace every morning.

As I mentioned, Eva is very bright. She can say her alphabet and recognize a majority of the letters. She's known her shapes and colors since she was about 20 months. She can also count to about 15, usually forgetting 10 for some reason. She adores her brother. Hugs and kisses abound when they are together. I'm excited to see how their relationship develops as they get older.

Many have asked if we're 'done' having kids now that we have a boy and a girl. Lord willing, the answer is no. We love children. They are a gift from God and, as trying as they may be at times, we would be thrilled to have more. God has been so kind thus far to bless us with our two kiddos and hopefully he will see fit to add to our family, eventually.

It's been an eventful year. First, Eddie V was born and almost a month later we were thrilled to welcome Anna Grace Adler, my brother Ben and his wife Vicky's first child. It's so exciting that Eddie V and Anna are so close in age. It will be fun to see them grow together. Another exciting event was the marriage of my bro JD and his lovely wife Amanda. We were able to join them last weekend as they said their vows. How exciting it was. We are an extremely blessed family.

I'm hoping to try and be better about keeping up with blogging. Just bug me if I don't and maybe, just maybe I'll write something. ;)

Posted in: on Saturday, October 9, 2010 at at 10:42 AM 1 comments  

Lately (and always really) we have so much to be thankful for! The first thing that comes to mind is that after a looong period of unemployment Eddie has been offered a job! As far as we know he'll start working for SRA on August 17th unless the NRA (who he also interviewed with) decides to scoop him up in the next couple days. After several weeks of no interviews Eddie was contacted for two on the same day this past week! So he interviewed with SRA in the morning and the NRA in the afternoon. The very next day he received the offer from SRA. This is a blessing in so many ways. First, it answers our prayer for God to provide Eddie with a job in His timing. Second, it answers the prayer for a job close to home (how's 4.5 miles sound???)! We are so very excited to enter this new season and keep seeking to learn what God has for us each step of the way.

Eva has been amazing. She has loved spending so much time with her daddy, something that will be sadly given up when Eddie goes back to work. She's been blossoming into a beautiful toddler. Recently her vocabulary has really been expanding. I'm not sure about how fast other kids start speaking but it seems like she's held off for a long time. Her comprehension has been really great for many months now and she can obey simple instructions (if her will doesn't get in the way). She just really hasn't 'spoken' in words that other people can understand. Sure, Eddie and I can understand what she's saying when she says da-DA versus DA-da but it's tough for others to grasp. Anyway, we're trying raise a polite little girl so we've begun to request that she says please before getting something that she's interested in. Typically, her interest is food. [Side note: I was a kind of honored when she had her first full blown hissy fit complete with stamping feet and screaming over some of my freshly baked muffins. :)] So her version of please is really cute and I wish I could share her expression and the exact way it sounds with you all but suffice it to say that it sounds like 'pleh' and her tongue goes crazy in a really cute way.

A few weeks ago she got her very first bloody lip. We're not talking just a little bump...we're talking bloooood. She excitedly raced to the window to look out and misjudged her steps and did a face plant into the sill. Luckily her teeth were fine and the damage to her lip healed quickly. It was really really tough to console our poor little girl. The best remedy wound up being a run through the sprinkler....she loved it!! She seems to really like the water. We've been going to the pool in our community a good bit and she has really enjoyed it. We got her a little float that has a canopy and she just lays back or forward and kicks her legs. She also likes being thrown up in the air by Daddy!

Eva's gotten pretty fast now. She loves running back and forth from the kitchen to the living room and often tries to 'scare' us. She in turn also has really begun to love being surprised/scared. It's cute to hear her little gasp and see the surprised expression on her face.

Work for me has been good. It seems like things have been easier lately since I adopted a regular schedule. The connection to my virtual machine on campus at the PTO has been slow lately so that's kind of frustrating. There have been several days where I haven't been able to get a whole lot done. The good thing about my job is that it's not that hard to make up work here and there. I'm not sure what we're going to do about Eva with me working AND Eddie working. I'm sure God will lead us to what is best for her and us. I'm hoping that I can squeeze work in during her naps and have that be sufficient. I kind of doubt that I'll be able to get everything done in that amount of time but I'm going to try initially and see what happens. I anticipate a looooot of crockpot dinners. Love that thing.

Now that Eddie is going to start work we have requests to add to our family. I'm not going to lie and say that the thought hasn't crossed our minds. I used to think that once Eddie got a job I'd be ready to have another baby but now I would kind of like to lose at least my pregnancy weight from Eva before getting pregnant again. I'm hoping to start a tap class in a few weeks so that should help. We'll have to see how disciplined I can be with my eating habits, that's never been an easy thing for me. We shall see.

Posted in: on Saturday, August 8, 2009 at at 3:09 PM 1 comments  

It's required a good deal of restraint on my part not to write a post immediately when I got home today. I wanted to make sure to share an awesome deal with you that you could also take advantage of. The best part is that there's no foreseeable end to this deal.


So, a couple days ago Crystal over at Money Saving Mom wrote about a coupon good for .75 off of any Santa Cruz product. There are a couple great things about this coupon. First, it doesn't expire until December and second, it's a pdf which means you can print as many as you want!!! I happened to be in Whole Foods last week after reading about the coupon and saw that they have Organic Santa Cruz Lemonade on sale for (drum roll please) .99 per 1 quart bottle. WOW!! So I mulled it over for a while and decided that my life would be incomplete without obtaining mass quantities of lemonade for very little money. Today I high tailed it over to Whole Foods with 36 of those babies in hand and grabbed three cases of lemonade.

I had to do three separate transactions because Whole Foods puts a limit of 12 of the same coupon per transaction but it was worth it. The lemonade doesn't expire until 2011 so I'm planning on making a few more trips to stock up on enough lemonade to last us for two years. If you have a Whole Foods near you and like lemonade GO! I asked the Customer Service guy who checked me out when the sale on the lemonade was going to end and he said it should be around that price all summer. Oooooooooo baby.

Posted in: on Monday, June 22, 2009 at at 2:35 PM 0 comments  

Well it certainly has been a busy couple months! Between getting sick, a trip up north to visit family, working, taking care of our house and family and getting a shower in here and there ;-) I haven't really had a chance to write. I continue to learn and grow with each passing day. God is kind to sustain me by his grace.

So let's see, like I said, I was sick for about a week after Mother's day with a head cold and then, sadly, Eddie caught my cold. It's no fun for anyone but Eddie's sinuses just don't handle colds well so he's still battling off the remnants of the cold. We were planning on traveling up north to visit family on the 20th and we did leave, we only made it to Baltimore though. Eddie just wasn't feeling well enough to take the 8 hour trip and he didn't want to share his cold with anyone. There was a lot of wisdom and guts involved in turning his family around. I admit, I did not even come close to handling the decision well. My reaction pretty much equated to a toddler having a temper tantrum and stamping their feet. I have since asked for forgiveness for my selfish attitude and I'm continuing to learn to try to be more laid back when it comes to our schedule.


One week later. Wednesday the 27th we departed for our families...again. :-) This time we arrived, and in record time!! Eva did really well with the trip even though she only slept about an hour during the whole trip. She's generally such an easy going, happy kiddo. Blessed we are. Our families were thrilled to see Eva (and Eddie and I too I guess). Our parents were gracious enough to host some extended family for a meal so that we could see them. We had a great time and a good trip back home as well. I'm glad that we took advantage of our currently flexible schedule.


Eddie is still battling the economy and looking for a job. He accepted an offer a while back but he's waiting on a security clearance which could take months. So, in the mean time he's still looking. He's had a couple of interviews but no other prospects so far. God is meeting our needs as always and I am so happy that Eddie has this time to spend with Eva.


Eva is growing like a beautiful flower, and fast! She's popped another tooth and it looks like her top two front teeth will be in any day now. She's handling it like a champ and aside from some minor crabbiness she's as happy as ever. She's a voracious reader and is currently happy to hear mother goose rhymes over and over (and over and over...). If anyone wants to hear a rhyme you can just ask Eddie or I and we'd be pleased to enlighten you about pussy cat Mole or Jack Sprat. We could also present you with a recitation of Dr. Seuss's 'ABCs an Amazing Alphabet Book' if you would prefer that. She's beginning to enjoy showing us where her tummy, eyes, ears and nose are. She's also taking a liking to animal sounds. When she sees a dog or bird she makes a noise but her favorite right now is a cow 'MMMMmmmmmmaaaah.' Today she started trying a bee noise too. It's really entertaining. We're having so much fun with her each day. Viewing the world through the eyes of a child is awe inspiring.


If the summer holds half of the things that we have scheduled it's going to be a busy one. Weddings, graduations and lots and lots of babies. It seems we have an extraordinary amount of friends due in July. How fun. I guess we missed the band wagon again but I'm not rushing things. As much as I would love another baby I'm still working on getting a handle of where we're at right now. I'm excited for what the summer holds and what new things God will teach me and my family. I'll try to keep you up to speed.

Posted in: on Wednesday, June 10, 2009 at at 2:34 PM 2 comments