Happy New Year!

After all the chaos of our huge family Christmas, we took it easy for New Year's. Our friends, the Walkers, invited us over for a very chill "Eastern Standard Time New Year's" family party. A couple of our other friends and their kids were there as well. We ate, talked, played Rock Band and Just Dance and basically hung out. The girls played dress up and acted silly. Then they put on hats and got horns to blow at "midnight" (9:00pm). It was really fun. When we got home, both of our kids were determined to stay up until actual New Year's. We gave them the green light...and they lasted til about 10:45. But they both made us promise to wake them up before midnight. So at 11:55 they came downstairs, we watched the ball drop, counted down, gave Dad some New Year's kisses...then they went back to bed. Party animals!

Best Present Ever!

The highlight of my holiday vacation actually happened two days after Christmas. My darling niece Naomi was on vacation with her Mom and the Mizzells's at Disneyland, only an hour away. Rachael graciously offered to let us spend a day with Naomi before they left. Lily talked about it non-stop for about a month beforehand. We all love and miss Naomi so much, and we hadn't seen her for 2 years! So this was a great present. Devyn, me and the kids drove up and picked her up in Anaheim. We went to the Discovery Science Center Museum, or "The Cube" as my kids call it. We spent 3 hours there playing and looking at cool stuff. Lily and Naomi held hands the entire time (so freaking adorable). Then we drove Naomi back to LA, so she could get to bed early for her flight home the next day. The kids just laughed and laughed and laughed the entire car ride. They had so much fun, it was like they'd never been apart. It made me miss my brother even more than I normally do. I look forward to the day when we can all live near one another again! These kids need each other!!

Doing the ice skating simulation. They were both "super fast"!

Playing in the sand and water. This was the #1 thing on Lily and Naomi's list of things to do. Kids...they're so easy.

In actual goalie pads. Look how huge those things are...the girls could literally fit inside a pad each!

In the Wind Tunnel! The wind starts at zero and goes up to 70 MPH. They had so much fun!!

Christmas morning-Connor

After a bit of a rough start, Connor ended up having a GREAT Christmas! We had bought the kids a PS3 for Christmas, along with a few new games for it. Darrin thought it would be funny if we had Connor open up his Santa gift first, which was the new Ratchet & Clank game for PS3 before he'd opened the actual PS3. His hope was that Connor was be a little bit crestfallen about it and just planned on saying "Oh man, we thought it was a PS2 game, we'll have to exchange it for something else". Then Connor would be wildly excited when he opened the PS3. I didn't think Connor would fall for it, but told him to do whatever he wanted. Well...neither one of us was ready for him to burst into tears, which is what happened. Poor kid. He totally thought he got the shaft. Of course we immediately threw the PS3 box at him to open and all happiness was restored. Can you say backfire? So I didn't get any pictures of that because I was so distressed about his distress. My mom probably has some...

He also got an awesome Padres warm-up jacket (which he's been dying for), a Padres flatbill hat (which he's been dying for), some new batting gloves, a bunch of awesome books, and quite a few video games! It was a nice haul. I think he's forgiven us for the "joke".

Christmas morning-Lily

Great year for the Lily-bug! She got everything her little heart desired and then some! A bike, Go-Go walking Pup, season 2 of Justice League, a new game for their new PS3, some books, some jewelry, couple of Zhu-Zhu pets and a 5-FOOT LONG STUFFED ENGLISH SHEEP DOG that she (appropriately) named "Hairy". The wonderful thing about Lily is that she's so grateful for everything she gets, it just makes you want to give her the world.

Lily and her Zhu-Zhus.

Lily getting to know Hairy. She tells everybody that she now has a "couch" in her room. It's awesome. She just lounges around on him and watches movies or reads. He really is a couch!

Opening some presents and being cute...notice she's wearing Connor's shoes. They were the closest ones available when she had to go into the garage to get her bike.

Lounging on Hairy with Go-Go! Dog Heaven!

Big girl bike! Her bike is now the same size as Connor's...my baby my baby....stop growing!!!

Christmas Eve

We had SO much fun this Christmas. We were lucky enough to have Grandpa Jim and Grandma Lori here. Plus Chelsea, Shawn, Cora & Collin. It was so wonderful to be surrounded by family and celebrate together. On Christmas Eve all 14 of us spent the night at our house so we could wake up together on Christmas morning. We had a delicious feast, complete with a turkey, a ham AND a prime rib! Gluttony doesn't even cover it. The girls went and looked at Christmas lights. We all came home and had cookies and the kids decorated gingerbread houses (I didn't get any pictures of that, but I think Grandma and Chelsea did). Lily and Cora wrote a little card for Santa to leave with his cookies. And of course the kids all opened their traditional Christmas pajamas. It was really a beautiful feeling to have all of us together, it brought back so many memories of my own childhood. I missed my brothers and Amy and the Perkowskis and, of course, my Aunt Debbie. But they were all there in spirit! Hopefully some day we can ALL be together for Christmas. But until then, we'll take what we can get and love every minute of it!

The card and plate full of cookies for Santa. This was the leftover cookie...don't worry, Lily finished it off for him the next morning!

Clean and in their Christmas pj's! Connor looks a little psychotic, probably too many cookies.

All the kids ready for bed and Santa!!