Happy New Year

We closed out 2009 at my parent's with a New Year's Eve dinner followed by a marshmallow roast and fireworks display.
Lucas did not quite get the part about roasting the marshmallow and promptly removed his marshmallow from the skewer.
It was pretty cold and windy too. The perfect combination for a fire, right?So happy to have a big marshmallow all to himself.
A picture with the blue moon in the background. You can barely see it but it's there and no it's not blue.
Getting ready for the fireworks show, the illegal fireworks show mind you.
Waiting for the egg laying chicken firecracker.
The last picture of them before they caught on fire. Not really but with the wind blowing like crazy I'm surprised only the marshmallows got toasted.
Christina writing a New Year's message with her sparkler.
Bubby getting into the action. My dad would say "shake it, shake it" and he'd go crazy.
He really, really loved the sparklers. A little too much for my liking and makes me think I should start hiding all fire sources from him. Oh boys!
Even Grace shook a sparkler or two. Grace! I was really surprised at this one. Not surprising that she held her nose. Later after the fireworks display was over, I started thinking about what I would have said in the ER if we'd had to take one of the in after they caught fire or burned their hands/face (take your pick). Probably not my best parenting moment to let my almost 2 and 4 year old play with sparklers. I don't know. Let me just say that there was a lot of close, adult supervision. So close that I almost ended up with burns to my thighs and face a couple of times.
The pyrotechnician himself. The apple really does not fall far from the tree, right? This picture was with the $3 "big gun" of the night which the fireworks guy sold as a "fountain of fireworks" and nothing that would scare a 3 year old. Well it was a fountain, probably the loudest I've ever seen and it lasted several minutes. Too funny especially since we were trying to be discrete about popping fireworks. Definitely freaked out the kids. Good job, Daddy!
Snacking on a New Year's dessert of chocolate covered strawberries and buenuelos after the countdown to 8 o'clock. You didn't really think we stayed up until midnight.
We went the whole nine yards----dinner, roasted marshmallows, fireworks, champagne, hats and blowers.
A rare photo of Steve and I.
And an even more rare photo with all of us with our hats on. Sort of.

Well, Happy New Year everyone! Good riddance 2009 and hello 2010! I can't wait to see what the new year brings.

Trimming the tree

Last year I put the tree up while my parents watched the kids. When they returned voila, a beautiful Christmas tree had magically appeared. This year, I thought it would be fun to involve them in the process.
So, we headed out to the forest to cut down our tree......maybe next year. Our Christmas tree is one that Steve had for many years before we even met. It's a little chaotic at first but we're used to that.
Learning about electricity the old fashioned way. Not really. Don't worry, they weren't plugged in. He was very interested in getting the prongs into the right holes. Luckily, he lost interest and forgot about the plugs once the tree was up.
"Look at all the necklaces!"
Getting into the new ornaments.
Time for the star. We thought we needed a little help from Daddy and the ladder.
Turns out we just needed Daddy. Yea!

I think decorating the tree is so much fun, once you get it up and the lights on. I love going through all of our old ornaments from Christmas's past. Every year we pick a new ornament, a tradition my parents started for us long ago. This year Grace picked a Toy Story toy box ornament and Lucas picked a "lellow" bus. I realize now that I should have taken a picture of the completed tree. Oh well, I guess you'll have to trust me when I say that it looked great.

Advent calendar

We started our advent calendar activities today despite my calendar not being ready. We're using the one from last year that my sister gave us. I'm thinking that the one I'm making won't be ready until at least Christmas day or more likely Christmas 2010. Humpfh.

This year instead of just filling them up on candy, I decided to add a holiday activity to each day. Makes sense right? Maybe next year we'll transition into just the activities and no candy. See how my evil mom mind works?
The first activity was to hang up our vinyl gingerbread house. Basically little stickers that stick to the wall but peel off without leaving any residue behind. Perfect for little ones.
They had such a good time with this activity. All I did was peel off the stickers and handed them over so they could put them on the wall. The only sticker I put on was the actual house and only because it was a little big for them to handle.
There were plenty of stickers to go around and so there was no fighting (okay, maybe just a little but mostly over the footstool).
The finished project. Grace did most of the house decorating and Lucas just sort of grouped all his stickers together. See all the gumdrops lined up on the right? He was very focused. Fun times.