Happy New Year!

Kids at my parents' house. Chocolate truffles with scotch (and Jon
working on-call).

Hope everyone enjoys a safe New Year's Eve tonight! :)

Heroica

A fun Lego "board" game that Logan and I have been playing all
morning. He's surprisingly good! ;-)

Cheese!

Happy kids finally getting their cookie fix after a yummy dinner of
fajitas at the Jodoin's house. Thanks again Jenn (and Jarrod)! :)

Intermission

The boys were a little scared at first but have relaxed a bit now.
During part of the show Logan leaned over and asked, "Are you sure
they're pretend Mom? Because I saw him blink his eyes."

How to Train Your Dragon

We're at the live show of How To Train Your Dragon at the San Jose
Arena (the show is just about to start). Should be fun!

Callum's New Kicks

Massage chairs

We're at the La-Z-Boy store. The boys found the electric massage
chairs, which they love.

Logan told me we should get them so that I don't have to massage them
myself anymore. ;-)

The end of an era

Kind of sad to see the crib taken apart. :(

The upside, I convinced Jon we needed to go furniture shopping today. :)

Keurig Mania

Jon has succumbed to the mania, like many others we know. :)

.....and to all a good night.

:)

Assembly time

It wouldn't be a real Christmas if we didn't have to put together every toy! ;-)

Assembly time

It wouldn't be a real Christmas if we didn't have to put together every toy! ;-)

Merry Christmas!

Jon's parents and sister are visiting this week - they arrived just as
the boys were finishing up opening the last of their Santa gifts this
morning.

We've been having a wonderful day at home - spent opening presents,
eating (and cooking by me) and now napping. ;-)

Merry Christmas to all!

Christmas Eve

We had dinner and opened presents at my parent's house tonight. We all
had a great time. :)

Many years ago when I was small, my parents put together a Christmas
slide show (with real slides people, not PowerPoint) ;-) choreographed
to music and everything, which we would show every year during the
holidays, inviting all of our neighbors over to watch with us.

My dad just converted the audio and slides to digital, made a DVD of
the show, which he recently finished and we had the pleasure of
viewing (now on a TV, so much smaller than his projector screen!) this
evening. It was funny to watch my kids watch what I used to love and
enjoy every Christmas at their age (my parents actually created it
right before Kai was born, when I was 5, Logan's age now). It was a
really special treat to see it again after so many years. :)

We got home late tonight and well passed the boys' bedtime, but they
were pretty excited about Christmas and looking around for Santa's
presence, disappointed that he hasn't visited us yet. I finally
convinced them that Santa wouldn't come until they fell asleep.

Logan gave me very special instructions just before going to bed. He said:

Mom, when you hear a loud THUNK, come get me so we can peek in around
the corner, at Santa coming down the chimney, just like this (and then
he demonstrated by hiding most of his body in the hallway, peering
around the corner and into the living room, with a perfect view of
their stockings).

Pretty damn cute. :)

Merry Christmas Eve!

Santa has left the building

I'm finally finished laying everything out for the boys. Whew!

On his 7th piece

(3.5 slices of toast!)

If I had made more, I'm pretty sure he'd eat it! I guess I need to
start making bigger batches for these growing boys!

Cinnamon Toast

I didn't have the ingredients on hand for Monkey Bread (what Callum
had requested) so cinnamon toast it was!

They were fine with the compromise. ;-)

Christmas has just arrived at our house

Yummmmmm!

Woohoo!

Santa's main present for the boys just arrived. Right on time. ;-)

Can't wait to see their faces on Christmas morning!

We'll see if this sticks

Tonight marks 7 straight nights, of the boys sleeping in their bunk
beds, in the same room together.

So far, it's been working out pretty well. Logan is not bothered at
all by the fact that Callum is now sleeping in "his old bed", the
bottom bunk. And, he's not disturbed by the crying and whining and
night time postponing ritual we're currently dealing with, with
Callum. In fact, this change has probably disrupted Logan's life the
least.

Callum I'm a little bit more concerned about. He loves his new bed
and sleeping in the same room as Logan, but he's chattier than ever
and having a hard time falling asleep each night. I think it's just
pure excitement, but he's not sleeping as well right now because of
that. :( Most nights, Logan is passed out before I'm able to finally
relax Callum enough to go to sleep himself! :/

So, we shall see. I'm also a little bummed since it means we'll soon
be moving the crib/toddler bed out, which is yet one more milestone
reminding me just how fast our little guys are growing up.

Meanwhile, Jon is doing his happy dance since it means he'll get his
office back very very soon. ;-)

White Christmas Cookies

Callum fell in love with the white powdered sugar Christmas cookies
that my friend at work, Gary, gave us earlier this week. Each night
when I pick Callum up from school he asks if he can have "his white
cookies" - and scarfs down his dinner in order to have said (crack,
IMHO) cookies.

Today was the last of the batch, and Callum seemed to know it, by
licking his bowl clean and smothering as much of the powdered sugar
all over him as he could (what the pic doesn't show is how much got
onto his shirt and hair too). :)

We have a Houdini dog

Crate was still locked when we got home. Tobey, on the other hand, was
chillin' and roaming around the house free as a bird....


(We think he squeezed out of the bottom of the door since I had only
locked the top - which still couldn't have been easy. Another lesson
learned with this dog!)

Out looking at lights

More squirmy and talkative than Callum

Our poor stylist. Logan kept demanding "When are you going to be done?!?"

*sigh*

Haircut time!

So, this happened.

This was my welcome home (plus another room) last night.

It was my mistake for trusting Tobey and Grover by leaving them out of
their crates yesterday, but still very irritating. We have all been
battling a nasty head/chest cold, so we haven't been exercising the
dogs as much as usual lately. This is our punishment. :(

What did they destroy? A nursing pillow (thus all the foam - when I
had first walked in I thought they had destroyed part of our couch!)
that we had put out to give away, a couple of presents from under the
tree (thus the kids' books) and a number of ornaments - all
irreplaceable, most from my childhood, but the one that upset me the
most was one that Logan had made at school a couple of years ago. :(

Oh well, goes with having dogs who need constant exercise. We've
learned our lesson, that's for sure!

More sweets!

A gift from a friend at work. The boys are going to love it - these
are the same cookies that Logan kept eating at our friend's holiday
party the other week. ;-)

Teachers' gift this year

Logan is very proud since he picked the cookies (macaroons) out himself. ;-)

Love our neighbors!

Right on schedule, our giving neighbors popped by with a gorgeous
plate of homemade cookies (this is about half the plate, most were
eaten by us immediately!) ;-)

Another set of neighbors made the caramel popcorn (upper left bag in
pic) PLUS a couple wrapped gifts for the boys "from Santa".

Love them - they rock!! :)

TwitchTV Holiday Party!

Our hotel room view

Lovely!

Traffic

We are on our way to our hotel, to get ready for Jon's holiday party
up in the city. Traffic is insane!

He ate my finger!

Callum loves playing with our nutcrackers. I just love the festivity
they (and all the other decorations) bring! :)

Super Hero Ornaments!

And one for each of us here too. ;-)

Star Wars Ornaments!

One for each of us. ;-)

Best buds

After a really yummy dinner with just the four of us, we headed home
where Logan got to open his gifts from Callum and his parents. We all
got him Ninjago characters (and he will be getting more for Christmas!
LOL) - to which he turns to Callum and says, "You're the best brother
ever!!"

I guess he liked the gifts. ;-)

Long day...

He's got a rough life. ;-)

Finishing our day off

At, where else but the toy store?!?

Logan bought himself another Angry Birds game (with some of his
birthday money he received). Mama got in a little bit of Christmas
shopping too (thus the full cart!). ;-)

Frosty

Nice job Disney

Logan says, "Mom, look! Brave!"

Heehee!

Christmas in the Park

Logan had to chase the train around in a circle several times before I
could convince him there were other things to see. ;-)

Closed

I didn't even think to look up the hours for the Children's Discovery
Museum. :(

So we walked to nearby Christmas in the Park, instead. :)

Next stop, Legos.

Built three little guys to take home and join the masses.

Birthday Boy!

Happy 5th birthday to my handsome little devil!

First stop, donuts.

I took today off to spend with Logan for his birthday. After a few
episodes of Phineas and Ferb in pj's, we headed out to grab donuts. :)

Undefeated season!

The kids did great this season! Undefeated record; tho they did lose
their last game in the Championship tournament today...

We'll see if they had enough fun for Logan to want to play again next
season. ;-)

Championships!

Happy birthday Julie!

We had a great night! :)

Bob Saget up soon!

Girl's Night Out

My friend (Julie)'s birthday is on Monday (same as Logan!) so a few of
us girls are out tonight. We just finished a really nice dinner and
now waiting in line at The Improv to see Bob Saget. Hope it's good!
;-)

The Den