Happy First Father's Day

Happy First Father's Day K. Just today I was thinking of the day we first kissed. Now here we are years later, married, in our own home and celebrating life with our child. It is amazing to see how far our love has taken us. I look at you with Olivia and I fall in love with you more and more each day. Thank you for being such a wonderful father to our daughter. She really is lucky to have a dad like you. I see how much you love her when the two of you are together. Now that Olivia is able to express her emotions, it's nice to see her get excited to see you. She knows you are her daddy and she loves you so much, and so do I. Happy Father's Day.

Baking with my Family

A few weeks ago I had my sister, two cousins and nephew over to do some Christmas baking. It was lots of fun and we baked for hours. I'm blessed to be able to celebrate the holiday season with my family.

Oh christmas tree, oh Christmas tree.... Part 2

Getting the tree to stand straight in the stand while the other two turn the screws to hold it in place. In this photo they were trying to figure out if some of the lower branches needed to be removed so that the tree would stand flat on the bottom.

Then I held the tree while Jen (my sister) made sure it was straight. K and C worked at making the tree straight for a few minutes, and finally got it to stay.

Stay tuned for more Christmas tree decorating..... And in related news, it's supposed to snow on Thursday!!!!! So excited.

Oh Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree....

Sunday morning my sis and her bf came with us to the tree farm to cut down our Christmas tree. We walked for ever (or at least it seamed that way to the pregnant lady). Here's a cute picture of my sister among the trees. Notice there is no snow! I'm still upset about that.

After a good 30 -45 minutes searching high and low we finally found our tree. Can you tell which one of us is roundest in the middle - lol.

Carrying the tree back. That's the real reason we asked my sister's bf to come with us. I couldn't help saw or carry the tree back to the car.

When you get back to the front of the farm they shake all the dead needles off the tree and wrap it for you.

Then you ever so gently place the tree on top of your car and tie it down. However this doesn't work if you have a two door car. You can't tie it down through the windows and then get in the car. Thankfully our fat tree fit in the trunk.

Then....

New Year's Eve Eve

Here's another post from the holiday season. A few years ago we were all doing different things on New Year's Eve. Jennie came up with the idea to throw a New Year's Eve Eve party with just the 6 of us to still be able to celebrate the new year together. Just before midnight we pour some champagne and do the count down. We shout "Happy New Year" and toast each other. Even the years that we know we will be able to celebrate together, we still have NYEE. Last year Jennie and Aram invited a few more people and made a wonderful sit down dinner for all of us. This year, in the words of Aram "due to the recession" there was no sit down dinner. The said they will alternate the dinner and cocktail parties year to year. Next year might be a little tough to do. They will have a new baby, the Trio dinner will be at their house and it will also be the year to have another sit down dinner. K and I might lend a hand and have the Trio dinner at our house.

As luck would have it Dawn's birthday falls in between Christmas and NYE. To celebrate, Jennie made a delicious cake and we sung happy birthday. Here's a picture of Jerrell helping his mommy blow out the candles.

And since we didn't get to before, K and I gave Jennie and Aram their congratulations on expecting gift. Jennie is very earth conscious and is always thinking of ways that she can be more natural. A while back she mentioned that she wanted to use as much natural cotton as possible. So when I saw an all natural cotton blanket in Toys R Us it was perfect partner to the gift card we gave them. K and I were having so much fun looking at all of the cute little clothes and toys, we thought they would enjoy the experience too and decided to get a gift card to let them do a little shopping on their own. Congrats guys, have fun.

Trio Dinner

K and I had a great little dinner with some of our friends. Usually the six of us will exchange gifts, but this year with the economy being what it is, I suggested going out to dinner and just enjoying the company of one another. The girls thought it was great and suggested a nice dinner at home with the six of us. We thought to make it a tradition and will take turns at each others homes over the years. This year was at Shayne and Dawn's. They made fancy drinks and a wonderful dinner. My favorite was the crab and corn soup Dawn made from scratch. After dinner Aram decided to help little Jerrell put together his new Radio Flyer 3 wheeler.

Jerrell was right in the mix so excited to help. Aram was also really wonderful. He is was patient with Jerrell. Always making sure to explain why he needs to take something out of Jerrell's hands when it was the next part he needed.

Jerrell got the screw driver and thought to move ahead while Aram read the instructions. Just like a typical man to not want to read the instructions. LOL - he's so cute and so smart.

When the job was strictly a one man task, Jerrell would sit patiently on the side and wait for the next step to help.

Job well done Aram. Jerrell thought so too. To thank him, Aram got a big hug and kiss. Aram is going to make a wonderful father. In fact if you didn't get to read this post, Jennie and Aram are expecting a baby at the end of July so the practice was good for him :)

Jerrell taking his new set of wheels for a spin. Also in the picture are his parents, Shayne and Dawn.

Thanks for a wonderful night guys. We talked about politics, religion and the best advice for having a baby, all things you should never talk about with friends, but these two couples are different. We can talk to them about anything and feel comfortable with them. It's okay to disagree, we actually have very different views on many things, but we respect one another enough to listen and appreciate each persons thoughts. They are very important to us and have always given us their support. We are very blessed to have such great friends, it feels like we're at home with family when we are with them.

Love you all.

Christmas Day on my clans side

My side of the family is a bit large. It is made up of my dad and his 4 sisters families. Now that we are all a bit older, so many of my 10 cousins have kids of their own. In total I think there are 32 of us. We all get together on Christmas day for dinner and "Santa" visits and brings us all gifts. It's a tradition that my grandmother started when we were little and we carry it on for our generation of kids. At a certain age you discover our secret of how we get Santa to visit and you are required to keep it and play along for the enjoyment of the younger folk. Not to mention the older folk take the opportunity to have a good laugh with the gifts that Santa gives them.

Just before we make "the call" to Santa, I grabbed my mom and sister and got a picture of the three of us. And to answer the age old quest, Jen and I are not twins. We get this question almost every time we go out in public. There are 3.5 years between us. The best part of telling people this is that they then proceed to guess who is older, and 9 times out they guess she's the older one. Great for my ego :)

Anyway, Jen Laura [my cousin] and I all go up stairs to make "the call" to Santa. The conversation usually take a bit of time. Once we are all done, everyone downstairs gets the kids to keep an eye out for Santa from the back window. The next thing we all here is the doorbell and the kids go running to the front door to see Santa come in.

Here's Santa waving hello to everyone.

This is a cute picture of K getting his gift.

This year I helped Santa by reading the names on the gifts for him.

K's Family open house

A few days before Christmas K's mom has an "Open House". She makes her wonderful bread, ham and Christmas cookies. Not to mention the baklava, my favorite. There's wine and cheese, but no dinner. She prepares everything invites 40-60 people and they all come and go at anytime. She usually invites friends and family and it's fun for all.

My sister-in-law brought a new game. Well actually more than one. The game below is called "Speed Stacks". This is pretty cool. My niece and nephews gym teacher has a bunch of them and when kids can't participate due to injury or illness he brings out the Speed Stacks and let them play while the rest of the class goes on. There's a cool mat and timer that come with the game. The point is to stack and unstack the cups like a cheerleaders pyramid.

Kenirck and our oldest niece Alexa. She was the lucky recipient of the pillow I was making. Below are two quick snaps of the front and back.



So here is the front side of the pillow. The lovely Amy Butler fabric was just perfect. Along with some scraps of my own. The Jonas brothers image was printed at home using a sheet that you can put in the printer, print and then peel off the back. It's pretty cool. The sheet is actually soft cotton. Once you peel off the back all you are left with is the image on the cotton. Not like the iron on sheets that leave the image area hard, and over time crack. I added a few embellishments and did a loose stitch around the border.

The back actually took more time. I saw the inspiration for it here over at Anna Maria's flickr site. Sometimes when I am looking for inspiration I go to Flickr and search for ideas. The flowers are all hand made and are embellished with beads and thread. It took a while to do, but it was worth it. She called me right after she opened it. She actually screamed out loud when she saw what it was. Nice!

Finally I thought I would end this post with an image of me playing RockBand. That game is so addictive. I'm actually pretty good at it. At least I like to think so. Maybe next time I will try something other than the Easy mode :)

Christmas Eve continued...

How can you not laugh? Dad got a new pair of jeans for Christmas. We all suffer from the same issue , we're too short for store bought clothes. Our legs are so short we almost always need to spend more money to get them hemmed. When dad stood up and held the pants to him I couldn't stop laughing. In fact none of us could, I told him they were long enough to be overalls.

Then Corrie opened the gift that K and I got him. He was looking for a fondue pot when he recently moved into his own place. Lucky for us he couldn't find one he liked. Thank goodness for HomeSense, my favorite store. K and I liked the one we got him so much, we bought one for ourselves too. We just have to find the right time to actually use it.

Then there's Jen. She begged Corrie all winter to buy her a pair of Lululemon pants. He refused, saying they were too much for a pair of pants. He has obviously never had the feeling of being in a pair of pants that feel like butter next to your skin. They fit everyone of your good and not so good curves so well they actually make you look better. Well they make you feel better about the shape you get from eating 250 Christmas cookies and 4 Christmas dinners. I have a pair that I wear every time they come out of the wash.

K and I did the same thing we did last year when it came to gifts for each other. We filled each others stockings with goodies, like CD's, toiletries and chocolate. Then on boxing day we take all the gift cards we get and go shopping. While we are out we also grab something for each other. Or sometimes it's for the house. Last year we got the family room furniture. This year we both went to Lululemon because I had a gift card, and we ended up getting our gifts there. I got 2 tops and a second pair of pants and K got a pair of pants and a jogging jacket.

I know it's not as exciting as being surprised or unwrapping a bunch of stuff under the tree, but between opening gifts with my parents and sister, then opening the gifts from K's family on Christmas morning we find it to be enough. After all it's not about how much you get, rather spending time with friends and family to celebrate the reason for the season.

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve has recently become a new tradition in our parents home. With K and I not living there, and Jen's boyfriend Corrie celebrating at his parents house on Christmas day, we have come up with a tradition of our own. Mom and Dad typically have a few people over on Christmas Eve for some traditional food and simple card and board games. Once everyone has left the six of us move into the living room to open presents. Jen and I sort through all the gifts and create individual piles. We all take turns going around the circle opening and watching each other open. It's a quiet and intimate gift exchange and is nice to enjoy with them all. Below are some pictures from this year.

P.S. I will be continuing the post about new years and my blogiversary, but I want to catch up on the holiday blogs first.

Jen [sis] & Corrie [the BF]

Mom and Dad

Opening the presents

Christmas Angel and Cookies

I know I've been away for a long time. I even missed my first blogiversary. December 18/07. No need to dwell, let's move on. I thought I would begin by reflecting on the past year and the plans I have for this one. Unfortunately I have been a bit busy this week at work. Then on Monday I watched the Oprah "Best Life" which really got me thinking.....

So it is now 5.5 hours from when I started writing this. Between the workload and my new found distractions I am having a hard time logging in to the blog scene. So for now I'll just update you on a few Christmas events and be back tomorrow with more.

One of my nieces as Angel Gabriel in the nativity story at her church. It was so sweet. Her younger brother was a shepard, but took his costume off before I could snap a good photo.

The Sunday before Christmas my younger cousin came met me at my parents house and together with my sister we baked hundreds of cookies and goodies for Christmas day. Here's acute shot of the two of them adding the ingredients to the mixer bowl while my dad peer's over my sister's shoulder.

Then they mixed the wet and dry ingredients and Laura [my cousin] mixed it by hand.

Of course nothing would be complete without my stamp of approval!

And while we baked the men did their part. K read the paper and Dad "played" with Jen's laptop.

Bamboo on top of the tree and crawling skirts

The topper is finally up. I grabbed some garden bamboo and duct tapped it to the tree. For those of you that are asking what is garden bamboo, its a name I made up. I had some leftover bamboo that you use in the garden to tie leaning plants too for support. It comes about 1/2" thick. It worked perfect.

So far, so good. Milo doesn't seem to like the tree. When I took him over to "teach" him that kittens don't play with trees, he practically climbed over my shoulder and down the back of my shirt. He wanted no part of it. That was Monday, he does however have an addiction to string and ties and loves the ties on the tree skirt. I didn't take a picture, but this morning the tree skirt had "Crawled halfway across the living room floor all on it's own, swear mom" That was the line Milo tried to sell me. Maybe next year I will make a felt skirt that uses Velcro to stay closed.

*On a side note, so far option {F} is unanimously the favorite for the pillow. I'm not sure if you can tell, but it's atually pink with white stripes. It was my first choice. The other fabris are pieces that I intend to use on the back. What going on the back? Let's just say I'm taking inspiration from Anna Maria Horner ---------------->