Sunday, December 30, 2007

2007 In Review

Well, I like to take time at the end of the year to reflect on good and bad highlights. Honestly there were a lot of positive things that happened this year!

January - Jamie's mom, step-dad and sister came out for a visit.

February - Jamie and I celebrated 5 years of wedded bliss together (ok, no I don't live in a freaking castle but the years have been good ones :))

March - St. Patrick's Day!!!! We had our friend's Steve and Lisa over to share in our corned beef and cabbage :)

April - Kian and I headed out to Wisconsin for my Grandparent's 50th Wedding anniversary.

May - Kian turned 3!!

June - The Painstaking treatment began on my foot (ouch!)

July - We threw our first party at our house for the 4th of July! I think everyone had a good time :)

We also celebrated one year of being homeowners! WOOT!

August - We bid goodbye to diapers - Kian was fully potty trained!!! (well, during the day time anyway - but a huge step!)

September - Kian started his pre-preschool class (I say pre-pre because I go with Kian to this class)

October - We took our first family vacation and went to Disneyland!!! We also had a great time visiting with my Uncle Dave and Aunt Lori that live in SoCal.

Kian also got to go trick-or-treating for the FIRST time! Even though we had to take out most of his candy and replace it, he had a great time :)

November - We welcomed Jamie's Dad and Step-mom for a visit. Then a few weeks later my mom arrived for a visit over Thanksgiving! Kian had a great time with all of them :)

December - We decorated the tree and Kian got to help decorate for the first time! Kian also helped me make cookies for the first time too :) Kian's excitement of Christmas has sparked a renewed excitment in our household of Christmas!

We had a very blessed and busy 2007 and we are looking forward to more blessings to come in 2008. We hope you and yours have the same :)

Saturday, December 29, 2007

There's No Place Like Home for the Holidays!

This Christmas was spent in the comfort of our own home - just the three of us (ok 5 if you could Allie and Toby). Christmas Eve was had our gorging of gifts that our family sent us. We all received some very nice things, but Kian made quite the haul!

Christmas Eve night we had lasgana with garlic bread and salad for our special meal. We also had home made pumpkin pie - YUM! (ok, I took some store bought help - but nut free ones ;))

Santa brought gifts - the floor in front of the tree was filled with books, a Tonka garbage truck, My First Computer, Thomas Legos and a Thomas mat to play with his smaller trains with.

So far he has LOVED the My First computer (thankfully Santa brought two games to go with it) and his mat for his smaller Thomas trains. He really is enjoying everything, but those he's playing with the most.

And of course Santa stuffed all our stockings - even Toby and Allie's! Kian got two new cars from the movie Cars, a new Disney movie, Thomas underwear, and candy of course ;)

Our christmas vacation has been pretty relaxing. We have all really enjoyed not really having a schedule and just doing what we want when we want. A quiet Christmas this year but a good one :)

Monday, December 24, 2007

Our Christmas Gorging

Well our tree slowly filled with wrapped gifts as the month progressed. This morning, after breakfast, we gorged ourselves on those gifts. Kian was so excited! He has been asking at least once a day if he can open them lol We let him dig in while I pulled gifts from all around the tree and separated them all. Jamie and I helped Huricane Kian with his mass of paper and gifts before we opened our own. We both got some pretty cool stuff! And the best thing was that I surprised Jamie with almost everything I gave him ;) That is VERY hard to do so I was quite proud of myself :)

Before bed Kian and I baked cookies for Santa and set the cookies and some carrots on the special plate that my cousin Maggie gave him for his first Christmas....there is a sang on the plate that says the cookies are for Santa and something like "I was good this year, don't believe those things you hear" hehehe

Tonight Jamie read Kian Twas The Night Before Christmas and even I stayed in the room to enjoy the book :) We said goodnight and haven't heard a peep from that room since! Kian is so excited for Santa to arrive :)

Speaking of the big man in the red suit, I better get to bed so he can drop in ;)

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Thursday, December 20, 2007

Christmas Countdown!

Well, the final stretch is here! Five more days until Christmas! Kian is SO excited to open gifts. It's been a little tough to keep him out of the gifts that are wrapped under the tree, but he's done a great job listening. He does ask several times a day about Santa and if he came lol

Kian has enjoyed the Advent calendar that we bought him last year.


Here he is with the calendar looking for the door to open for the day. It looks really neat but the door numbers are not in order so it's hard for Kian to understand how many more days are left. We do show him on the calendar though how many more days until Christmas and we count together what is left. Kian just really likes to get the candy out of the door that he says Santa brings him lol

A few weekends ago we celebrated Christmas with our friends Steve and Lisa. Here is one of the things they got Kian - which is his favorite right now.


Jamie got some fun things that he has at work with him (one is a BS button - we had to try it outside away from Kian ears! lol) and he also go a hat with his name on it...ok, not really - it's a Jameson Irish Whiskey hat but is VERY fitting :) Jamie loves it!


And as you can see Steve and Lisa know me well :) We hung up the Irish Blessing hanging immediately!


Last weekend Lisa and Steve gave us another AMAZING gift! Lisa offered to watch Kian for the night while me and Jamie went to the EA Christmas party! Steve had a prior engagement that ended up being cancelled so he came along with Lisa as well. I know Kian had as much fun as we did because he loves those two :)

This year we look forward to a quiet Christmas at home - just the three of us. We plan to start a new tradition of making cookies on Christmas Eve night so that Santa can have fresh cookies ;)

We miss you all and know that we will be thinking of all our family and friends that live far and near throughout the holiday season.

Stepping into the New Year with a New Foot

Yesterday was my FINAL treatment on my foot for my warts! WOOT! I've had a little bit of pain, but nothing that some ibuprofen couldn't take care of :) I am relived that this 6 month ordeal of going to the doctor every 10 days is over! Yep, 6 months! phew! But, at least when this is done I won't have to ever do it again :)

So, here's to starting off 2008 on the "left" wartless foot ;)

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Kian Visits Santa

Well, Kian met Santa today. Our track record with Santa is now 1.5 out of 4 lol I say 1.5 because when he was 7 months he was cool with Santa and every other year after that he has screamed bloody murder when we it was our turn to see Santa.


This year we were headed down the same road. Thankfully we saw Santa on a weekday so he could take time to talk to Kian. Jamie brought him over to sit on Santa’s lap and Kian yelled “Let’s go that way!!” Well, Santa came down to Kian with a candy cane and a temporary tattoo. Kian said thankyou and then pulled out his “list” that we made this morning (we cut out pictures of toys Kian wanted and put them on some notebook paper). Santa took the list and pointed out some of the trucks and talked to Kian about them. Then he took Kian’s hand and brought him around his little area and showed him the stuffed animals that were decorating the area. He then had Kian sit on his big chair! We FINALLY got a photo with a half smile from my Kian with Santa standing right next to him :)


So, this is the only photo we got this year, but it’s a good one and definitely a great memory for us all :)


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