Bring On Christmas

We didn't waste any time getting into the Christmas spirit this year. By the end of Thanksgiving weekend we had our Christmas tree up, decorations out and scattered all over the house, Christmas lights up, Christmas cards ready to mail, and already visited Santa at the Enchanted Village over at Jordan's Furniture. I anticipated Vince's freak out at the thought of sitting on Santa's lap as he did last year, so we started talking up what he needed to do and that if he sat on Santa's lap and told him what he wanted for Christmas.... that he just might get it (if he was a good boy!). Well our talking it up at least got us a picture with him on Santa's lap, but as you can see he wasn't exactly thrilled to be where he was.


We brought the neighbor kids along with us, mainly for selfish reasons..... as they are great with Vince and Zoë and make our lives so much easier when they are along! They are becoming a regular part of our family! They are really great kids and we enjoy having them along.

Joe carried Zoë most of the time

Waiting in line to get in

Mary totally LOVES Zoë, and considers her as her little sister.

looking at all the festive decorations

Sharing popcorn after wards (from left to right: Joe, Adam, Beartla, Mary, and Vince) There was a mound of popcorn under that seat that was almost bigger than what was in the bag!

This is what you get when you try and have an 11 year old take the family photo...Zoë cut out of one shot, and Vince turning his head in the other

As I write this post, Vince and Mike are watching the 1964 version of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, as told by Burl Ives. Vince's first time hearing Rudolph's story... and he's totally enthralled. Yes, I think we're ready for Christmas over here.

Thanksgiving

This year, Thanksgiving involved a very brief trip to New York to spend some time with Mike's family. We packed up the car and kids on Wednesday morning, and we were back by Thursday night. Mike's sister Donna worked hard again this year to set up an excellent assortment of all the Thanksgiving traditions including (but certainly not limited to) turkey, ham, stuffing, potatoes, and home made apple and cranberry sauce (my favorite). I couldn't get out of working on Friday, which meant driving back on Thanksgiving eve. It was a bit difficult to have to leave everyone and get in the car for a 3 hour drive, having the turkey coma feeling. It was a short but nice trip.

Here we have a Thanksgiving Turkey (Melina) and a real life Pilgrim (Amelia)

Zoë getting some girl time with her cousins

Me with little Zoë and Hilde with her cute little turkey

This Thanksgiving marked the first brother sister bath for Vince and Zoë! We are thankful for bathtime

click here to see more photos from Mike's brother Charlie: Thanksgiving 2010

Getting Crafty (with recipes AND cookies)

Last week I had the idea to finally use the train shaped cookie cutter that my mom had bought for Vince a while ago; so I decided to whip up some sugar cookie dough, invite the neighbor kids, and get Vince into the spirit of art by setting up different colors of frosting for him to "paint" the cookies with. Now some of you may know that when I decide to bake something, I usually decide to throw in different twists while following the recipe, usually to try and make it a bit healthier, or substituting this for that because I don't have a certain ingredient, and sometimes just because I downright don't want to follow directions. My husband is constantly amazed by this because he always says to me "if there's a recipe you should really follow and not diverge from, it's things that you are baking!". Apparently it's super easy to mess up baked goods/items if you don't follow the rules exactly, but for some reason I've had mostly good luck when diverting from baking recipes.
Anyway...... back to our cookies. To make a long story short, my sugar cookies turned out a bit healthier than normal because I decided to use whole wheat flour and (too much) flax seed, but that was canceled out by the ridiculous amount of walnut oil I used to fix the dough (mind you: walnut oil, flax seed, and whole wheat flour were not part of the recipe). At first this concocted mixture didn't want to roll into a dough because the whole wheat and flax made it too dry, but it was nothing that 1/2 a bottle of walnut oil couldn't fix! The cookies turned out great I swear...

It took a bit of coaxing to get Vince to cut out the dough

But he was totally on the ball with painting the train cookies

beautifully decorated trains

Then again, after Thanksgiving we had a chance to make some gingerbread men because Mike's mom gave us a gingerbread man baking pan. This time I gave in and just followed the recipe that the pan came with. No 'fixing' needed.

Vince ate the leg and arm off before finishing up his decorating job. poor little gingerbread man!

The ever popular tie-dyed ginger man

Welcome little Lucas!

Last weekend we went to visit our friends Beth-Ann and Jason, who just welcomed Lucas Owen into their family! At just over a week old, Lucas is an adorable little snugly newborn. We immediately put Zoë and him together for some photo ops. Lucas made our little Zoë look like a not so little baby anymore! Instead she looks like the jolly pink giant with a balloon head!

Let's put our heads together (Zoë 4 months, Lucas 1 week)

their hands entwined... the start of a beautiful friendship

We tried to get them to look at each other but nevertheless, got this adorable shot

I think Zoë's voracious appetite is definitely helping her grow up quick. The rest of our visit consisted of her trying to see how much of her fist she could put in her mouth... this is what she looks like most times now when you glance over at her. How much fist can I fit in my mouth!

4 Months Ago Today....

Zoë is four months old today, and when Mike and I stop and think that we have an almost 2 and 1/2 year old and a four month old, we both look almost dumbstruck; as if we've missed the last 3 years of our lives and are just trying to catch up. How and when did all this happen?

It's been so amazing, wonderful, difficult, and tiring(lack of sleep is probably why we don't remember it all)..... but raising little ones and watching them grow and learn is something we are so grateful to be able to have the opportunity to do.

I can't help but always compare Zoë to Vince, in terms of how easy she was as a newborn compared to Vince (although Vince wasn't that bad either). It seems that she has been so much easier than Vince, but sometimes I'm not sure if it's because she's the second child. It's no doubt that she gets to sleep a lot easier than Vince did, and will sleep longer hours in a row (which is nice!). She's also much more of a little piggy than Vince was! She'll drink up milk in half the time it took Vince, he would be so difficult to feed and it took forever! In general she's a pretty laid back and chill little girl. It's so fun daydreaming about the things we'll do when she's older, the shopping we can do, the girlie things like getting our nails done and such (of course snowboarding with her has always been in there too). All these daydreams sort of caught me by surprise because I didn't even want a little girl at first!!

Here's our happy 4 month old

Here she is just minutes after the first photo... she's SO cute when she's falling asleep!

Friday Night Sans Children

Last week Mike wanted to go out after work to have a few beers with some co-workers in order to toast to a buddy that was moving to California. When he asked about it, I of course said that would be fine.... me and the kids would hold down the fort at home without Daddy. Little did Mike know I was just banking up some time so that I could ask to do the same thing on Friday. One of my coworker friends got a great job at Mass General Hospital and will be leaving us after next week, so we all went down to the Columbus Street Cafe after work to have a few drinks and relax. Although I'll miss my friend that's moving on to a new job, I was SUPER excited all day to have the opportunity to go out after work rather than rush home to get dinner ready and go through all our evening activities! Is my life sad or what, haha!

We had a really great time hanging out, and Mike sent me little updates on the phone of goings on at home. One was this super cute picture of Zoë and Vince sharing a crib. I was the proud mommy and of course immediately showed the picture to everyone at the bar with me.....

Halloween: The Big Day Finally Arrived

It seems like we've waited months for this weekend!

Getting the pumpkins ready

Before Vince got his costume, I kept talking up what he was going to be for Halloween, and making sure to remind him that the hat part of the costume was the most important part. This was to ensure that when he finally received his Cat in the Hat outfit, he would be EXCITED about wearing the hat instead of REFUSING to wear it. Well, I talked it up so much that we had no problem with Vince wearing the hat (whew!). He proudly wore it all over the house, and wanted it on whenever he would watch the Cat in the Hat cartoon.

We did the same thing when we talked about trick or treating on Halloween night. We described to him the excitement of going from house to house with a bag; what he would need to say, what he would get, and how he needed to make sure to say 'thank you'. Well, by the time Halloween night came around, we opened that front door to go trick or treating and Vince stormed out the door (along with his buddies) screaming 'trick or treat' over and over again.... heading down the street like banshees. He would be saying trick or treat before we would even get up to the doors of our neighbors houses! Getting candy thrown into a bag that you are holding is a pretty big motivator for toddlers I would say. We plugged down the streets of our neighborhood, herding our little ones from house to house and making sure they always said thank you. It was a great Halloween!

Getting out the door

Trick or Treat!

Hey, where did that candy go!?

Meanwhile, our little ladybug slept comfortably and couldn't care less about getting candy

Vince pushed on for about an hour, and then we headed back to the house to re-group (aka: start eating the loot).

Adam and Vince, happy with their lollipops

We chilled out the rest of the night at home, having the kids give away candy to trick or treaters coming to our house. We repeated our tradition of offering warm spiced wine for the parents of our trick or treaters, and at one point a parent said "oh yes! I was trying to remember which house gave the wine last year!"..... needless to say, between taking a few sips here and there ourselves and giving it away to parents, we didn't have any left over wine! Yes, it was a fun Halloween. Now I just need to gather all of Vince's candy and our leftover candy and take it to work tomorrow before I eat it all.