Ashley and Katelyn have been getting along much better lately. They are finally able to hang out together and play. Katelyn calls Ashley her "sissy", she can't say sister yet. It's very cute :) Katelyn attempts to repeat whatever we say, it's still hard to understand her, but she's getting there. Last night the two of them were so sweet, they had a "Tea Party" at the little table, an as you can see most of Katelyn's tea didn't make it in her mouth. Nevertheless, they were so nice to each other, they fed each other cheerios, giggled and cuddled :)
Ashley's birthday festivities lasted a few days this year. She started on Thursday, by bringing homemade cupcakes to preschool to celebrate her birthday. On Friday, January 7th, Ashley turned for 4 years old! I took off from work to spend a day with Ashley. Ashley and I met up with Mike for birthday lunch in Red Bank for a slice of pizza and ice cream at Zebu, and then walked over to the Hobby Shop store so that Ashley could pick out her birthday gift. It was a nice afternoon. Ashley didn't cooperate for pictures, and I didn't feel like threatening her on her birthday to get a good shot, so this is the best we got..
In the evening we had Ashley's mini birthday cake after dinner and sang Happy Birthday to her:
As if Christmas Breakfast, Christmas Dinner, and New Year's Eve party (all in two weeks time) wasn't enough for us to host, crazy Mommy also threw a Birthday Princess Tea Party for Ashley this past Saturday. I made Ashley a special Pricess Belle cake, as well as different tea sandwiches and other treats to snack on. Needless to say, Indira and I were up until 3am preping everything..
All guests were asked to dress as their favorite princess, and upon arrival had their nails done. We proceeded with a Princess parade, Kiss the Frog game (similar to Pin the Tail on the donkey), Princess in the Pea game (girls sat on pillows and tried to guess if there was a pea under their pillow), and Pinata. We had a Princess Cake (that I made myself) and ended the party by playing a movie for the kids downstairs to get them to calm down a bit. It was a lot of fun both Ashley and Katelyn enjoyed themselves, as well as their guests :)
Even though I have no pictures to share, I have to mention how much fun we had on New Year's Eve. We went house hopping with the neighbors on our street. We started at 7pm and partied at four houses, going from house to house with kids, having drinks and food at every stop. We ended the night at our house, since Katelyn is the youngest and we didn't know how long she'd last. Lucky for us, she made it all the way to 11:30 before starting to self destruct. When we got to our house, I put a movie on for kids to watch in the basement, and they were perfectly happy watching the Grinch until 1:30 in the morning while the grown ups enjoys themselves upstairs :) Ashley and Katelyn both slept in in the morning, so it was a good time! Probably the best New Years we've had in a while :)
On Sunday, the day after Christmas we woke up to some light flurries, followed by not so light flurries with the end result being a major snow blizzard that dumped over 30" of snow on our town. Monday morning it was still coming down, and our heat and hot water heater were not working. It was 60F in the house. Turned out the exhause pipes from the furnace where blocked with snow, luckily as soon as that was cleared the heat came back on :)
Indira's flight to Ohio got canceled, and Dan was stuck at our house until they cleared the roads. Mike was only able to leave the house on Wednesday, which made for a slight change of plans for our week off, however we made the best of it. I made Hungarian goulash, chicken noodle soup, cinnamon buns, and a lot of hot cocoa with mini marshmellows for all. Ashley really enjoyed sledding down the slide that Mike made behind our driveway, and Katelyn joined in the fun as well, except she wasn't nearly as excited as Ashley. We got to play Candyland game with Ashley, and after kids were in bed, myself, Mike, Indira and Dan got to play monopoly and sip on some snowtinis :)
Here are some pictures and videos of what went on that week :)
Christmas this year has been beyond awesome. Ashley is almost four, and she's been truely enjoying all that the holidays have to offer, going out to cut down a Christmas Tree, decorating it together, reading Christmas stories, visiting with Santa and singing Christmas carols.
Santa sent Ashley a very special video message using the Portable North Pole console that was so cool that words can't describe it. When Ashley watched the video she was just amazed! Check it out for yourself:
Ashley really wanted a Unicorn pillow pet for Christmas. She asked Santa for it when she saw him at her preschool and at the mall. So, on Christmas Eve we baked and put out Chocolate Chip cookies and some milk for Santa by the fireplace. Ashley went to bed early because she knew Santa would come only after she's asleep. And in the morning she woke up early to find cookie crumbs by the fireplace and a pillow pet by the Christmas tree. She spotted the unicorn from upstairs and was so excited!! We asked her to wait until Katelyn woke up before going downstairs to open the other gifts and she did. It was really fun watching them tear into the gifts!
Ashley's been wanting a picture camera, so she got a kid camera to take pictures. She and Katelyn also got plush princess chairs for TV room, a trampoline and a Dancing/Singing Mickey Mouse! Here's a couple videos of Ashley and Katelyn dancing with Mickey:
In the afternoon mom, Chuck, Joan, David and Dan came over for a celebration. We started the afternoon with my mom and Chuck giving Ashley the biggest gift - a Battery Operated Cadillac! Ashley really liked it. She drove it all the way down the street and back. This is her first car, so she needs a lot of practice driving, but she caught on quickly on what to do. Hopefully in the spring she can drive Katelyn around :) For now, the car will have to hibernate in the shed unti it gets a little warmer out.
I made a spread of appetizers and Snowtini drinks for adults. And then we opened the rest of the presents. The kids got more cool stuff as well as adults. Ashley got a Princess Belle dress with matching wand, shoes and tiara, and Katelyn got a scooter and monkey slippers from Nana. Mike got a new suit and I got stuff for cooking :) Everyone was still full from appetizers so we had a nice time before sitting down for dinner. This year for main course I made smoked turkey legs and roasted turkey breast with double stuffed baked potatoes and creamed spinach. For desert I made creme brulee with fresh raspberries, chocolate pecan pie, cookies and fruit salad.
Again, I didn't take a lot of pictures, but Chuck did. I'll add his when I get them.
On Sunday, December 19th, we hosted our Annual Christmas Breakfast. We crammed nearly 60 adults and 20 kids in the house. We got to see a lot of family, friends and neighbors! We went through 6 gallons of orange juice, 80 cups of coffee and 10 lbs of bacon! It was an awesome morning! I didn't even get a picture of the table with food, but here's slide show of whatever I got.. (Note to self, next year delegate picture taking to someone else..)
Every year in our town a fire truck with Santa comes to every street in the town to wish kids Merry Christmas and give out Chocolates. They come with an entourage of about 3-4 trucks and make a lot of noise with the sirens. Ashley was again too scared to come out, but Katelyn, my fearless monkey was right there with Daddy waving to Santa :)
It's been an extremely busy end of 2010 for us, so needless to say there's been no time update the Blog.
Before the holiday break, Ashley's preschool had a surprise "Holiday Tea" party for the parents. It turned out that it wasn't just a "Tea" but a full blown Holiday Concert, with the kids singing Christmas songs on Stage, a visit by Santa and a breakfast! It was definitely a surprise.. Had I known it was going to be a such a big production, I would have invited more people, but at least Mike and I, along with Katelyn, Indira and Geli were it.
This was Ashley's first concert that she was a part of, and she did great! She's really come a long way since starting preschool in September. She's become more confident, outgoing and independent, and made a few new friends along the way :)
Here are some pictures and videos from the day: (You can see Ashley yawning and half asleep.. it's rather early for her to be up and at school, it was 9am, and her class typically doesn't start until 11am)
Here's our Christmas Card that we are sending out this year.
I like the idea of keeping electronic versions of all special things, rather then cluttering up the house with them. I'll have to go back and scan our Christmas cards from previous years as well.
After all the Tree lighting festivities outside were finished and everyone was in bed, I rearranged the furniture in our living room, trying to find a way to make room by the front window for the tree. I spent more time then I'm willing to admit on moving our couch, love seat and an arm chair around the room, only to come with the conclusion that there's no way to make room for the tree by the window without removing the love seat from the room, which wasn't an option. I went to bed thinking that at least I tried.. In the morning, everyone in the house was laughing at me, because all of the furniture was back in the regular spots except for the arm chair. Sigh.
Yesterday we spent a good part of the day setting up and decorating our Christmas tree. This is the biggest, fullest tree we've ever had! It smells amazing and looked really beautiful even without any decorations! While the kids nap, I put up the lights on tree. Typically I'd wrap every tree branch with lights (Last year our tree had 3,000 lights!). This process takes about 8 hours and at the end I need a day or two to recover from the back and shoulder pain.. This year, I went with a simpler approach, I ran strands of lights up and down the tree until it looked like it had enough lights on it. I was a little skeptical, but I think it came out alright :) Ashley was really into decorating the tree this year. She put unbreakable ornaments all on the bottom, so that it's safe for Katelyn, and then helped me with the glass ones. We usually hang our stockings over the fireplace in the family room, but since Katelyn is such a trouble maker, we decided to put our stockings on the railing above the piano this year. All our indoor Christmas decorations have to be 100% baby proof. If there's a way, Katelyn will find it and try to eat it and if doesn't take good, she'll destroy it, so a preemptive strike is the best approach for us this year to keep our house festive and safe for all :) Here is a picture of our tree all done, minus the tree topper, it was too high to reach without a ladder and we didn't want to disturb Katelyn with the noise since she was already in bed.
