Our Christmas Card

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.

Our Christmas Tree

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.

Lantier Tree Farm and Tree Lighting on Our Street

Every year since we moved to this house we've been getting a live Christmas tree. We've been going to Lincroft Tree Farms in Lincroft but last year we decided we wouldn't be coming back. The place didn't have any trees that were big enough to cut down that we liked, so we had to get a precut douglas fur which was beautiful but cost us an arm and a leg and defeated the purpose of going to the "Cut Your Own" farm. This year we decided to join our neighbor's Tree Picking party and go to the Lantier Tree Farm in Englishtown (http://www.lantiertreefarm.com/). This place as it turns out is the biggest tree farm in New Jersey! They have 50,000 Christmas Trees that you can pick from and any cut your own tree costs only $50!

The weather was great, about 50F, sunny and no wind, but we bundled up in case it got chilly. Turned out we were a little overdressed (except for Mike who doesn't wear jackets or coats ever). It took us about half hour to get to the farm, and once there, we took the wagon ride into the section with bigger trees,

and walked around until we found a few that we liked.

We found one about nine feet tall that looked perfect, so Mike cut it down and we carried it out carefully not to break any branches.



After our neighbors got their tree, we got some hot chocolate and funnel cake. Ashley and Katelyn had fun with Emma and Liam. Here's a picture of the four of them:
(You can tell my how they are dressed that it was a rather warm day for December!)

Our neighbor's brother came with a pickup truck, so we didn't even have to tie the tree to the roof. He drove it home for us and it was on our front door steps when we got back! Everyone had a great time.

Later that day festivities continued with the Tree Lighting Party on our street. We have a tall Christmas tree in the middle of the circle that guys put the lights on. You can see the tree coming down the street and it looks beautiful! After Santa arrived the lights were turned on and people continued to roast marshmallows by the fire. Ashley's still a little scared of Santa.. As soon as she saw him coming down the street, she ran inside the house, and didn't come back out. Only Mommy and Daddy got a picture with Santa.


We ended the night back at Stacy and Bill's house next door. Ashley had more fun with Emma and Liam. (Liam was teacher her how to play hockey, and then she was practicing rollerblading) Katelyn only took a short nap on the car ride back from the farm, so she was tired and checked out by 7pm.

Here's a view of our house with the lights. Mike and Dan worked very hard to get the lights up on the second story, but the wind storm we had last week pushed them inside the gutters. Nevertheless, the kids love the way the house looks. Katelyn keeps going "Wow" when she seems more lights, it's very cute :)

Ashley's Art Work

I finally got around to taking some pictures of Ashley's drawings. She really likes to color and is getting better at it.




This is a picture of Busenka and Grandpa Chuck that she drew for Grandpa Chuck's Birthday.

Taking Pictures for Xmas Card..

Yesterday I attempted to get a nice picture of my two crazy monkeys for the Christmas Card. I had to bribe them with sweets, and even then it was a challenge...

Here's the best that I could get:



And here's the rest.. my failed attempts at getting a decent picture. I got the best picture in the first two minutes, after that it all went down the hill, not to mention the scratches on Ashley's face that make her look like she's been in a cat fight..

We'll be going for formal portraits in January for Ashley's 4th birthday. Hoping to get some nice shots then.

Joan's Birthday

Yesterday was Joan's, I mean Nana's birthday. We cooked dinner at home and had a little celebration. It's much easier these days to stay home than to go out for a dinner with kids. Ashley's still ok, but Katelyn will not sit still for more than 20 minutes. I made a few appetizers, including bruschetta on french bread toasts, blueberry goat cheese with crackers and shrimp. For dinner we had Indira's famous Harvest Salad (with roasted turkey, feta cheese, pears, walnuts and dried cranberries), and I made a ham with mashed potatoes and string beans almondine. For desert I didn't have time to make a homemade cake, so I bought a cheesecake and make my own raspberry sauce to go with it. Katelyn loved the sauce so much she could have eaten a whole bowl full of it!

Here's some pictures of Nana and Ashley. (This was already after Katelyn retired to bed, so no Katelyn pictures this time)

General Update on What's New

We got so many things going on at the same time that I don't know what to write about. The highlight this weekend was going to Domenick and Carmela's wedding. It was a lot of good food and dancing, not to mention getting all prettied up, which I don't get to do much of these days.



I'm also happy to report that I'm finally back down to my pre-pregnancy weight and size 4! (All thanks to many friends that recommended Weight Watchers :) and watching food portions.) However, if the holiday partying continues at this pace, I may be in trouble..

We had couple other events this weekend that were very fun as well, but this Blog would look like an encyclopedia if I wrote about everything that we do.

I prefer to keep this Blog more focused on what's new with the kids. Speaking of which, both Ashley and Katelyn have been fighting a cold all week. They are both coughing and got runny noses; it’s nothing to get too excited over, but I did take them in to see Dr. Yia just to make sure that their lungs where clear and they were :)

There are a couple of new things that Ashley's been into lately. She's always been fond of coloring, but now she's branching into drawing people. The faces look more like ghostfaces from the movie Scream, but she's trying. I'll have to take pictures of the portraits that she's drawn to put up here. She's also been getting better at writing letters. She loves to play school, and really enjoys going to her Preschool. She even asks me on weekends if she can go to school. Not sure if I never mentioned this on the Blog, but she's 100% lefty. She does everything lefty, including holding her spoon and writing. Katelyn, on the other hand, (no pun intended), is a righty! She does everything righty!

Katelyn is a ball of energy, she's none stop all day. She's figured how to climb up on to the kitchen chair and from there on to the kitchen table! She thinks it's hilarious when she does this and we drop everything to run to her to get her down before she falls down on the tile floor! Kitchen/family room area that we have gated off used to be a safe place to leave her for a few minutes, but not anymore. She's also fond of jumping on the couch, and has fallen down from there more times than I can count.. Apparently the pain from falling doesn't bother her and hasn't taught her to not do it. She can also now push a chair to the kitchen counter and climb up to reach anything on the counter top!

We'll have to sign up Katelyn for gymnastics as soon as possible, so that we can tunnel that energy into something productive. She can already do a forward roll and likes to stand on her head doing the downward dog yoga pose :)

She's also finally beginning to like reading books. Her attention span has improved significantly in the last couple of months. For someone that doesn't like to sit still, we can now get through 3 books with her in one sitting! She also likes to color, but unfortunately half the time she also wants to eat the crayons that she's coloring with, so the coloring has been very limited for her.

In other news on Katelyn's front, she's got a lot more teeth now, literally. She has an extra tooth in the front on the bottom. Instead of having 4 bottom front teeth, she has 5! I guess that explains the teeth crowding.. We asked the pediatrician about this, but she said that it's no big deal. So, in total she's up to 17 teeth! (8 on top and 9 on the bottom!)

Here's a picture of Nastya holding Katelyn where you can see the extra tooth:


I think that’s about all that I wanted to mention for now. I have to make more videos of them. Watching them in action is priceless!

Blueberry Tarts with Crumb Topping

I've been testing out a few recipes that I want to prepare for Christmas dinner.
One of them was for Blueberry Tarts. I made them a couple of days ago, and they came out pretty amazing! I made small tarts, however I'm thinking that for Christmas I'll make one large one.

Thanksgiving Weekend

We had a great four day weekend! On Thanksgiving day we drove up to my mom and Chuck's house for dinner. It was a nice gathering minus all the screaming entertainment provided by Katelyn on the ride there and back. She was not a happy camper to be strapped in a carseat for over an hour.. The hope was that she'd fall asleep on the ride home, but no such luck.. She insisted on watching the DVD all the way home. Lesson learned, keep long trips to a minimum until she's a little bigger.

Friday was a long day. Indira and I went shopping to the Outlet Mall from 1am - 5am, I mostly picked up clothes for everyone. They had 50-60% off whole inventory of many stores.. After that I dropped off Indira at home, woke up Mike, and the two of us continued to shop up 8am. By 8, I was falling asleep standing up, but it was worth it since we bought everything on our list. Mike watched the kids until the afternoon, and I got to sleep a bit. We went out shopping again at night, just to get the kids out of the house.

Unfortuantelly I got no pictures from this weekend, because my camera's been acting up and no longer takes pictures :( I get the "Card Locked" error on display, and the only way to clear it is to open it up, remove battery and chip set and blow inside. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't. All I know is that I missed some great shots this weekend :) The good news is that I took advantage of the Black Friday deals and picked up a new camera! It arrived yesterday, so we are back to taking pictures :)

Here's a picture from last week of Ashley and her friend Lily (our neighbor's daughter) over at Barnes and Noble. Turns out the bookstore is the place to go, if you've got time to kill with kids and you want to get out of the house...

Ashley and Lily will be in the same grade when they start kindergarden, possibly in the same class. That would be great, since Lily is a very sweet girl :)

Cake Decorating (Week 4) - Last Class

Yesterday was the last day of my Cake Decorating Class. We practiced writing on the cake and learned to make roses. Both skills need a lot of practice to make them look professional. Our final product was a Cake decorated however you like.

I make a Chocolate Kahlua Cake with chocolate mousse and fresh strawberry filling. Covered chocolate whipped cream frosting and decorated with vanilla whipped cream frosting tinted with different colors. I don't like the taste of the Buttercream Frosting that we've been using in class to decorate our cakes, and it's full of Crisco, which is loaded with trans fats. The whipped cream frosting tastes really good, but is harder to work with, since it gets too soft at room temperature.

Since Chuck's birthday just past I thought to surprise him with a Homemade Birthday Cake on Thanksgiving: