New Year's Eve

Another new tradition for this year... We moved our New Year's Eve celebration to Jenine and Chris' house. Sandy and James have hosted it for the past 4 or 5 years but unfortunately James had to go back to the boat before NYE this year so Jenine offered to host so Sandy wouldn't have to do it alone.

The kids had a lot of fun and all of them (except Livi, but she came so close! She just needed 20 more minutes, lol) made it to midnight and got to ring in 2009!

10...9...8...

Happy New Year!
Welcome 2009!

Juli, don't waste your time with that Sprite...
Here, have some of Mommy's champagne instead!

Katie and Aunt Karen enjoying their non-alcoholic 'sparkly'

Chris, Karen, and Maddie

Juli and SandyDenise, Katie, and Joseph
(Katie and I were making weird faces. It was so cold!
We just wanted to get inside!)

Christmas Dinner

To wrap up our whirlwind Christmas, we headed over to James and Sandy's for dinner on Christmas night. One of my New Year's resolutions is that next year I will actually take pictures when we go there. This is the 2nd year in a row that we have no pics from their house. Actually I think there was one from last year and this year none. I guess by the time we got there, we were just ready to relax and didn't even think about pictures.

Thanks to Aunt Sandy & Uncle James, Grandma, and Nonna & Pop-Pop Frank for Katie's gifts! :-)

Here's a few pics that I shamelessly stole from Sandy's blog!

Christmas at Mom-Mom and Pop's House

Usually Katie and I wake up on Christmas morning and head right down to Mom-Mom's house to open gifts with her, Pop, Aunt Karen, Chris and Maddie but since we finally got to have our own Christmas morning at home with Joseph, we headed down there after opening our gifts and spending a little bit of time playing with the new toys.

We exchanged gifts with everyone and Two Mom-Mom and Uncle Joe as well, and Katie definitely certainly made out well. Joseph had to make a few trips to the car to take all of her stuff out there. Whew, I think we need a bigger house for all these gifts! Joseph and I got smaller gifts but it's true, good (green) gifts come in small packages, LOL. Thanks to everyone for all of the great gifts for all of us!

Two Mom-Mom and the girls. Look at all those presents!

Katie, Maddie (after trying out her new hair dye), Karen and Chris

Joseph trying to figure out Kevin's new cell phone holder, and looking very perplexed, LOL

For more pics, go here.

Our 1st REAL Christmas Morning

This was the first year since Joseph and I have been together that he was home for Christmas. Usually we have to have our own Christmas morning a few days after Santa visited everyone else's house. (Wasn't that nice of Santa to make a special trip to our house for our late Christmas each year?) Now he'll be home for Christmas for about the next 10-11 years so every year I'll be getting exactly what I want for Christmas - Joseph! :-)

Katie woke up around 8:10 and was very excited to see what presents Santa brought us but she was also so tired from our late night at Poppy's that she couldn't decide which she wanted more - sleep a little longer or open presents. She kept dozing off and then waking up and being upset because we hadn't gone downstairs yet. So Joseph went down first to make sure Santa had showed up and called us down once he turned on the lights and set up the camera. Katie was kind of dazed still but was excited to go downstairs.

Someone ate the cookies and drank the milk... Guess Santa was here!

Peeking around the corner to check it all out

She opened one gift - slippers, made this face and
then said "I think we should have breakfast first."

We tried to convince her to open more gifts but she wasn't having it! While Joseph made her favorite breakfast - peanut butter oatmeal - she fell asleep right next to her unopened presents!

A few minutes later, she woke up and patiently waited to eat breakfast on her new tray.

Then it was finally time to open presents...

She told us this was her favorite present

Time to set up the new game

Katie's "not quite awake yet" look

Game Time

Mommy & Daddy's Christmas

After we came home from Poppy's house and Santa paid a visit, Joseph and I exchanged our gifts to each other. We didn't get to bed until 3am and Katie's wake up call at 8am came WAY too early!

All of Katie's 'loot'

Opening my cards

Joseph and his 'surprise' look

He was SUPER excited about this gift.
He's only been asking for it for like 5 years now!

Joseph says I look like I'm faking that I like the present he gave me
(a pocket HD video recorder) but he's wrong. I really do like it!!! :-)
Now if I could just figure out how to use it, LOL

Christmas Eve

This year we moved Christmas Eve to Poppy's new house instead of TiTi's since we seemed to have more adults than space at TiTi's over the past few years. We keep adding boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, wives, kids and we ran out of room, LOL. As usual, TiTi did a great job cooking all of our favorite Christmas Eve dishes with the help of Tia Silvia.

The Gracious Host and Two Mom-Mom in the room that Joseph calls "The Yellow Submarine"

It'd be nice if Joseph was looking and not scratching his chin
with his middle finger but hey, I don't look too bad! LOL

Katherine, Mike peeking in, Jen and Steve

Mike, Rui, Diane, and Jorge

The Preggos
(but shhhh, no one else knew about Karen yet!)

The "Senors" Table

The 1st of many Barbie gifts this year and Katie loves every one of them!

Sleepy, but hanging on for more presents, :-)

Hey girls, what's in the box???

It was princess gowns that Katie had to put on right away!

Thanks to everyone for all of the great gifts! Katie definitely has no excuse to say she's bored now. Plenty to keep her busy!!! :-)

Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree

Daddy and Katie made thee... :-)

Katie and Joseph finally get a tree with a star on top!
(We have a bow on our big tree and neither of them likes it.)
What??? You have a problem with our tree? I'll mess you up! LOL

Finishing up the decorations

The artists with their finished project

Katie and Mommy

Katie and I had a relaxing day at home hanging out and playing with all of her toys. You'd think just a few days before Christmas we'd be pretty busy (and I should have been!) but nothing was more important than spending some Q.T. with my favorite girl, :-).

Mom, want some lip gloss?

See how pretty it looks on me!Katie made me take a picture with Belle

Holiday Party

Katie's school had their Holiday Party today and all of the parents were invited to see the kids perform their holiday songs. It was really cute! All of the classes except the infants were involved and it was adorable to see Livi's class, and even younger, 'singing' their songs!

Sandy and I decided that next year we're going to get there much earlier to get a good spot (both in the parking lot and inside of the school!) because it was super crowded!

Livi and the other little reindeer
Katie waiting her turn to get on 'stage'Almost ready...
Katie almost had a 'wardrobe malfunction', LOL.
Her pants kept falling down!

Singing their Hanukkah and Christmas songs

Juli singing "Momma's little baby loves latkes, latkes..."
(sounded a lot to me like "loves vodka, vodka", LOL)