Happy New Year!

What a Ham
Originally uploaded by tracyg00

We had a lame New Year's Eve party this year. We had some neighbors and their kids come over (since it's especially hard to find sitters on NYE). In all fairness, they all have pretty young kids, but party broke up by 9:30 - which, even with young kids, is a pretty lame event :-)

We got a few of the dads to play Just Dance after the kids had their shot at it. We ate a bunch of food, the kids ran around crazy and everyone cleared out early! Here's one more from the evening:




We spent the next day at Jenny's house - now they know how to party! We got there at around noon and didn't get home until about 11:00. Our kids never want to leave that place!

Christmas Day!

Ben 10!
Originally uploaded by tracyg00

Oh, this was an exciting morning. All Jake had been asking for was "Ben 10" toys. So, he was pretty excited when he opened "Rath". Jake is REALLY into toys and he certainly wasn't disappointed on Christmas morning.

The top item on Megan's list was the "Olivia House". She had seen it on a commercial and figured she could work it into her Polly Pocket set-up. I'll have to do a separate post on Polly Pocket. Anyway, here's her big surprise on Christmas morning:



Santa also brought her "Just Dance 2" for Wii. I'd like to mention that I'm the current undefeated champion. But I digress......

The kids played with their toys for the morning and then I cooked up a "fancy" spaghetti and meatball dinner and brought it to Grandma Helen's house, where my dad, Ruth, Brian, Damien and Ada also joined us. The cousins had a great time playing together. They all ate dinner (Christmas Pizza for the kids & Brian :-), had dessert and then we got to open a few more presents. Here's a Great-Grandma photo (I took about 5 of these, but couldn't get all 4 kids looking my way):



And, here's the Grandpa photo:



After they opened presents, Jake went into the bedroom, got his coat, put it on, came out to where the rest of us were sitting and said good-bye to everyone. Subtle, huh? That kid was ready to get home and play with his new toys.

Christmas Eve

Merry Christmas!
Originally uploaded by tracyg00

Look at those faces - Christmas has finally arrived! Aunt Jenny hosted Christmas Eve and this was taken in front of her showroom-quality fancy Christmas tree. This was a fun night with a big group (Jen and Flip were pretty ambitious, hosting such a big crowd!). Here is the chef preparing his salt-covered fish:







And a few shots from the evening:







The kids were excited to get to the presents. It started with the "Find the Pickle" on the Christmas tree.



Megan happened to be the winner of that and snagged herself a stuffed Rudolph. She's pretty good at those types of tasks. All of the kids got the Wii Gaming System from Jenny & Flip, so that was pretty exciting. Megan was excited to actually "give" a couple of gifts this year. She made Mimi a picture frame with little pieces of confetti that she cut out by hand and decoupaged onto a wooden frame (not sure why I didn't take a picture of that one). And she painted a birdhouse for Papa:



It turned out pretty good!

Jake's Christmas Program

Jake's Christmas Program
Originally uploaded by tracyg00

Jake's program took place on the morning of December 17th. He has a new music teacher this year (Ms. Barth) and he loves her! She's young and energetic and she used to be a character at Disney. Actually all of the kids love her. He turned out to be quite the entertainer. He was placed front and center and he sang loud and did all of the dances.







He even had one line to say with another boy, but Jake was the only one we heard on the microphone. And, this kid is such a ham....there was a musical interlude in one of the songs and Jake noticed his friend's dad in the back of the room and hollered, "Hi Mr. O'Patka!"

This was definitely one of the most lively preschool shows we've seen (out of 4). It was fun to watch :-)

Candles & Carols Christmas Program

M w/Mimi & Papa
Originally uploaded by tracyg00

Megan had her school Christmas Program on December 16th. They gave us 3 tickets per family, so Mimi and Papa came up and Papa was kind enough to stay home with Jake so that the rest of us could go to the show. This was probably a good thing, since the show was pretty long for a 4 year old. The kids did a great job, with approx. 3 songs and the finale. We were in the second row, so Darin was able to get some good video.

Here's a photo of Megan and Mrs. Campanini (Megan loves her):

Winter fun

Winter fun
Originally uploaded by tracyg00

December was a fun and busy month for us. I guess the fact that it's now the middle of January and I'm finally getting around to updating our December news says a lot. We got a couple of good snow falls in December, which meant lots of fun play time. Megan and Jake had a grand old time at our local park when it snowed. It made the slide REALLY slippery!





Megan went to a workshop at the Brickton Art Center and this was her favorite project from that day:



It's called Peace on Earth, but she and Darin renamed it "Pizza on Earth" because it's made on a round piece of cardboard (like you'd find in a frozen pizza package).