Happy New Year!

We rang in the New Year by inviting a whole crowd of friends for a potluck at our house with raucous play and a big finale of watching the ball drop in Times Square. We had a blast and are probably going to be finding confetti around the place for 6 months! Here's some documentation of the chaotic, crazy fun.



Since we were watching the Times Square celebration online we were able to replay it several times! The kids got even more into it each time-so fun with toasts and confetti poppers.

Making sure the neighbors know it's time to celebrate!

Matilda with confetti debris.

Happy New Year and best wishes for 2013!

Holiday Treats

Quick before it is January and we are all trying to avoid temptation, I wanted to share some of the treats I cranked out in my workshop with child labor this holiday season.

We made these chocolate covered pretzel sticks to give Matilda's classmate and some neighborhood friends. 

Once I got the chocolate melted, they did really well on their own with Matilda spreading chocolate and Porter on sprinkle duty.

Next up, truffles. For once Matilda did not mind getting her hands messy with the prospect of licking them after!

We packaged them up all cute for office gifts. 

An old family favorite, these little pecan cookie bites taste like mini pecan pies. Yum! 

Dessert on Christmas. The kids won't touch the date-coconut frying pan cookies which is just as well, more for Tim & I!

Christmas Day Pictures

We had a really nice, quiet Christmas at home. It was a leisurely day of yummy meals, present opening, new toy play and web-cam chatting with all the family we were missing. Here are the kids, first thing in the morning, being sweet and snuggling as they check out Porter's new hyena and attempt to contain their excitement at the giant pile of presents in front of them.

They each picked out really good gifts for each other, a raccoon-driven motorcycle for P and Vanellope from Sugar Rush in her race car for M. For days now they have been playing really cute with an endless goofy dialogue and fake voices between these characters - so fun to eavesdrop on.

Every fire fighter needs some fruity lip balm.

Matilda loves this pocket volcano she got in her stocking. We are going through vinegar and baking soda at an alarming rate!

When asked about what gift to give, Matilda and Porter both tend to want to get people socks. They each picked out a few pairs for Daddy and Porter was really eager to put some on for Tim.

Matilda spent a fair amount of her day lost in the new books she received. 

Even the rats got extra treats on Christmas! Leopold is in cheese-heaven. 

After much deliberation, Matilda asked her Grammy for this very special doll for Christmas. Once Matilda opened the package with Marie-Grace in it, M was so excited she just ran off to hug her new companion quietly for a few minutes.  

Porter capped off the night with a few rides down the drive way on his new daredevil toy.

Merry Christmas

To The Nutcracker with Friends

Matilda and I totally enjoyed the ballet today in the beautiful San Gabrial Mission Playhouse. 

We also had one of Matilda's oldest friends along, to make it even more fun! 

There was some serious spinning and ballet moves going on at intermission by many of the attendees. 

We also ran into another one of our friends. 

These sweet gals have been friends for over 5 years! It makes me want to give them all huge neck hugs, too. 

Fancied Up Kids

We got the kids dressed up to go see Santa at the Huntington and took some extra shots of them together being sweet and goofy along the way.

Matilda and I are going to see the Nutcracker ballet tomorrow and you can bet that she will be sporting this exact outfit, her current favorite fancy look.

Visions of Sugarplums

Porter fell asleep laying with me reading in the living room tonight. He looked so sweet there and it was like a classic Christmas Eve moment of kid-sleeping-under-the-tree, only 3 days early.

 Thankfully we are ahead of schedule with ONE part of our holiday preparations!

"Gingerbread" House Decorating

We invited a few school friends to join us for a sugar-filled afternoon of decorating graham cracker houses yesterday. Here's the before:

During:

Hard at work on her design:

Porter ran into some major design challenges; he ate all the building materials. Here you can see him shoveling the cement-frosting directly into his mouth. 

This is a shot of his final product. There were probably 5 pieces of candy total that made it on the house, most of which were removed again for consumption. 

After an hour of sugar-fueled hour of racing in the back driveway Porter's classmate heads home with her final product. Everyone had a blast decorating (of course) and there were (surprisingly) no major candy related melt-downs.

Matilda's classmate shows off her final product and her newly empty front tooth gap. Matilda is so jealous that she gets to really sing, "All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth!"

A Superhero Picked my Tree

Candle Chimes Tradition

Last year I was so happy to revive my strong childhood memories of these chimes with our own set. They are getting daily use, to the great joy of everyone involved.








It's getting Christmas-y around here!