Happy New Year!

We have been ringing in the new year in Lake Tahoe. It's so beautiful here. It has been crisp and sunny, until today. Today is snowing. I love sitting here in the house watching the snow fall. It's so peaceful. Such a great way to start the new year.

Check out my photography blog (link below right) for some other images I've taken the last few days. Here are some fun photos of what we've been doing.

On New Years Eve we went into Truckee on our way to a friends house for dinner. So many great shops it was fun walking around.

Happy New Year! Our two little party animals. We had a great New Years Eve with friends in Truckee. The girls were barely awake, but perked up to pop streamers and wish everyone a happy new year.

Playing on the beach....snow or sand, our girls are happiest by the water.

Sledding in the side yard. We don't have to go far to have fun. We had a nice little (and I mean little) hill on the side of the house. Perfect for our girls, and Nonna, to do a little sledding.

Daddy made the hill a little bigger in the afternoon and the girls went out by themselves. They had a great time. They didn't care that it was getting dark. As a matter of fact they started throwing snowballs at the kitchen window and O asked us to turn the light on. Sorry, no side yard light....time to come in.

Merry Christmas!

We had a wonderful Christmas. Here are some highlights.

After going to Mass on Christmas Eve we have dinner at my God-Father's house. We had a wonderful dinner, Daddy took a nap and the girls did some crafts and tracked Santa with my cousin.

Christmas morning we had a nice quiet family morning at home. The girls opened gifts from Santa, I tried to clean up all the glitter Santa left behind (still working on that), and I made two pumpkin pies. We had dinner at my mom's house. All the little kids put on a Christmas show. They sang Jingle Bells with piano accompaniment from CK. Very fun.

Our tradition for the past three years is to go up and visit our dear friend JK in Santa Rosa on the day after Christmas. We have a great time visiting with her and her parents. This year we had a great brunch and walked around Historic Railroad Square. The girls enjoyed finding Peanuts characters around the square.

This year on the way home from Santa Rosa we stopped in The City to have dinner with Auntie D and Uncle J. We are so happy they were available on such short notice. We had a great visit over a nice dinner. A new tradition! Next year we will plan ahead and arrange our visit more thank an hour in advance.

Baking Cookies

Every Christmas the girls and I bake cookies. I make lots of Biscotti, but the girls love decorating Gingerbread People.

Each cookie was designed with care. A story behind each cookie. One tray was going to a party. One cookie was Aunt J another Auntie D. This cookie will go to Nonna, that cookie will go to Papa. It was the cutest thing.

These are some of the Christmas memories and traditions I love the most.

All I Want For Christmas is...

my front tooth.

Birthday Tea

CK finally was able to have her birthday party. Poor thing. Only 2 months late. Better late than never, right? Darn leak!

I had a birthday tea one day after school for her and three of her friends. It was very fun.

The girls all had their tea dresses on. I made Biscotti, Blueberry Scones and had some grapes. There was a choice of orange tea or pink lemonade. After making origami swans they had chocolate cake with raspberry filling (from Nob Hill).

Happy Birthday CK! Sorry your party was late.

Traditions

One of our family traditions every Christmas season is going to see Santa at Daddy's work. It's so nice that Santa makes a special visit there. We talk to Santa, the girls tell him what they want for Christmas, we get a free print (and I get to take as many pictures as I want), and we have a cookie.

After Santa we have a Sushi dinner in Japantown and then go to Christmas in the Park. It is always a wonderful family evening out.

I'm not crazy about the carnival rides at Christmas in the Park, but they do make fun images.

It's snowing! Not really, not in our city, but the snow machines around the park were a lot of fun. They were soap bubbles.

Gosh they're big! How did they get so big? It seems like just last year we were taking CK for her first picture with Santa right here in Christmas in the Park.

Our Miracle Baby is Growing Up

Wednesday night CK had her first Confession (Reconciliation/Penance). She will be receiving her First Holy Communion in the Spring. It seems so surreal. Is she really that old?

We went to a Reconciliation service at our parish. We had one daughter nervous about doing her confession and one upset because she was not able to do her confession. We had a range of emotions.

In the end everyone was feeling happy and cleansed.

Prayers Needed...

A friend of a friend's daughter has just been diagnosed with Leukemia. I have never met this adorable little girl or her family. If you would like to learn more about Ellie and her family you can go to her website. Please keep Ellie and her family in your prayers.

UPDATE

Thank your for all your prayers for my sister. She had her iodine radiation for her Thyroid Cancer and is doing wonderfully! She is now on her Thyroid medication. I  have my old sister back! You can read about her journey on her blog.

God Bless

Black Friday

Black Friday, or the day after Thanksgiving, has been known to be the busiest shopping day of the year. People get up at what I consider to be the middle of the night, to start their Christmas shopping. 4:00am! No thank you, I love shopping, but I love sleeping more. Maybe it's because I worked retail for 5+ years and had to work on Black Friday every year.

This year was no different. We all slept in. It was a wonderful morning. We started getting some of our furniture ready to bring back into our house (have to put felt pads on the bottom of all the feet). At about 3pm or so my husband says, "Do you want to go to Pottery Barn and Restoration Hardware to get those things today?" Really? Do you know what you just said? Today? It's going to be busy. I'm up for it, by this time it should be better. The girls LOVE the mall, so no argument there, but my husband doesn't like crowds, doesn't really like the mall. Are you sure?

In no time at all we were out the door and on our way to the mall. No surprise it took some time to find a parking space. We were just about to leave. O started crying in the back seat because we were not going to go to the mall and something about turning out to the the worst day ever (well, that might not have been what she said, but she was upset). Just then a very happy woman, walking by our car, said she was leaving. She saved the day! C couldn't believe this was his idea.

We get into the mall and C still can't believe this was his idea, but was proud he came up with such a crazy idea that made his family happy. Now even though I have not stepped foot into a mall on Black Friday in YEARS, it was fun. I still wouldn't go at 4am. The bummer part was both items we went to the mall to purchase were not there! One was a catalog/online item only and the other this store didn't have any of. You're kidding me. Oh well.

We made the most of it and decided to walk across the street to Crate and Barrel and then have an early dinner. Talking with our waitress she mentioned this was not the usual Friday crowds, even in the mall for Black Friday. My husband could not believe that. "That wasn't busy?" he asked. I told him from my experience I would agree. This was just a busy weekend Christmas shopping day.

On our walk back through the mall to the car I noticed something. There were lots of people in the mall, but no one had any bags (well, very few). When I worked retail people would have two, three, four shopping bags full. They would get all their shopping done on that one day. Not this year. People were just at the mall window shopping.

Things change, but traditions last. Even when it comes to shopping. The day after Thanksgiving will always be the start of Christmas shopping. Whether it will be the busiest is yet to be seen.

Turkey + Family = A Wonderful Thanksgiving

A beautiful day of family, kids running, getting to know extended family, cocktails (with my husband as bar tender), turkey, three types of potatoes, stuffing, desserts and birthdays. I love Thanksgiving!

Some people got cut off in my family Thanksgiving photo (SORRY). Guess I need to buy a wide angle lens. We had 22 people, two tables and lots of fun! These are just a few of the photos I took.

H A P P Y

THANKSGIVING

I have so much to be thankful for.

God has truly blessed me.

I have a wonderful loving husband

who takes good care of me and our daughters.

I have two smart, loving sweet daughters

who make me laugh every single day.

I have a roof over my head.

I have a wonderful extended family

and caring loving friends.

I'm thankful we are all healthy.

I am thankful the repairs on

our home are almost done.

I wish everyone a very happy Thanksgiving.

I hope you all enjoy a wonderful turkey

dinner with your family and friends.

Painting Begins!!!!

Can you believe it? I'm not sure I can.

8:00am this morning three painters showed up at our house with our contractor, of course. The painters went right to work covering our beautiful new flooring with resin paper and blue tape. They covered the banisters and walls, they were not going to paint (that had pictures still hung on them) with plastic. The stairs and cat walk were covered with drop cloths. Furniture (the little we have actually in the house) was covered with plastic.

By the time I got back from bringing the girls to school the painters had started cutting in the high walls and ceiling. Yes, ceiling! They painted the ceiling! That is huge. We can paint most of the other walls, even the high ones, but the ceiling. That is a different story in our house.

The painters got a lot done today. The living room and ceiling mostly. They packed up at about 4:00pm and will return tomorrow at 8:00am to finish. Tomorrow the family room and baseboard (entire first floor) will get painted. That will be it for the painters. The rest will be up to us.

I would like to finish painting a few walls before putting furniture back into the house, but after two and a half months, I really need my house back. I want furniture back in my house. A place to sit with my beloved and girls. I would like to sit at our dinning room table in the dinning room for meals. I want to start decorating for Christmas! We can paint the rest of the walls after Christmas. I think Friday we will start moving furniture back into our house. I'll see what C thinks. I don't think we'll be able to do it any sooner, with Thanksgiving on Thursday.

It will be easy to paint a few of the walls downstairs (dinning room wall and family room TV wall) after Christmas. We won't need to move too many things out of the way and they are normal walls. The tall walls that aren't getting painted now will need to wait until Spring or Summer to get painted. It will work out.

I'll take some pictures of our beautiful painted walls tomorrow and get them posted, hopefully tomorrow night. I've got to find time (and space in my kitchen) to make pumpkin pies for Thanksgiving. Good thing Thanksgiving dinner is not at my house.

House Update - Good and Bad News

Our adventure in home repair and a little remodel continues. It's been quite a week!

I'll start with the bad news. (I want to end on a positive note.) Yesterday when they were demoing our old kitchen floor the contractor and flooring guys found Subterranean Termites! YES! AAAAHH! So.... the "bug guy" is here now squirting poison foam into the wall and ground outside the house to kill the little suckers. Good thing we decided to upgrade to laminate flooring. If we had just replaced the carpet with carpet, we wouldn't have found these little pests!

On a more positive note. Demolition of the rest of the carpet and baseboards was done on Wednesday. O was able to help our contractor with removing the baseboards. A benefit of only being in school for half a day. Notice the gloves. She had to go and get her gloves so she would match Mr. P. 

They started putting in the flooring on Friday. It was suppose to be Thursday. Another problem with another Sub. Again, my contractor was very angry! It all worked out and the flooring is almost done. The guys are here working as I am typing.

The flooring is beautiful! We absolutely love it! The girls have already "sock skated" on it last night and this morning.

Oh, the other thing that was finished this week was the stucco under the front window. I didn't take pictures of that yet, but it looks beautiful! Just needs to be painted. The stucco guy rocks!

The painters should be here next week, Monday I think. I'll let you know how that looks when it's done. We won't be able to paint everything right now. With all the added expense, some painting will have to wait. I just want my house back together! We'll be painting this spring and summer.

I Can See The Light

There has been a lot of work being done on the house this week. We can finally see the light and feel everything will be done soon. YEAH! Here is what has happened this week:

Tuesday the electrician came and installed three can lights in our family room. What a difference!

Wednesday our contractor was back to finish installing the windows! YEAH! He also added insulation. What a difference in temperature.

I had some fun and took some cool construction photography while the guys were working. I couldn't resist.

Can you tell what we did different to our front window? I did not take a close up, so you'll really have to look. (Leave a comment)

The last thing that happened this week (as of today) was drywall! YEAH! The Rockers came early this morning (7:45am!). It took them no time at all to hang all the drywall. Talk about fast.

Oh, the other thing that has also started is demolition of the flooring. We're getting ready for our new floors. I don't have a specific date of install for the flooring yet, but I'll keep you posted.

I'm not sure if I'll tell you what colors we will paint the walls. I might keep that one detail a surprise. hmmmm.....

NOW, it feels like our house is getting put back together! Stay tuned for more updates soon.

Cell Phone Pics

On Sunday the girls and I went to hear Papa play his Tuba in the Ohlone Wind Orchestra. What a treat. We also had the pleasure of hearing a wonderful piano solo by Brenda Tom.

The only camera I had was my cell phone. Here are a few pics I took.

The girls just outside the Smith Center, where the concert was.

Smith Center at Ohlone College

The lobby of the Smith Center.

I couldn't resist taking this picture (again with my cell phone). What beautiful fall colors!

Caught By Little Sister

I'm making dinner on Saturday night and the girls are in the kitchen.

O: (in a very sing songy cute voice)  "K why do you smell like chocolate?"

CK:  doesn't say anything - just shrugs  shoulders, doesn't open her mouth and makes a question noise

Mommy: "CK did you eat chocolate?"

CK:  shakes head no

Mommy: "CK did you eat chocolate?"

CK: shakes head no

Mommy: "CK DID YOU EAT A PIECE A CANDY? Tell me the truth, because if you lie to me that will make me more angry, and TALK to me don't just shake your head." (I KNEW she wouldn't be able to lie to me if she spoke. Shaking her head and humming no was too easy to lie.)

CK: walks toward mommy crying

Mommy: "CK look at me, did you eat a piece of chocolate? TELL ME THE TRUTH. DO NOT lie to me!"

CK: (crying) "Yes."

 

It was much more than eating a piece of candy (right before dinner!). I was angry that CK lied to me (3 times).

I think it's funny that O smelled the chocolate on her. That is totally my sister.

P.S. I had to post this, but don't tell CK.