It's Christmas Morning!

William was so excited on Christmas morning to open his presents. After all, he'd been waiting anxiously and impatiently for weeks! Here he is enjoying his new Batcave which he had talked about non-stop for weeks. He was so obsessed with getting a Batcave that he carried around a Fleet Farm magazine with an advertisement and picture of a Batcave. He eat, breathed, and slept Batcaves.

William and Grace also received a dollhouse by Plan Toys. LOVE this thing! It's so sturdy and fun. It even holds up to Gracie's beatings and William's rough play! We will have this for years to come and I am sure that my grandchildren will play with it someday!

Christmas Eve

This year we enjoyed a relaxed and quiet Christmas Eve. We went to church with my parents and my brother, Ryan. We then came back to our house for a yummy lasagna dinner and some presents. William and Grace got Pottery Barn Kids Anywhere Chairs from "Uma" and Papa. Grace was so excited to have something to climb on that was just the right size for her. You can see the delight in her face!

William was really excited that this was the Santa was due to visit and leave some presents. He sprinkled oatmeal (reindeer food) outside our front door for Santa's reindeer. We had a slight dilemma a couple days prior to Christmas Eve when William realized that we don't have a chimney for Santa to climb down. How is Santa supposed to get into a house without a chimney? He doesn't have a key and we can't leave our front door opened. Why of course, we had to get the "magical key". Papa and Uma have a magical key at their house, so we drove over one evening and got it from them. On Christmas Eve I tied a ribbon around it and put it on our front door where Santa would see it. We also left out milk and cookies for Santa and carrots for his reindeer.

Grace 10 almost 11 months

PIcture Taking: Impossible.

A friend from my mommy group makes these adorable shirts. I really wanted to get a nice picture of both kids showing off their LLC shirts. Did NOT happen. Oh my stars. Getting Gracie to sit still and look at the camera is impossible. And trying to get William to just stand there and watch the camera...ain't happenin'. I kept telling William just to watch the camera and smile, because as soon as I could get her to look, he wasn't looking. Augh.

Hot Chocolate and Gingerbread Houses...

William LOVES to be in the kitchen-baking, cooking, stirring, decorating, pouring, measuring...he loves it all. This year we made a gingerbread house and had hot chocolate for the first time. He wasn't overly fond of the hot chocolate, but he did love the marshmallows.

*Excuse the face he's making...he went through a "googly-eyes" (as he calls it) phase.

OOF Mamas' Weekend Getaway!

If you aren't an OOFer, you're probably wondering what "OOF" means. :) When I was pregnant with William (4 years ago) I joined an online message board. The moms on this board were all due to have their babies within months of William's birth. After our babies were born, we all joined a message board for moms of babies who were about 0-6 months old. After awhile we decided to start our own private message board. This is when OOF was born! We've all been chatting and friends on OOF since September 2007! Some have gone, new members have joined, but overall it's been the same group for almost 4 years!

Two years ago I met one of the moms (Beth) in England as we were over there for Christmas at the same time. Beth's husband is also English. This past summer I met another mom, Linda, while she was visiting Minnesota for her cousin's wedding. It was neat to see Linda and Beth in NYC again last month.

Last month 35 of us met in NYC for a weekend. It was awesome to meet all of these lovely ladies that I've "known" for 3-4 years! It was really surreal to walk into a room of women having met only TWO of them, and know who they were (from pictures). Not only that, but I could name most of their children and tell you at least one thing about each of them. Did I mention there are over 100 of us on OOF?

I'm hoping that someday in the future (hoefully sooner rather than later) we will have another get together and see each other again. I think our NYC trip planted the seed...

Some highlights from the weekend:
1. Flying on an airplane by myself and reading my book with no interruptions.
2. Meeting the first OOFer, Mara, at the airport. It was straight out of the first episode of the Real World. You know...they meet at the airport for the first time.
3. Staying at a hotel right in Times Square.
4. Times Square-you have to see it to believe it.
5. Sex and the City tour-really neat to go around and see NYC.
6. Friday night-this was the first time we were all together in the same room. It was really neat to hang out and talk to everyone.
7. ROCK OF AGES! Oh my gosh, if you ever go to NYC, you have to see a Broadway show. It is so worth the money, and Rock of Ages was awesome! I'm still singing songs from the show. "Here I go again on my own...goin' down the only road I've ever known...like a drifter I was born to alone..." DO you know who sings this song? WHITESNAKE!
8. Seeing the Statue of Liberty. Unfortunately there wasn't enough time to take the ferry to the Statue and out to Ellis Island, but it was still really neat to see it.
9. Visiting Ground Zero. It was very surreal to think about what happened there just over 9 years ago.
10. Coming home to my family!

Kate, Mara, and me in Battery Park.


This is a memorial at the FDNY across the street from Ground Zero. This particular department lost many/most of their firefighters that day.


Looking over Ground Zero where the World Trade Centers once stood.


This is one of the new buildings on the site of the World Trade Centers. It's amazing to think about how long ago 9/11 happened (9 years ago) and how little progress they've made (although I'm sure it's actually a lot of progress compared to what it was like that day).

Times Square-Amazing


All of us OOF girls together



The last two pictures are of Saint Paul's Cathedral right across the street from what was once the WTC. The first pictures shows what it looked like following 9/11. Several feet of debris and papers. The second pictures is what it looked like just recently when I was in NYC.

I realize I'm going in the wrong order...

with pictures, but that's what happens when you let a couple months go by in between posts.

Here are some photos from William's preschool. They paraded down the hallway on the day of their party. William was a fireman for Halloween since he wasn't able to wear his Batman costume (no superheroes). Owen is his "best buddy" from preschool.