Christmas

Christmas has come and gone another year! We all had a wonderful Christmas with presents, good food, and family. Marisa and Alex must have been very good this year because Santa left them lots of new toys. Marisa got her Easy Bake Oven that she has been dying to get and Alex received "fancy" cars and Lightning McQueen just as he had requested. Alex really loves opening presents now, he tears into the wrapping paper. I am pretty certain that just a year ago he still needed help from Marisa to get all of the paper off...not anymore. Not only that but he loves opening any present, even the ones that are not for him =0)

Carlos helping Alex put together a shark race track.

My mom and brother spent the morning with us opening up presents and eating breakfast. Carlos and I got my mom a pearl necklace. I became aware that she has never had a pearl necklace when we were deciding on jewelry for the wedding, so it made a great gift this year.

I forgot to mention that my brother's dog, Tucker, spent the day with us as well.

Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and are getting ready for the New Year! What is your New Year's Resolution for 2009??

Snow Day and Christmas Program

The kids have already had their first official snow day off from school! And before Christmas this year, which seems very strange. Strange or not they loved getting out of school to build a snowman. As you can see he is fully accessorized with a West Virginia hat on and all. I have to back up a second, Marisa was actually very disappointed to miss school when it snowed...her class was making gingerbread houses that day and she did not want to miss out. Just a side note, they still did get to make their gingerbread houses the following week. Alex had his school Christmas program this past week. He is so funny! He was on the stage and the lights were too bright for him. He came up to the front of the stage to tell me that he needed his sunglasses =0) He did great and rang his bells and danced....he did a lot of dancing!!

My little reindeer!

Well the clock is ticking and I have a lot to do still before Christmas day..which is now in 5 days! I have to finish my shopping, clean the house, and wrap presents. We are trying to keep Christmas low key this year. The kids wish lists are really not all that outstanding and Carlos and myself said that we would keep our gifts to each other at a $50 minimum to keep costs low. Since the wedding, our savings is a bit lower than I would like so we are trying to rebuild that and just not go overboard with gifts. I am just excited to spend the day with the family! I would like to think that I might get another post in before the big day, but if I don't Merry Christmas!!

I've been "Tagged"

Ok so my friend Tiana "tagged" me. I am to go to my pictures open the fourth folder and select the fourth picture and explain the picture....well here it is! Pleasant Hill Mansion at the Governor's Club. I took this picture to show my florist for our wedding. This is obviously the front of the mansion where we were married. This picture does not make it look all that exciting, but the night of our wedding it looked so great all lit up!! Now I am suppose to pick two people to "tag" now...I choose my great friends Laura and Lauren. Have fun girls!!

Tis the Season!!

Well we are officially ready for the holidays! Except for finishing shopping, we have been to see Santa already and the house and tree are decorated. The kids are sporting all of their Christmas clothes now and we have already seen a few of our favorite Christmas movies...I feel so accomplished! We have done all of this and it is only the 10th of December. Actually I guess that isn't that good, but I'm still happy with what has been done!
So as I already mentioned, we went to the mall last Monday night to see Santa. Marisa and Alex looked great and even allowed me to get a great picture of them. We only had to wait for about 10 minutes to see Santa, and then we were happy with the second picture they took. The first one was great of the kids also, but Santa had his eyes shut...way to go Santa! So toy requests have been reported to Santa so now we will just have to wait and see what he brings on Christmas day! This past Monday night we decorated our tree!!! It looks great by the fireplace and stockings!! I can actually say that decorating the tree is an enjoyable holiday chore to me. I think it is fun to get the ornaments out of the crates. It is funny how a year can go by, but when you find one of your favorite ornaments it seems like it has been forever since you have seen it!! I have a few ornaments like that...it doesn't matter that I see them every year at Christmas, I still am happy when I see them all over again! Marisa was a big help this year, Alex too. He just did not understand why some of the ornaments that looked just like his toy cars could be ornaments and had to be placed on the tree ( and the very top of the tree so he couldn't grab them). Once he got over that, he really enjoyed the tree.

And finally below, is "Bob" our Elf. For those of you who are not familiar with the Elf on the Shelf, I will enlighten you! The Elf on the Shelf is this cute book that comes with your very own elf like the one shown below. The story tells you that this is one of Santa's elves that has been chosen for your family. During the day he hangs out somewhere in your house, nothing really fun about that. His job is to watch little boys and girls during their days and takes note of who is naughty and who is nice. Once children are asleep he magically flies back to the North Pole to give report to Santa. By morning he is back at your house, but he is in a different location to watch for the day. Marisa and Alex love getting up every morning and finding where the elf is for the day. We started this tradition last year and Marisa loved it, so we have to continue this year. And this year, Alex understands a bit better. This morning, Bob was in the kitchen in one of our holiday baskets looking out towards the living room.

So today I am going to try and battle the mall and Target! I am off of work today because I am working this weekend and would love it if I could get the majority of my shopping done. Wish me luck!

Potty Training

So the last week while my Mom was out of work as well as Alex, we started the potty training process. Although, if you ask Carlos he began the process because he got Alex to poop in the potty first. We have both big boy underwear and pullups, but I think pullups are too much like diapers so we put the boy in big boy underwear. He was not sure about them at first, but now he loves picking out which ones to wear. His choices are plain white, Disney Cars or Disney characters. He has actually done very well. He can go pee pee great now. He will tell us that it is "pee pee time" and we run in there and he takes care of business with a big excting scream when he is done. Now going poop in the potty is a bit different. Basically we have spent time in the bathroom and just hope that he does that. Although we do think he knows when he has to go and now is holding it. Pretty much he is on an every other day schedule with this. Last week, I spent several evenings in the bathroom with Alex coloring, reading, playing with cars all in hopes that we would have results. As promised by my Mom (Ga Ga) we went to Chuck E Cheese on Sunday to celebrate Alex's accomplishments. He had a great time!! And he even stopped playing to go pee pee. I am so proud of him.

The whole family went to Chuck E Cheese. I swear I think Carlos has as much fun as Marisa and Alex. Just a minute ago while typing this Alex came up to me and said "pee pee time" He is such a big boy now!!