A Visit with Santa

My good friend Mary happens to have a very close connection to Santa Claus.  She was able to arrange for us to have a visit with him last year and it was so very special.    I started planning another visit for this year way back in the summer (so unlike me to be so on top of things!!).  And I'm so excited to say the event was a blast!!  We kept it pretty intimate (which is sometimes hard to do when most of my friends have more than one child!).  We were joined by our closest friends and the brunch was such a wonderful time (though some of our besties were very sick and couldn't make it . . . we send major get well wishes out to them!!)

{And I have to throw a major shout-out to my mom & Aunt Anna Marie.  Tim ended up having to travel overseas for work again, so I foolishly thought I could pull off all of the prep and gifts and crafts and food and toddler wrangling for the brunch myself.  But boy . . . having 2 sets of extra hands around was SUCH an amazing help.  There is NO way the party would have been such a success if it weren't for them.  So thank you!!!}

My aunt helped with the photography while I was drinking my mimosa socializing.   And I wanted to include them all since Tim is still out of town and hasn't seen them yet (and be warned -- if I get my act together you may just all be bored with some video from the event, too!).

Things to note:

•  We are lucky enough to have a Santa's elf staying with us this holiday season.  His name is Boyd.  You'll see a picture of him in the montage.
• Unlike last year (or even last weekend at the mall), Kendyll LOVED Santa.  I mean, freaken L-O-V-E-D Santa.   You'll notice she is in almost every picture with him.  That's because she wouldn't leave his side.  And I apologize to all of our guests who probably have to crop K out of their family photos with Santa.  She was really, really attached to him.
• Everyone made Santa pictures while at the party (thanks to Ashley picking up supplies).  I've been told by Mary that Santa will be hanging the pictures in his workshop.  So cool!
• I want to give another major shout-out to Jenn's husband Jason.  Originally the party was to include other dudes, but illness, travel and other unforseen circumstances caused him to be the only male there (well, over 3 years old and besides the guest of honor).  So J -- I'm sorry!  I promise we will do an adults only event -- including husbands!! -- very soon!  You are a trooper!

Enjoy the show!

"Visit with Santa"

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Sweet sweet Black Friday

If you know me in real life or through FB you know I hate people.  I mean, I work in HR, I have freak show twins who draw lots of attention and people drive me nuts.  So I would be the last person on Earth you would think loves Black Friday, right??  Oh man, it is my most favorite day of the year!

For the past few years the ladies would go out at the pre-butt crack of dawn to do our shopping.  In recent history we've traveled down to the outlet mall and scored major deals without messing with big crowds because we timed it just right.  It was fabulous.

This year turned into a year of mega doorbusters and all nighters.  And it was SO MUCH FUN!!  We started Thanksgiving evening with our normal routine of looking through ads and strategizing our shopping plan.  My mother-in-law, mom and I decided to do Toys-R-Us when it opened at 10pm and then we would head home, sleep a bit and then go as a bigger group down to the outlets.  Well, I'll save all the gory details but we ended up waiting in line in the freezing cold rain for 2 hours to get in to shop for about 5 min.  But it was fun and we scored what we wanted (thanks to my friend Marie who was also shopping at TRU at another location . . . we were timed about the same distance in line and we were able to score something from her list and she scored something from ours.  All about teamwork!).

After that excitement we decided to just go for it and stay up & shop all night.  I dropped my mom off at home (she is the smart one) and I put on some dry clothes and headed out to pick up Debbie again.  We tooled around a bit waiting for Target to open (like we tried to shop in Old Navy, but with a line 1.5 hrs to check out we wisely decided we didn't need anything from ON that badly so we ended up going out for a bite to eat).

On our Target list was a new 40 in TV for the playroom (which we had no chance of getting since we decided not to wait in line outside in the freezing cold for 3+ hours), a new Dyson (which is something I've wanted for a LONG time) and a few other smaller items like slippers & such.  We got in line about 15 min before the doors opened with the expectation that we would be leaving with just the slippers.  But thanks to a couple of random acts of kindness from strangers we scored this




AND this


So very awesome.  And totally fun.  I think I'm still high from the rush of Black Friday shopping!! (sadly, the outlet mall wasn't all that this year.  Yes, we did still go down there and yes Debbie & I were up for some 30+ hours). 

But oh how I love the Dyson!!  Look -- this is how much Tabasco hair it picked up on my first swipe (and this was AFTER a very recent sweeping with our old vacuum).  Awesome!




We are already stoked to plan for next year.  We definately want to do the doorbusters again -- and yes, we are crazy! 

Let's Play Catch-up {aka belated Thanksgiving update}

Holy Moly, as Bennett would say!  I know this update is much delayed, but things have been VERY busy around here (as you'll see from the shit-ton of posts I have scheduled to hit here over the next week or so). 

So to catch every one up . . .

We hosted Thanksgiving.  This year we had a total of 14.  Us, my parents, brother Mark, Tim's parents, Tim's Aunt Nanci, Uncle Ted, Aunt Elaine, Uncle Brian and cousin Brian.  Whew. 

The weekend involved a bit of hanging around

And drinking {for the record, Bennett is drinking WATER with Tim & Nick}

Relaxed and vegged out

And played with our family

It was a wonderful weekend!  And Black Friday was amazing this year.  But more to come on that one next . . .

Tidbits

{Not to be confused with Timbits from Tim Hortons.  Mmmm, donuts}

We're busy getting ready for the Thanksgiving holiday.  For the 6th year in a row Tim & I are hosting our favorite holiday.  We'll be heading out Wednesday night to celebrate with some friends, Tim will be cooking up a delish meal on Thursday, and the ladies (me, Nana Debbie, Grandma Angie, Aunt Nanci & Aunt Elaine) will be heading out at the pre-buttcrack of dawn for Black Friday shopping.  It's the most glorious time of the year!!

But since I've neglected the blog yet again, I thought I'd post a few random updates:

 - KENDYLL POOPED ON THE POTTY!!  Gross, right?  But in our house this is a momentous occasion!  It happened a week ago Sunday and she was quite proud of it.  It probably won't happen again for another 3 months, but we'll take it.

 - Speaking of gross things, here is a funny exchange from a morning last week:
Kendyll - "I need a diaper change" (she only tells us this when she's gone #2)
Me - "Ok K, just a sec"
K - "I NEED A DIAPER CHANGE!"
B - "Yeah, Tendal, you stink"

 - Despite the horror and somewhat disgust about those who already have holiday decorations up & lit before Thanksgiving (the most glorious holiday ever), I am proud to announce I not only have my holiday cards ordered, but they are also already stuffed & addressed and ready to be mailed out the first week of Dec!  And I might add that I love them more than anything (I'm super, uber proud of how they turned out!!).  I'll be pimping Shutterfly again, soon, but I'll leave you with this sneak peek (which is NOT the photo in the cards, but from the session where our card photo came from . . . major thanks to miracle worker and photographer Ashley for these awesome pics!!).

Oh yeah, that update

I think I promised, oh, ages ago, an update about all that B&K are up to these days.  Where do I even begin??

-  The time change was a bitch.  Kendyll was already waking up early on a daily basis for some reason (though she did give me two days of "sleeping in" until 7 when Tim was in Istanbul).  They are both fighting little colds, so that doesn't help.  But I'll put it this way . . . I'm often asking myself why we thought it was a good idea to buy her a twin bed vs. a full-sized bed (and also why couldn't Bennett be the one who requires company at night.  In his giant full-sized bed)???

- Speaking of Bennett and sleep, his imagination is often getting the best of him these days.  Several times a week he talks about the "monsters" in his room.  Or our house (esp. if he has to go in a dark room).  I know he is probably seeing shadows -- or remembering some scary Scooby Do episode or something -- but every once & a while I'll let my imagination get the best of me, too.  ::my son does not see dead people::  ::my son does not see dead people::  Thankfully, a good friend suggested we pretend to spray "monster spray" to keep them away and that has really been doing the trick.  Now when Bennett enters a dark room (or his bedroom), he puts up his index finger and "spppppprrrsssh" sprays for monsters all while saying "no monsters in here" (with a thick New England accent, I might add.  Where does that come from???).

- They LOVE to read.  I mean freaken love to read.  And I'm not talking about US reading to them.  I'm talking THEY read the books to us before bedtime now.  And they both have pretty good memories.  Normally if we've read the book to them once they can recite them back to us (or at least get the main gist on every page).  I really need to get this on video.  Aunt Nanci would be so proud.  :) And for the record, here are some of their current favorites:

{the last two are my favs, too}

- They really care about each other.  It is sweet to see them so concerned when the other gets hurt (well, unless they are the cause for the hurt, that is).  They are much better at sharing and taking turns.  And they still love to help out with Tabasco -- especially scolding him when he steals their food or goes into the play room when he isn't supposed to be there anymore (because he steals their food).

- We're getting excited for the holidays.  B&K have long been exceptional singers of songs such as the ABCs and Twinkle Little Star and Wheels on the Bus and Itsy Bitsy Spider.  But now we're starting to add in goodies such as Jingle Bells.  And they are fascinated with Santa (which is a good thing because we are hosting a little party in Dec with some of our best friends and Santa is going to join us again this year). 

I'm sure there are a gazillion things I should add to this post, but this is good for now.  I'll leave you with a couple of adorable pictures Ashley sent me today (which reminds me . . . we got their school pictures proofs last week -- holy cow do they look like real little people.  I'll try to add a scan once we receive the pics in a couple of weeks).


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Halloween Weekend part 2

On Sunday we packed up and met Nana & Papa for breakfast (funny story -- the bitchen Pacifica has 3 rows of seats and so we didn't have to bring 2 cars, Papa rode in the 3rd row.  Kendyll kept saying "Papa, you ride in the trunk?".  They thought it was hilarious that Papa was in "time out" and riding in the trunk).

We then took a trek up to Leeds Farm for Ava's birthday party (although we technically missed the party . . . it was scheduled for during naptime, so we went up early and still had a BLAST. We plan to celebrate with Ava on her birthday later this month).  B&K had visited the farm a few weekends ago with Nana & Papa and when Tim found out he would be traveling this week I asked if they wanted to go again (because trust me -- there is NO WAY I could have done "zone" defense and handled B&K there by myself this weekend.  Man-on-man is the way to go!).  We had a fabulous time, although the weather was very cold and windy!  Here are some pics from our morning:

"Leeds Farm 10.31.10"

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Once B&K got up from their nap I threw on their costumes and we headed up to Boo at the Zoo.  I wanted to do something on Halloween (since our stupid Beggar's Night was so early this year).  Although we were only there for a short time, it was fun nonetheless.  And we were excited to have our friends, the Murray Boys, join us, too!

Halloween Weekend (aka I am so freaken tired)

As Bennett would say "Holy Moly!".  To say we had a busy weekend is an understatement.  It was so busy, in fact, that I plan to split the recap up in two posts.

Saturday was filled with a picture party (hopefully with at least one decent picture for holiday cards).  Then in the afternoon we went to a birthday party to celebrate Payton's first birthday and Avery's third birthday.  It was at a new, hip kid hang-out in town, Firefly Cafe.  Very, very cool.

Since Tim is out of the country I went a little camera happy trying to capture the fun so he could "live" it with us.    Enjoy the pictures!

"Firefly Cafe 10.30.10"

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