Happy New Year!!!

Wow it is hard to believe that 2009 has come and gone. I feel blessed to have had such a great year and hope you do too. I look forward to what God has in store for me and my family in 2010. I want to give a quick late Happy Birthday to my loved ones who celebrated in December. Todd's cousin Lana's husband Chris and his cousin Michael's wife Michelle both celebrated a birthday in December and I hope it was wonderful as did Todd's Aunt Mary Alice and Todd's best friend Jason, hope yalls birthday was wonderful too!

Well December came and the kids were so excited to celebrate Christmas. They love to decorate the tree.

We spent the Sunday before Christmas celebrating with Todd's family. First with his parents and brother:

We all got some great stuff including this:

Then after lunch we met up with the some more of Todd's family. His cousin's were in town with their kids so we celebrated with them for a little while:

After fun playing Amanda got a gingerbread house out to decorate. Only the girls helped. Well Dylan started out helping, but decided to go play:

On Christmas Eve my side of the family comes over for dinner and fun. It is great spending time with the people who mean most in your lives. Here are my parents grandchildren minus the oldest, my nephew Harley, who wasn't there:

The kids couldn't wait to open their presents:

The adults in my family do a white elephant gift exchange. You know were you pick numbers and then you can either open a gift from the center or you can steal one that someone else has already opened. It is a lot of fun, but we didn't do much stealing this year. The gift my dad opened had all kinds of goodies in it like these, isn't he cute:

After all the presents were opened and everyone was filled up on Mexican food, it was time to get ready for the arrival of Santa. Emily had made some reindeer food at school and sprinkled it out on the lawn:

Then off to bed the kids went. JT woke up very early the next morning, I think it was like 6:30 or so. I convinced him to lay back down for a little while longer til about 8:30, then we got up and the kids got all their stuff from Santa then it was time to open presents from mom and dad:

I believe everyone got what they wanted! Then we headed over to Mimi and Popsy's for some awesome (as usual) Christmas day food. Believe it or not, I didn't take my camera so no pictures. That night when we came home Aunt Sarah had left a gingerbread house kit at our house Christmas Eve for the kids to do so we did it Christmas night:

New Years Eve we didn't have a big party like we have had in years past as Todd had to get up and go to work early in the morning on New Years Day. We did have family over and cooked and played a little. The kids started off playing Lego Rock Band:

But it didn't take long for the big kids to kick them off so they could play Rock Band 2:

Then it was fireworks time:

We called it an early night and Todd went to bed, but the kids and I stayed up to watch the ball drop and ring in the New Year!

Aunt Christy had bought Dylan a pizza making experiment kit. On New Years Day Dylan wanted to do it. So we took it out and there were enough stuff to make 3 kinds of pizza's so he shared with his brother and sister:

JT had gotten and Ice Cream making kit which we did too, but I didn't get any pictures, we did both the vanilla and the strawberry, but vanilla was everyones favorite!

Now it is January 2010, that is hard to say. I feel like I just graduated high school and got married, it doesn't seem like it has been 15 years ago. In January we have many special birthdays so Happy late Birthday to Ken, who is on the 1st. Then Linus will celebrate his on January 8 and Saliah on January 10, and JT will turn 10 (wow, it doesn't seem possible, that my oldest baby will be 10 ) on January 11. Matthew B, will celebrate his on January 19, with Popsy and Uncle Mike turning another year older on January 24 and Vanessa on January 26. Hope everyones day is special and unforgettable.

Here is to a new year and hope that all your dreams come true. God bless each and everyone!