Happy Birthday Mom

Today is not only the last day of the year...it is also my Mom's birthday!

We now refer to her as MiMi. We all took MiMi out to one of her favorite restaurants in town for lunch. It also happens to be one of my favorites as well. Then we invited her back here for birthday cupcakes which Jackson lovingly made and decorated.

Here is Jackson helping me whip up the icing this morning.

recognize those pjs?

yummy!!!

The finished product with MiMi's presents:

Notice the top row of cupcakes spells "M i M i".

MiMi with Emma before blowing out her candles.

And with Jackson while she reads the card that he picked out for her...

It's time to sing.

Good thing MiMi had three helpers to assist in blowing out all 13 candles.

MiMi, we love you so much. You bring us so much happiness and love on a daily basis! Happy Birthday!!!

Wordless Wednesday - Daddy's Girl

Christmas Morning 2009 - Santa Claus

Merry Christmas!!!

We all were up by 5am...it was not earlier only because I told the boys they could not come out before 5am!!!

Jackson was the first to come down. I met him at the bottom of the stairs and asked him to go get his brother while JC went to wake Emma. In that time, I turned on the Christmas tree lights, started coffee brewing and set the iPod to our Christmas playlist. We always try to have everything on before the boys come in and see "Santa" and their presents for the first time. Our kids get three gifts from Santa - unwrapped, and then they get Mommy and Daddy presents which are wrapped. The presents from Mom and Dad never make an appearance before Christmas morning though! This year, I tried to be organized by choosing a different wrapping paper for each child. That helped when it was midnight and the elves were about to fall asleep!

When everyone came downstairs, there were three sets of very WIDE EYES! The boys were all over the place, and Emma just stood in the middle not knowing what to think!!!

Look closely at the next photo...Jackson has found his "ringing bell" from Santa's sleigh!

Santa brought Emma a kitchen. She has seriously not stopped playing with it! Santa must be very smart!!!

I love this smile on Brendan's face.

Both boys got an autographed baseball by Dustin Ackely (he was the MLB #2 overall draft pick this year). His mom taught me dance lessons when I was little.

Both boys got football jerseys.

And Emma got a cute little pink tutu...

Overall, I would say that the children were very happy with this year's presents. Brendan was especially hard to buy for...this is the first year that he had no toys on his wish list. However, by the looks of things, our children got way more than enough.

We feel so blessed to have had such a wonderful Christmas morning with all THREE children! We wanted this year to be especially memorable, for we know that it was Emma's first Christmas with her forever family.

Christmas Eve 2009

We celebrated Christmas with JC's family on Thursday at his parents' house. We are so fortunate for everyone to live within about 30 minutes of each other.

JC's mom decided to have brunch this year. The hit of the day was definitely the Krispy Kreme donuts. I am not sure I want to know how many Brendan and Jackson devoured.

Then we opened gifts.

JC must have been good...

Jackson loves his P*kemon cards.

Both Brendan and Jackson each got a Wii game.

Emma and her two cousins got their first tricycles. Emma is working on the pedaling.

Emma got her first tea set.

In the afternoon, we came home in time for Emma's nap. Then it was time to get ready for Santa. Jackson and I baked cookies, and we made reindeer food.

Jackson also decided that we should leave carrots for the reindeer this year along with sprinkling the magic food.

Just before bed we changed into our Christmas pjs, and Brendan read 'Twas the Night Before Christmas.

We had a great Christmas Eve, and we all went to bed with visions of sugarplums dancing in our heads!!!

MERRY CHRISTMAS from Our Family to Yours

Christmas Baking

Since we were snowed in this weekend, it provided us the perfect opportunity to bake Christmas cookies. Only Jackson and MK were interested in helping, but what great helpers they were. We had a lot of fun baking sugar, chocolate chip and peanut butter cookies.

And a lot of those tasty cookies have already been eaten....

I am going to need to starve myself after Christmas! :)

The following pictures have NOTHING to do with baking cookies, but I think they are cute and wanted to share them with you.

Big Girl Shoes

Our Snow Princess

Emma loves her thumb! She is such a stinker! :)

Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!

I cannot remember the last time that it snowed before Christmas, but on Friday morning, it started sleeting here in NC. By 2pm, it looked like this in our front yard...

The boys could not wait to get outside since we had an early dismissal from school.

Although there was virtually no snow build up yet, they got out their sleds.

And they started to build a snowman...

But then they dismantled him, and tried to use his body parts as giant snowballs...

By Friday afternoon, the weathermen had forecasted that we may get between 5 to 10 inches. I know this may not be a lot for some people, but up until last year the boys didn't even remember snow lasting for more than one morning. Sooooo...our great friends in Wilmington decided to brave the highways and drive up for some wintertime fun.

And thankfully, MK finally got that snowman built...

On Saturday morning we all got dressed and headed out - even Miss Emma. I am pretty sure that she has already seen more snow in her first winter in St Petersburg than I have my entire life.

I tried to teach Emma how to make a snow angel. She didn't really get it. When she got up, all you could really see was a big indentation that her bottom made. Too funny!

Dad even decided to sled with Emma. He was being goofy wearing the "faux" fur hat that we brought home from Russia.

We all had so much fun this weekend even though we were semi-snowed in. The boys went out for three LONG snow sessions yesterday, and then they were back out for two more today. I have to say that it was a nice surprise to see snow especially with everyone's Christmas decorations out, but I will not miss the "mess" that playing in the snow brings. For example, I have mopped up the floor and run the dryer ALL weekend long trying to keep ski bibs and gloves dry. I am glad that we saw so much snow on a weekend, but I am now ready for it to melt away! :)