And a Happy New Year!

We headed up to New York for the New Years on Wednesday. There was lots of jumping from house to house to celebrate Christmas with all of our family. But, all in all the 4 days were at times a bit of a blur but, definitely wonderful!

Here's a short recap: We watched tons of great movies; Four Christmases, Date Night, Inception, Legend of the Guardians, Karate Kid.

We ate lots of great food! But, our families favorite that I think is going to become a tradition each time we are together: Buffalo Chicken Wing Dip... I like it best with celery, my brother well, he'll smear that stuff on anything... it's just that good!

And so now here are some pictures.... starting with the beautiful J's.... Jen and Jenna.

And the boys... playing video games, of course! When we got there you could find each one of the kids (with the exception of Jenna and Eli) upstairs all sitting in a row on a bed with a video game in hand.

And here's the two smallest.... just wait til next year. Hopefully they'll be best friends just as their siblings all are. And basically the whole time we were there they sat around...

and sat around some more....

and worked on some teeth... Jenna actually got one while there and worked on her other top tooth also...

and the tree... it has sparkles on it, and Jenna was very intrigued.

And then we opened our gifts...

Gracie just loves her "Fancy Pancy" book.

After the kids all went to bed, the adults all had a White Elephant gift exchange.

Here is Chelsea opening her box of VHS tapes. The box actually went home with Jennifer, while Bryant ended up with Andrew's helicopter and I came home with a box of old CD's.

And while we were at Bryant's families house the kids got some fun gifts too. Here is Gracie with her cousins having a tea party.

We discovered once we got back to Virginia that Jenna wasn't the only one teething. Eli got his first tooth on the drive back home! This picture isn't the best, but it was very difficult to get a picture of the tooth without Eli sticking his tongue out to eat.

Merry Christmas...

Our visit with Santa was brought by the Fort Belvoir Fire Department on the Wednesday night before Christmas. Santa was kind enough to visit all the children on Fort Belvoir and hand out candy canes to them.

Thursday we made Gingerbread "girls and mans".

We opened our stockings on Christmas Eve.

And then once the kids were tucked in tightly to bed... Santa came. When taped with our video camera using night vision, he actually was pretty convincing... to our children.

Then Christmas morning came...

Home for Christmas...

Bryant got home Wednesday night and just in time to cuddle with his boys and then get ready for Christmas.

She's Got Skills....

The skills...

Whewww, all that work and then it was time to perform. However, our little Ballerina wasn't feeling very well... she had a runny nose and was sleepy. So she didn't give it her all, and was distracted very easily. ... the same with her tap dance. I took videos of those dances too, but the file was too large to upload. Boo :( She really did do very well, seeing how she did not feel well. Can't wait for the big performance in the spring!

Weighting In...

Eli is finally getting over his miserable weekend. That little boy had his 6 month shots on Friday morning and sure enough, just as always, they were followed by a low fever and just plain misery. He is now feeling much better, with the exception of a snotty nose, and currently is snoozing away for an evening nap. Here's his stats:

• Weight: 16 pounds 5 ounces, 53rd percentile
• Height: 27.4 inches, 91st percentile
• Head circumference: 17.4 inches, 75th percentile

"I can not believe she did that!"

...that was the main phrase spoken between Bryant and I this evening. But, then again every girl has her own story.... I think it's a right of passage. This is what I'm talking about....

I was upstairs hanging a curtain and both Nathan and Gracie were downstairs. Gracie is playing a computer game and Nathan is playing Legos and watching Gracie play the game too. I hear Nathan say (with no alarm in his voice or any type of urgency at all), "Mom, Gracie's cutting her hair.". I think, no she's not, she knows better than to play with scissors... she must be playing a game that involves cutting and styling hair. And Nathan says nothing else, so obviously there is no concern... and I'm almost done hanging this curtain, I'll be down there in a minute to see what's going on, if anything is. A few minutes pass, then Nathan runs up the stairs yelling, "Mom, Gracie is cutting her hair!!". I run down the stairs and see this... Gracie is sitting in the computer chair with a pair of kid scissors in her hand and some nice long locks on the desk, Bryant is on Skype. This is the funny part to me. Bryant called the home computer on Skype and Gracie answers (since she's already at the desk). The first thing Bryant says is, "Gracie are you cutting your hair?! " followed by "Nathan!... Nathan! Go get mommy!!!". And me I'm upstairs hanging a lovely curtain... this cracks me up! Luckily she didn't really do any noticeable damage, so I won't need to take her anywhere. But, apparently she thought it was time for her hair cut... funny thing is that I was actually planning on going this week!

See, no damage. Well, not unless you really look for it.

Give me a yard of fabric and some chocolate and just see what I can do...

We have our tree skirt on the kids' tree. A yard of fabric, some scissors and my sewing skills got us to this point.... Please don't expect fringe or fluffy white stuff attached around the edges. We are just lucky that this turned out decent and not into some ill-shaped nightmare!

I also need to share with you this wonderful Chocolate Bread. It is heaven in a chocolate form. The picture isn't too fantastic because: 1. I've been hiding it in the fridge from my children and 2. They have ate all but these last 2 pieces (so, I don't have much to work with). Here's the recipe. Happy Holiday cooking!

And then there's these two guys. I love this picture, they look so much alike! And Eli's shirt is great but, Nathan is the one with chocolate on his face!