Our crazy friends

We had two other couples over at our house for NYE. After the ball dropped, things got crazy. : )

New Year's babies

We had friends over for New Year's. It was really fun to have so many kids! One slept the whole time, but that was great to letting our friends stay for midnight. Another (in the stripey pjs) left before, but a third came at 10 and stayed up until midnight with Anna. Fun!

Bonding

Yoshi and I hung out tonight, just the two of us watching Golden Girls episodes together. I think he missed most of the episodes bc he was napping.

New office

Katie and I moved into a new office today. She had a terrible space in, essentially, a hallway. We're going to get a cube wall between us, but it's already really great (even if we already saw a body getting loaded into a hearse...).

New book

I started "My Life In France" tonight. I'm excited about diving into it.

Terrible view

Even with the sunrise in the background, the view from my bus stop is not very appealing. Joe and I have always talked about buying and completely redoing this convenience store. It's so gross, but the neighborhood is so nice.

Snowman

I had to get a picture of this snowman tipping his hat in front of this palm tree. This family has the palm up all year. It's funnier in a snowstorm with the snowman.

Secret Santa

We exchanged our secret santa presents tonight at supper club. We decided to eat out instead since none of us have felt like cooking.

A touch of winter

It didn't snow on Christmas. In fact, it rained, but now it's good and cold -- and snowy.

Hedgehogs are cute

Edie got me this bag for Christmas off Etsy. I'm in love with it.

A moment

Something about the way she's looking up at this moment, with her bottom lip sucked in and her lashes so long, I dunno. It melts me.

Sander

I got Toaster an electric sander for Christmas. He was totally surprised. Now he won't have achy fingers and elbows from sanding his guitars.

Bubble bubble pasta pot

Toaster and I opened a couple presents on Christmas Eve. He got me this awesome pasta pot for my homemade pasta - strainer and steamer basket included. It's awesome.

Quack Quack

Yeah, I have no idea how to carve a duck.

Christmas is for tattoos

This is one of seven new temporary tattoos Anna put on today. This one is so pretty, I'm tempted to get it on me, permanently!

Cheers!

To start off the holiday festivities we had John and Tina over for some appetizers, wine and hot buttered rum. Yum!

Wrapping presents

I spent about an hour wrapping Toaster's presents while watching "Christmas Vacation," one of my favorite movies of all time. Toaster made out pretty good this year between me, my mom and his secret santa.

Berenstein Bears

Even though we're at the National Museum of Play all the time, we found a new place in it to play. The Berenstein Bears room was the perfect mesh of activities for Anna and Parker.

Redesign

I am trying to move some things around my office; it feels cluttered. I've been watching too much HGTV and feeling envious. I want a more cohesive look. Any ideas?

Santa's message

Santa sent Anna a video message by email because he knew we wouldn't have time to sit on his lap this year. She was pretty impressed that he knew what she wanted and even had a picture of her in his book.

Italian Cookies

These were my favorite cookies that my mom made when we were growing up. This past week, she sent me all of her Christmas cookie recipes by request. So today I finally made all of them. I had so much fun. These are still my favorite. : ) I haven't had my mom's cookies in years. It's been so long I can't remember.

Anna's a natural

Grandpa Rick lets Anna play his drums when we visit. She's really into them.

Big girl

Parker got to sleep in a big girl bed at Nana and Grandpa Rick's. Guess it made her think she was big enough to undress herself, too. Silly kid.

Jake

This is our beagle friend down the street, Jake. He is the cutest thing. I want him to be our dog -- and in a way he kind of is bc he's always off leash and goes with us on our walks.

Snow!

We got our first snow today. I got to leave work early and take Yoshi for a walk in it. He was less enthused about it than I was.

Little brass at lunch

The Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra's brass section played a concert in our cancer center today so I went down and listened for a while. I love brass.

Evidence of a good night

I meant to take a picture while my girls were over tonight, but I got so engrossed in the conversation, I completely forgot. Here is evidence of our good -- and late! -- night.

Royal typewriter

My typewriter was looking very handsome in the sunlight today. : )

Spanikopita

Just finished making spanikopita for a potluck at work tomorrow. Toaster is mad that he can't have any of it.

Peanut Butter Cups

I'm making peanut butter cups for the kids' teachers. Between the two of them, there are seven teachers to buy for. So I thought I'd make something yummier than I could buy (for less).

Cheezth

I don't take pictures with my phone anymore (no memory, won't send to my email -- darn new phone), but Parker still pretends to take photos with it. Funny.

Chrtistmas cactus

My mom always had a Christmas cactus in our house, so I decided to finally buy one for ours. Christmas makes me want to incorporate my family's traditions into our own.

Holiday cookies

I packed up the cookies I made for some of our neighbors. Now I have to make cookies for just me and Toaster bc there's hardly any left for us. : (

New Mac

Joe's office needs him to work from home sometimes, and they want to be more flexible when the kids are sick, so they bought him a new Mac and all the software for him. Nice! As long as it doesn't mean 12-hour workdays!

Christmas cookies

These have become my favorite Christmas cookie that I make. They are chocolate wafer cookies dipped in peppermint chocolate. They taste like a Girl Scout cookie.

Photo shoot

Our friend Richard Baker came over to take some photos for us, and he got this gem. It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, like I just sipped some scotch or something. Hee.

Festiveness

We bought these candle holders at a yard sale for $1. I couldn't wait to put them out for Christmas. Our house is feeling very festive these days.

Christmas dancing

Somehow dancing to Christmas music devolved into pretending to be scissors on the floor.

First Christmas present!

Parker is much happier about this Vancouver vest Joe's aunt sent for Christmas than she looks in this photo. It's actually the first matching clothes they've had. Why didn't I think of that before?!

Trimming the tree

We drank wine and shared Christmas memories while trimming the tree. It was a great night. (We took so many photos it was so hard to choose which one to post. So I went with an overall of the tree.)

Stickers

One end is Parker's and one end is Anna's. Can you guess which is which?

Peacefulness

There was something very quiet and peaceful about this little door knob in the sunlight this morning.

Carolina Theatre

Toaster and I saw "It's A Wonderful Life" on the big screen tonight at our historic theater downtown. It was so beautiful on the big screen. Such a great film.

The Tree's books

My Tree team friends from Picture the Impossible got together over the weekend. And the lovely gamers also brought books for the children's hospital. Here's Mary, one of our child life specialists holding them all! Isn't she sweet?!

Birds

I bought this cute barrette at the indie market I told you about. I have this thing about birds. I don't really like real life birds but I love cute little drawings of them. I'm starting to own a lot of bird stuff.

I did it!

I rested it on the coffee table in front of the tree and finally got a decent photo. It made for an ominous angle, but I kind of like it.

Lego Love

Anna is really enjoying her Lego Advent calendar.

Cupcakes really do make everything better

After a long afternoon at the clinic at Wake Forest, Toaster treated me to a red velvet cupcake. The appointment went great. I'll send you an email about it this week.

Remember this table?

Sold it and its four chairs for $50 on Cragislist. Wish I'd listed it for more. 14 people wanted it. Definitely too low.

Jamestown Parade

We took Yoshi for the first time to our town's holiday parade. He barked at the horses. Ha! And he tried to eat the candy that the kids were throwing from the floats.