Happy New Year!

Wow! Another month gone and another year! How come in the good ol' "school days" time seemed to poke along so slowly (will I ever graduate?) and now it seems to warp by?
Just life, I guess.

After getting seven Christmas boxes mailed to family this year (I always tell myself I will get them out the first week of December...best laid plans) and getting the tree and doing all to get ready for the big day, we had a nice Christmas here at home this year. The Mommy had a great idea of eating out at Olive Garden for dinner since she did the cooking for Thanksgiving, but that proved stupid. Yep, it was closed—as so many others. But what luck! Our fav Chinese restaurant was open until 10pm! We even got 10% off our tab. We gave a nice tip, as the smiley waiter said "our gain was his pain". We all enjoyed a delicious plate of Mu Shu Chicken and Fried Rice.

And Christmas, of course, is much more than food, family and the requested doll house to Cali from Santa (he delivered!), it's about our Saviour. I read Luke 2 on Christmas Eve, but I couldn't help thinking of Mary, the mother of Jesus, this year with a sweet young baby of my own. How strong she must have been to try and understand His mission and ultimate sacrifice. She truly is a woman of courage and strength. And how fortunate and lucky are we that He finished all that was asked of Him for our sakes.

We decided to take pictures of the girls this year ourselves(see pic above.) They didn't turn out too bad considering one was floppy and the other has a short attention span! They truly bring many gray hairs, but a lot of joy, too.



Carice has to have a couple of sessions of physical therapy. She is favoring one side to lay on giving her a flat spot on her head. It's mild, but her ped thought it would help and keep her from having to wear a helmet to correct the shape. So, we will be getting that scheduled this month. She is just growing like a beautiful flower and is the yummiest to kiss and snuggle. And she actually sleeps! Unlike someone small and blonde that also lives in this house!


Cali is full of energy and full of funny/interesting words. We think Dr. Seuss is channelling her! She will be a great story teller/ writer someday with all the twists and turns she puts on the English language. :) And it is exciting for us to see her learning to read and write already. She is signed up for My Gym... (Gymboree on steroids!) so Saturdays will be class and Thursdays will be *free play* where she can go just to burn off that energy.

Rick is knee deep in website design... he and his business partner are getting ready to launch another CafePress store, TV Teez. They had a great month for Nov/Dec at Detour Designables selling 760 t-shirts! And he's waiting to hear from his 'day job' at DexMedia if he was selected to do spec ads solely, meaning he will get to be creative everyday by designing ads from scratch. It's fun having an artist in the house!

And as for the Mommy...she is in the cooking/baking mood. I found a recipe for Alfredo Sauce off the Olive Garden Website. Tried it out for New Year's Eve dinner. Darn my French Canadian blood! Oh well, it was better than the jar-stuff. I think I will give it another whirl; tweaking the recipe a little bit and seeing what happens. And since organics is my *passion* I am going to bake my own organic bread. YYyyyeeah. Wish me luck as I am NOT using a bread maker. However, I do have a lovely, curvy dough hook for my Kitchen Aid mixer that will be assisting me...can't you just smell it baking? MMmmm....:)