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We arent doing ANYTHING cool or fun for New Year's but that's ok. Jason has to work today and tommorow (and he has to be at work at a very dark hour) so we'll just treat it as a normal day. Maybe next year we'll live it up! So yall be sure to post about all your wild and crazy new year's adventures so I can live vicariously thru you!
Oh, I've got videos to share, but they'll have to wait until next week I think.
While Emma doenst "get" Christmas yet, she had a fantastic day and loved getting all her presents. It took her awhile to figure out the whole unwrapping thing, but by the end of the day she was a pro. Helping everyone tear off their wrapping paper and bows. :)
The night before...
T
After Santa gave and set out a few unwrapped presents...
Emma came out of her room Christmas morning and saw all of the fun new toys waiting for her and was very happy. (video of that to share later)
Her favorite toy by far was this doll baby I purchased with the gift card from Punchy. Would you believe that whole baby doll set was on clearance at Target for only $10.50???!!! WOW.
In the mornings now, she'll wake up and say "beebee!!" and point to her baby doll. So cute.
.
Emma was crazy spoiled by Jason's family. CRAZY.
This Little People Farm (as well as SIX other gifts) came from Jason's aunt and uncle. God they love that little girl.
After opening presents and playing with them for a few hours, Emma was BEAT.
Jason and spent very very little on each other but we both made some excellent buying choices and ended up with some nice presents.
When Emma woke up from her 2.5 hour nap (!!!!) we headed to the In-laws for Christmas Dinner.
(Why yes! I did bake that pie! And yes, it is the ugliest pumpkin pie known to man! I forgot to turn down the temp after the initial 425 degree setting. Oopps. Still tasted great though. Whew.)
Present Time!
(yes! Another Little People Set!)
For me from SIL.
Jason's gift from his parents?
A new tile backsplash for our kitchen! Not only are they purchasing all of the materials, but they are going to install in this weekend while we are out of town visiting my grandmother! WOW! Great gift.
I'd love to sit and recap exactly what everyone got, but I've got to run pick up Emma.
Love you all!
Ah Christmas is over.
On Christmas Eve, we went to the candlelight service at our church and then hosted a small family gathering at our house. Us, the in-laws, SIL, and Jason's Aunt and Uncle that live in town.
Menu
We had a great time!
(notice Alfred and Bella enjoying the festivities. Holly opted for a nap)
Amazingly, when it was time for Emma to go to bed, we had her give her goodnight kisses to everyone and we took her off and put her to bed and IT WORKED. She goes to bed easily for us, but with all those family members there? And being so loud? I was impressed.
And then she slept until 9am on Christmas morning! (I bet that will never happen again!)
It was nice having the family over to our house. It's small, but it worked out just fine.
From our Family to Yours!
Love,
The Alfredsmom Family
When I got home from work on Friday, there were two packages waiting for me!
Who is it from?
Our Secret Santa! Suki Sumo!
There was all kinds of neat stuff inside for everyone in our family!
Inside the little stocking was a very cute football shaped cookie. Jason and I are still deciding wheither or not it is a dog cookie or not. I think I'll just take a bite tonight to decide. :)
Thank you so much for all the gifts Suki Sumo! You are so thoughtful!
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The other package I knew right away was from Punchy because it was covered in red and green packing tape (her signature shipping move!).
What was inside?
All kinds of neat things! She also include a gift card for Emma for Christmas! Wait until I show you what we got with that card! (I'll show in the post-Christmas recap). I Love it ALL! Thanks so much PUnchy!
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Well, we had a great weekend baking tons of cookies and I would share pictures with you, but I only took pictures of the process, not the result! Ahhh!! So, when when I go back home in a minute, I'll take pictures of the plates of cookies we made for the neighbors and the impromptu gathering we are hosting tonight.
I hope you all have a merry christmas!
Closing? On old house? Not today. When? I dont know. Guess its a busy time of year for the "underwriter" because he is taking his sweet sweet time.
So, in honor of Just Not Worrying, I present Funny Face Friday.
Fresh from the shower. Try and control yourself.
"Jason! Show me your funny face!"
"Oh Come ON!!! Please?? It's for my blog friends...."
Isnt he handsome? :)
Alright people! My holiday work break starts at noon today!! Woohoo! Back in 2008! (Don't worry, I'll check in here and there, it would be severly too much to recap if I waited until January.)
So, we spent our 4th anniversary evening at my office Christmas Party.
When I heard that is when the party was planned for, Jason and I were actually both excited. Free food and drink on our annivesary! Yippee!!
So we dropped Emma off with the in-laws and SIL who is in town for the holidays, and headed to the Big Boss's House.
They had a long driveway that had these luminaries all down both sides.
She had a great sized house (maybe 2500 sqft?) but the layout wasnt my ideal layout, not very open.
She has a screened in back porch where all of the drinks were set up.
There were two kinds of wine, non-alcholic egg nogg, mimosas, and tea and water and beer. I had two cups of egg nogg. :) Why not? :)
Some of the party goers.
My boss is sitting in the chair on the left.
You don't know these people, so why am I showing you their pictures? I dont know.
The bathroom down the hall.
This was funny to me (and hey! maybe you have the same set, and if so, that's ok!) because in 2005, I did a post about gift ideas that had something similiar.
The food.
The menu consisted of:
I've got to be honest- the menu perplexed me. I know we all think about our menus for a LONG time before we have a party, so it just perplexed me that THIS was the menu they came up with. It was not a vegetarian friendly menu. I gave Jason the ham from my biscuit and picked out the shrimp from the casserole. (Normally I am anti-picking out meat and still eating what it was cooked in) The casserole was very good though.
(Here's hoping the Big Boss never finds my blog)
Dessert:
There was a spicy pumpkin pie, and spicy chocolate ginger cake (guessing that's what it was), and cookies.
There was also an antique santa on hand for entertainment.
Jason and I spent the evening sit across the dinner table from a couple that went to our wedding! We went to college with them both, and went to their wedding in June. The groom was the one that caught my garter so that was ironic that we ended up spending our anniversary sitting with them. (Kate got a job where I work a few months ago).
One day, we will treat our annivesaries more appropriately (nice dinner date, maybe a getaway, maybe a card of small gift), but this year its kind of overshadowed by the looming closing on our old house. (currently set for tommorow, we'll see).
Today is my 4 year wedding annivesary! Some days it seems like we havent been married long at all, and some days it seems like we've been married a lot longer than 4 years!
Please notice: Alfred was IN the wedding. Being SUCH a good boy too.
Jason and I were married in the (very old) chapel located at our Alma Mater.
The the wedding party took a brief limo ride over to the local historic Woman's Club house for our reception. The Woman's Club decorates the house beautifully for the holidays, so we really didnt need any more decorations! Great deal.
Pre-Wedding (and if you saw the slide show last year, there are no new pictures here. sorry)
Just Married
The Wedding Party
( Kim is the 2nd girl from the end and her husband is -duh- the Asian guy, my MOH was my friend Jenny, who just got married this summer.)
From the Reception
I planned most of our wedding while Jason was in Army basic training and then in Virigina Beach for Advanced training for 6 months. He graduated AT in late October (his parents went, I had school), we closed on our first house on Halloween, and then he lived at our new house (an hour away) by himself until we got married. I made him sleep in the guest bedroom all that time because the master bedroom was for married people and he wasnt married yet. Teehee.
For our honeymoon, we went to Nassau in the Bahamas to this Sandals Resort. It was an amazing honeymoon. We flew back home on Christmas day and got to open up our christmas presents and all of our wedding presents. Very fun.
We definetly plan to go back there one day. Of course, having two kids will make that goal a bit more...challenging, but we'll find a way, even if we only go for two nights!
Saturday morning we got a package! Pricilla sent us box of home made goodies!
I should have taken a picture of the box, she shipped the gifts in real popped popcorn! What a great idea!
(not pictured, chocolate chip mini loaf, also amount of treats is greater than that pictured)
My favorite? The bone shaped treats. Deeee-licious. ;)
Really, I love the ginger snap looking things. Pricilla told me they are really called, pfeffernusse. They are a German cookie. They are very very good. Check her website later this week for the recipe.
Thanks Priscilla!
Also recently, Emma recieved a darling little holiday outfit from her Aunt Sandy! These picture don't really capture how adorable the outfit is (and we have had tons of compliments on it Sandy! So So cute!), but I knew Sandy would love the pictures of Emma and Alfred.
Thanks Sandy!
When you have kids, everything revolves around them. So, I didnt build my birthday up to be a big deal this year because I just figured Emma would take 1st place and my birthday just wouldnt be able to be a big deal. Basically, Im saying birthdays are the one time of year when you get a free pass to be completely selfish, but when you have kids? You cant be selfish.
BUT! Best Birthday Weekend EVA. It was like everything just magically fell into place. And I really made it a whole weekend of birthday fun.
Friday Night
The in-laws picked up Emma from daycare for us and after work I went home, took a brief nap and the showered up for Jason's departmental dinner at Ryans. Although I do love Ryans, the event was...dull. Basically it was like all 15 or so members of his department came, brought their families, and ate dinner. Not much socializing. We sat at one end of the table and talked with another couple for the evening.
( I tried entirely too hard in this picture)
I didnt realize how...depressing it must be to work in a jail until I met Jason's coworkers. Yes, they are nice people once you get to know them, but they all (and this is going to sound so horrid) seemed like prison workers. Like whatever you think the stereotypical prison workers would be like, it was them. ( And I am seriously not intending to offend anyone becuase Jason works in a prison! And so does his uncle!)
Jason was the youngest by...hmmm. maybe 20 years? And easily the best in shape. Jason's in great shape I think and most of his coworkers were quite obviously not. And they all just seemed to have sad little dark clouds hanging around them. They've all been working there for many many years and its seems to have taken its toll. I dont want that for Jason! I dont want him to end up like that! I just figured he liked his job and his environment, being a Dentention Center instead of an actual prison, wasnt so bad. Well, guess I was wrong. Jason likes the law enforcement field, but I think one day (no time real soon) he might switch over to being a Road officer ( Dep*ty Sher*ff) for the county. At least then he wouldnt be in such a dismal atmosphere all the time.
Then we headed over the in-laws to say good night to Emma. They had offered to keep her for the night so A) I could sleep in on my birthday and B) we could paint Emma's room in the morning. So we went over and put her to bed and headed back home.
Saturday
slept until 9:45!!!! WOOOOOHOOOOOOOO!!! Oh, and it was Glorious.
Then we got up, I watched some tv...
And Jason went to get us some doughnuts!
YUMMY.
He then presented me with my birthday gift, my college dimploma (which had been previously lost), framed!
(Lie and tell me I look beautiful in the morning)
Then we got to work painting Emma's room. It's not finished, but its probably 3/4 complete. We didnt get to one corner area of the room and the ceiling isnt trimmed in the rest, but it wont take long to finish it up. (Whenever we have time! yikes! When we have time- Emma will be in bed! In her room! That we need to finish painting! Sigh)
When all the painting is done, and we had in a few new organizations pieces to help with Emma's growing clothes and toys collections, I'll take pictures of her whole room.
Then I showered up and we headed over to the in-laws to retrieve Emma. They actually expected we wouldnt be by until late afternoon, but we missed her! So, we had lunch with them (sub sandwiches) and socialized for a few hours. My mother-in-law gave me some pretty notecards done by a local artist friend and a gift certificate to TJ Maxx!! Holy Cow! Now I have two GC's to TJ's to use!!!! Wooooohooo! And her rule was I HAVE to use it on myself. No buying Emma anything. Okey Dokey! :) I plan to head over there some time this week and do a little me shopping.
Emma, who declined a nap at her regular nap time (around noon) fell asleep in the car on the way home to our house (4pm) and slept until a little after 6pm! Mommy got to sit around and be lazy and watch even more tv shows! It was heaven.
About 7pm our friends Kim and DT came over to hang out for the evening. Emma rode into the living room on her Dora the explorer car and stopped quickly when she saw them. She probably stayed there for a good 15 minutes, just staring at them. I'm really not sure if she was extra shy because they are strangers to her or because DT in asian and I dont think Emma has ever seen an Asian person before.
Anyway, Emma played with her toys on the far end of the living room (would not get near kim and dt!) and we all talked for about an hour, catching up on life. Then, I told Emma it was bedtime, dressed her in her PJs, and sat with her in the living room for about 20 or so minutes while the boys played Wii (Dt brought his over) and then I carried her off to bed and miraculously, she went to sleep on her own with no trouble. She's usually pretty good about bedtime, but given the late nap, the strangers in the house, and the different bedtime routine, I wasnt sure what would happen. I was truly blessed the weekend with an angel child. :)
So, after talking and playing Wii some more, we all watched Bourne Ultimatum. Better than the 2nd one, and I do love Matt Damon, I guess I just never understood why he needed to remember who he was. I say, Get Over it! Move on! Become someone else! But whatever.
We enjoyed a delightful pistachio birthday cake my MIL had made for me.
If you're like me (chocolate birthday cakes only please), then you were probably as suprised as I was to recieve a pistacio cake. But you know? It was really good! Really really moist. Kim and Dt loved it and by the end of the night 1/2 was gone!
They left close to 2am....when I finally said, "I have to go to bed..." It was great to hang out with them. And equally great that Emma did so wonderfully with them there. I thought surely that having tested fate and staying up that late would mean Emma would want to wake up early Sunday morning, but you know when she (and us) woke up?
10 AM!!!!
I know! The great sleep weekend continues! Amazing.
We headed off to church, then met Jason's parents for a mexican lunch. Their treat, as it was still techincally my birthday weekend. ;)
Then we decided to take Emma up to the mall to see Santa. We have a local mall in RH, but Jason refused to take her there because he thought the santa would be really ghetto. And really, he's probably right. It's a sad mall. But the big mall in Pineville, one week from Christmas??? Oh dear, so so busy.
We found Santa at the North Pole and let Emma watch him from a distance for a while.
She seemed to recognize him (we've been pushing Santa hard in books, tv and figurines) but didnt seem eager to meet him, so we decided not to pay the $15 to have her sit on his lap.
We ran into DT, who works part time at the mall while he goes to school, and Emma recognized him and finally gave him some smiles. Very cute.
We headed back home and that was pretty much it!
I really couldnt have asked for a better Birthday weekend! Thanks to all for the birthday wishes, to Jason for helping make it a great birthday and to Emma for being such an angel all weekend long!
