Holidays

St. Patty’s Day Party

Sarah Holidays

This is the 8th year we’ve had this party, and the 3rd year we’ve asked people to wear silly hats. (Silly hat pictures on Kodak Gallery – requires sign in.) It’s fun seeing how everyone has changed from year to year – especially the children! Somehow we had 32 people in the house and it hardly felt crowded at all. I think it helped that the kids who were Carrie’s age and older all disappeared up to her room for most of the party (and somehow wound up not completely trashing it even!) Now I just have to remember for next year that 6 pounds of corned beef was barely enough and 10 pounds of potatoes was way more than plenty. :)

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Only Six More Weeks?!?

Sarah Holidays

Oh, come on, we live in Rochester. Was there ever any doubt that the groundhog would see his shadow? There’s always six more weeks of winter from today. It’s just whether there will be six more weeks after those that’s in question.

Happy New Year!

Sarah Holidays

We went to a countdown to 6:00 party last night. It was a fun time, and the kids had fun with all the noisemakers. We asked Carrie what she wanted to bring, and she said “penny pasta, carrots and meat.” I put those three ingredients into allrecipes (well, I translated “penny” into “penne” and “meat” into “beef”) and the only recipe that came up was this one. We left out the hot pepper flakes in the dressing, and since there were no bean sprouts to be found at the store we used sugar snap peas instead. I also opted to not put in the green onions, peanuts or cilantro to make it a tad bit more kid friendly. And “penny pasta”? That apparently really means rotini, which is what we wound up using. So a lot of mods. But the dressing is fantastic. I’ve found my new favorite pot luck dish for the year, I think. And the best part is that my kid will actually eat it!

(You can pretend there are resolutions in this post, such as updating my blog more often and keeping my house cleaner, but it’s probably not worth it since they’ll be broken tomorrow.)

Anna’s First Christmas & Christmas Wrap-Up

Sarah Carolyn, Firsts, Holidays

Anna was, I think, the perfect age for a first Christmas. Not quite mobile enough to get into everything yet, but interested and engaged and awed by the lights, the colorful wrapping paper, and the fabulous new toys she could put in her mouth. She’s just thrilled beyond words to be able to roll all over and find a new toy wherever she lands that she can drool on and stuff in her mouth for a bit before she gets bored and rolls around in search of something new.

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Carolyn got her Handy Manny tools and costume from Santa, and couldn’t be more thrilled with them. She’s been using the old-school Fisher-Price phone that Aunt Jeannie got for Anna to pretend to take fix-it calls (I get to play the caller – usually I have a squeaky baby that needs oil!) She also seems to really like her new Sleep Fairy CD – as in, for three nights in a row now she’s asleep before the CD ends. Oh, how I hope this lasts! And the Tinkerbell movie was also a big hit.

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Denis and I? We treated each other to new Wii games: Mario Kart for him and Animal Crossing for me. Because, you know, we have so much free time to play games! But they’ve been a fun distraction at odd moments over the last few days.

All in all, this has been a very fun Christmas, and I’m looking forward to the next several weeks with not much to do or worry about beyond our everyday hectic lives!

Very Patient Puppies

Sarah Carolyn, Dogs, Holidays

So I’m a little late with everything to do with the holidays – including the decorating. Yesterday Carrie and I broke out the “family room” box and decorated the mantel:

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I was fussing with the lights for a few minutes, and when I turned around, Carrie had decorated the dogs:

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Considering the efforts we went through to get the dogs to wear those things for Carrie’s first Christmas I’m flabbergasted. Either the dogs have really mellowed over the past few years, or they’ve realized she’s above them in the pack order…

Santa Visit

Sarah Holidays

I took the girls to the mall today for their “official” Santa visit. (Carolyn has sat on Santa’s lap several times already. She’s a little obsessed.) Anna did surprisingly well considering a) she had just woken up from a nap and b) she’s pretty concerned about being held by people she doesn’t see nearly every day lately.

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Carolyn asked Santa for “Handy Mandy tools, a Handy Mandy tool box and a Handy Mandy costume!” (She insists his name is Handy Mandy, not Handy Manny.) Anna asked Santa for “ah-boo!” Whatever that is.

Happy Fourth!

Sarah Holidays

Thank goodness for great-grandmothers who go shopping and send random things to their great-granddaughters, or Carrie would have been wearing something much less patriotic today! (I kind of totally spaced, and didn’t even think to find something red, white, or blue for her to wear…and the one blue skort she had was in the wash anyway.)

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We pretty much just hung out, worked on the baby’s room some, went to my parents house for dinner, and stayed up really much too late to see if the fireworks that used to be visible from our hill were going to happen. They didn’t but between hanging out around the little open grill we’d used to make s’mores and watching the stars, Carrie didn’t mind one bit.

Oh, and we figured out how to get her to go to sleep right away: keep her up until 10:30!