Happy Easter

This weekend

Another one gone by way too fast with so little accomplished from the long list of things to get done...Oh well.  Overall it was a good weekend none the less.  Noah had a tournament on Saturday where he took first place for forms and second for sparring.  Here are the many faces of Noah...which is your favorite?

In the meantime, Kylie was working on her special stepping stone at CCD.  This is something that all the first communion students do each year as part of their celebration.  Here are a few shots of her & the finished product:

 

They will be ready for them to pickup when they do plantings behind the church to get ready for first communion.  Beyond that Jason has been working non-stop on the bathroom remodel, I've been working on plans for the upcoming parties, shopping, trying to find the rest of the house a little.  All this while doing our best to keep the family in our prayers....few extra prayers lately for my mom, Grammi & Joey.  Everyone needs to get well and stay well please :o)  Love to all and good night!

Noah's Belt Test Tonight

Wow...over 2 months!!  That has to be a record for terrible blogging :o)  This will be a relatively short one, because it is rather late, but wanted to pass along Noah's good news.  He successfully passed his latest belt test tonight and became a Black Gup White Belt.  This is it...no more stripes after this.  Next step is full Orange belt in June :o)  Here are a few pics (I'll try to play catch up soon with other things that have happened over the last couple months so stay tuned:

Christmas Begins...

What a weekend!!  Minus the work aspect it was a great weekend with friends and family.  Started yesterday with the annual cookie bake off.  Jason is the king of cookie baking in the house.  He insists on making them all from scratch which is way more time consuming, but they are yummy :)  Many, many batches were made and here are some pics of the baker and his helpers:

Then this afternoon we had the LeVasseur's & Martinelli's over to visit.  It got a little loud at times with all the kids running around, but it was sooo much fun!!  We definitely don't take enough time throughout the year to enjoy each others company so I enjoyed every minute of this afternoon.  Kylie was in 7th heaven when the twins got there.  Within the first few mins I look over and see her and Rylee cuddling on the couch...Awhh:

 Later in the afternoon we heard sirens outside and had a special visitor come to the door...Santa!!  The kids were sooo excited, running laps around as they waited and then patiently waiting with big grins for their names to get called.  It was so cute:

 Unfortunately, all good things come to an end.  Everyone all bundled up ready to take on the cold.  Thank you to everyone for making this afternoon so special.  Things have been a little crazy lately and the downtime was exactly what the doctor ordered.  Good night little ones!

Gingerbread Jamboree

Got to escape from work for a little while to enjoy the morning with my favorite little man.  Noah's kindergarten classroom made their gingerbread houses out of paper bags this morning.  We had a lot of fun gluing it all together, adding snow and sparkles everywhere.  It also happened to be PJ day which Noah insisted I was supposed to participate in too....so I did.  In his room I was the one of 2 parents that came dressed that way...but his teacher was in PJs to and it was a lot of fun.  Finish product below:

 

 Here is another shot of the two of us:

 

How I love this time of year...just wish we had more time to really enjoy it.  Looking forward to some baking and friends visiting this weekend.  Who knows, may even have a North Pole visitor :o)

Thanksgiving

Home again after a fun, sleep deprived long weekend back in NY.  Got in Wednesday night.  Biggest problem with the day was staying up until 12:30am and finding out that Toys R Us "lied" about posting specials at midnight.  So after the disappointment it was off to bed.  Thursday AM started early prepping the turkey at stuffing at Joanne's, getting the paper for the all important Black Friday ads and then off to Rene's for breakfast.  We had a nice visit with Rene & Kelly with some delicious french toast.  The kids were excited to show off their Disney books and catch up with "bald headed Grampa".  Next it was off to Nana's for dinner #1.  It was a full house too which was great.  Got to catch up with the cousins, visit and play with the babies as well as hangout with my favorite almost teenage niece!  Dinner was good and then came the huge variety of desserts for celebrating the 3 bdays...yum yum.  Thank you to all for the early birthday wishes...love you all!  To round out the day it was back to Joanne's for a little more turkey and desserts.  Great friends and family...what more can we ask for? 

Black Friday: Lists were prepared Thursday for the early start on Friday and sent Jason to Toys R Us for 10PM.  Amazingly, he stuck it out in line for hours to get in and got almost everything we needed.  Like the changing of the guard he got back at 2AM while Dawn & I got up to head for Kohls at 3AM...hahaha.  Without the play by play we left the house at 2:39AM and got back around 4:30PM.  More than 1/2 done with the shopping....feeling a lot better than I did before Thanksgiving.

So we got back home late this afternoon.  The kids were anxious to get the Christmas decorations out so they were VERY helpful at cleaning up the clutter we had lying around to prep.  Netting it out, the trees are up, stockings are hung and 2 kids are sound asleep in their beds.  Oh how I love this season!!  Sweet dreams all!!

IPPONE Finale

We are home after a tiring afternoon.  The ride wasn't as long as I expected it to be, but we definitely left earlier than we needed to (mental note for next time).  Anyway, little man did great.  He had A LOT more competition this time.  For forms there were 8 boys competing in the 6 & under age group and for sparring there were 10.  In forms Noah took 3rd place (inched out by a tiny bit for second).

A little while later he was up for sparring.  They only handed out trophies for the first 4 positions so he didn't get a trophy, but he did receive a medal for the 6 way tie for 5th :o)  He did sooooooooo much better than his first tournament.  If he had just remembered to throw some kicks I think he would have went further.  It's hard when all the kids are pretty much a year old and almost a head taller...haha.  Here are some action shots:

All in all he did a great job.  His teacher and his other teammates were really proud of him.  Can't wait for the next one...sort of...haha!