My Birthday

Thirty Years OLD! When did this happen?

Despite how weird it feels to turn thirty, I'm feeling pretty okay about it. It feels like an exciting new chapter that I'm ready to own and embrace, bring on the thirties!

Glenn was gone during my birthday, which was a bummer, but fortunately I have freaking amazing friends that made my birthday awesome. Lizzette had Banna and I over for a delicious dinner of lasagna and cake for dessert. Afterward Eddie volunteered to watch the kids and we were all able to go out that evening, which was so fun. I just love these girls. The next day my cousin Tiff had me over for an amazing dinner. Even being husbandless, I felt very loved and it was a wonderful birthday.

Do You Love My Puzzle Pieces?

Yesterday Skyler was talking to his Grandma Johnson and telling her all about his puzzles, what else? So while telling her about them, he finally said, "c'mon grandma, come with me and I'll show you." So he walks over to his puzzles, holds the phone over the pieces and then asks "do you love my puzzle pieces?"

It pretty much made this mom melt into a puddle on the floor because it was the cutest thing I'd ever seen in my life. It's those kind of moments that I really want to remember.

How Many Do You See?

Look closely...yep, you're looking at four floor sized puzzles assembled on top of each other. During the cold months of winter, we're grateful for bright colorful puzzles to keep us entertained, even if it means spending an hour putting them back.

The puzzle master himself!

Christmas 2010

If you were to ask me what my favorite day of the year is, it wouldn't take me two seconds to tell you that it's Christmas Eve. As fun as it is to open presents on Christmas day, I still love Christmas Eve more.

Back when I was a kid, my mom tells me that one Christmas Eve me and my siblings were bouncing off the wall. So they took us out for the day. We went bowling, went out for lunch, and saw a movie. We then went home, stuffed ourselves silly with appetizers and watched Christmas movies. It totally stuck and it's how we've spent our Christmas Eves ever since. Every year one of us siblings would get a chance to "plan" how our Christmas Eve was going to go. It was pretty much the same thing every year, we just got to pick where we went out to eat, which ranged from delis, to Chinese buffets, to steak houses.

Glenn and I really wanted to carry on this same tradition with our family, and staying home in Philly made it easy. We started our day out with bowling, the Bostons joined us. This was probably the funnest time I've had bowling with my family because the kids are big enough to bowl on their own (for the most part). Jayda especially did great. And bowling alleys are so cool, their bumpers go up and down depending on who's bowling. Not that it mattered, I'm pretty sure Sky smoked us all!




Afterward we had lunch at Chili's...


And saw Tangled at the theatre. I'm pretty sure it was the cutest movie I've ever seen.

After that we went home and with the help of the Matson family, feasted on all sorts of appetizers while watching Christmas movies. The kids got their yearly Christmas Eve gift of pajamas. They also put out cookies for Santa, chocolate chip, because those are Santa's favorite ;)

We laid out our stockings...


And went to bed. Santa laid out the gifts, and then hung up newspaper between the hallway and the living room so that no one peek without mom and dad there (another tradition we grew up with).

The kids were a bit underwhelmed with the newspaper, in all honesty I think when they woke up they forgot that it was Christmas. Skyler came in and asked for cereal, and Jayda asked to use our bathroom "cuz there's stuff there." After a bit of explaining they got it, and Glenn and I got up so they could break through the paper.



After that the present opening ensued. We started with stockings and moved to the big stuff. Everyone had a really nice Christmas and it was so dang fun to have kids old enough to really understand what was going on. I just love Christmas so much, I'm already excited for next year!

Christmas in Philly

There are things in life that I really want to like, but I just can't get there. Goat cheese is one of them, I've tried it so many times, no dice. Running, I so wish I liked to run, I just don't. And going into the city. I really want to like going into the city. I wish I could sit and tell you about all of our crazy adventures in Center City Philly, but I can't. I avoid the city, I can't stand how hard it is to park, I don't like rubbing shoulders with a million different people, and I'm a wreck behind the wheel, the roads are so narrow!

But, in the spirit of Christmas, and being that this might be our one and only Christmas here, we had to venture in and see how they celebrate Philly style. Once we were parked we had a great time! We walked through Christmas village, where they play great live music and sell all sorts of fun stuff, a lot of it of a European nature. We warmed our bellies with hot chocolate, and checked out the lights show at Macy's. This Macy's was awesome, and HUGE. On youtube they had shown a flash mob of the Halleluiah chorus that had just recently happened there. I would have LOVED to have seen it in person!

I still don't see myself running to the city every chance I get, but we did have a great time. It definitely helped to get us in the Christmas spirit!






I was really excited when I saw this thing. I don't know what it's called, but when you light candles under it, it makes the top fan spin. We had one growing up and I thought it was the coolest thing ever.

Bridge Walk

I've known about the bridge walk for a while now, but this time I was finally able to do it! Every fall there is a 10K on the Benjamin Franklin Bridge that goes from Philly to Camden NJ. I drive this bridge all the time, so I thought it would be so cool to cross it on foot. Since I wasn't quite ready to run a 10K, the walk was just perfect. It was a very cool experience, there were a TON of people there, and Bann was a great walking partner.

O Christmas Tree...

Since this will be our first year here in Philly, we thought we'd go all out with our decorations, including a tree, we haven't had a tree in years! It was so much fun pulling out all of our stockings and decorations that we've been collecting, I forgot that we'd had a lot of them. Glenn insists on a real tree, so we found a beautiful one that is perfect, except for the fact that it doesn't put off any smell at all! Oh well, I'll just have to get a candle.

The kids had a blast decorating it, it was funny to watch them, it seemed that the majority of the decorations ended up on the same five branches. They didn't quite get the concept of spacing, but it was dang cute anyway. I love our tree!