New Year's Eve

What can I say we are BIG PARTY ANIMALS... ha ha

Actually I am the one to blame for our awesome New Year's Eve :) This year we decided to stay home, or should I say I decided. I really wanted to spend time with our family and friends but I was way too uncomfortable to sleep anywhere but my own bed and I was not willing to drive an hour home after midnight with all of the crazy people. I know Party Pooper!!! But we did have a good night at home. We did our own celebrating and had a great dinner.

Checking out her Disco Ball balloon!

Check out my Hat!!!

Mommy & Tessa

Helping Daddy BBQ the steaks

I really want your hat...

SNAP

Cool :)

Ok you can have it back!

Daddy & Tessa

Dancing to the tunes

Our New Year's Princess

Tessa laughed when the noise maker made noise :)

Those of you who we would have been with know we were thinking of you and wish we were there to bring in 2010 with all of you. May 2010 bring you much joy and happiness!!!

Christmas Day

Our Christmas Day was a very full day. We started out the morning by waking up to see what Santa brought us. Tessa got 2 of her favorite toys (and more) from Santa. She got a playhouse and an Elmo chair. She plays with them all the time. She even gives her Elmo chair a hug and kiss everyday and waves to it every time she passes it. (Sorry we used the video camera for this).

Sitting in her Elmo chair reading her Elmo book :)

After this we jumped in the car and headed to Auntie Jacqui and Uncle Ryan's new house to meet up with my family for breakfast and Christmas. We had a great breakfast and enjoyed opening all of our presents and seeing how excited all of the kids were. Again I have to say we all got spoiled. Way too many gifts. We are running out of room to keep everything!!!

Tessa loved seeing all of the toys... even if they weren't hers!

Hey how do you get this thing out?

Even the "Big Boys" had fun with their new toys :)

Keegan enjoying Abby's computer

Wow look at all this stuff!


All of the kids are busy opening up their presents!

The girls opening up their "girlie" gifts :)

Hey what you lookin' at?


Tessa relaxing with Auntie Jenny

Then that afternoon we went to my parents house to meet up with all of the extended family to celebrate and have dinner. We celebrated until we all couldn't keep our eyes opening any longer.

The girls of the family:
Cousin Abby (2), Cousin Sidney (14 mons, My cousin Lyndsay's daughter), and Tessa (14 mons)

Christmas this year was so much fun and we look forward to celebrating next year. Thank you everyone for spoiling us and spending time with us. We are so lucky to have such a wonderful family!

Christmas Eve

We had a great Christmas Eve this year with DJ's family at our house. We all got to spend the day and night together and actually enjoy Tessa's Christmas. Last year she was just a peanut and had no idea what was going on! This year she got into it a little. She wasn't to in to opening her presents. She didn't want to rip the paper but would get so excited when we would rip it a little and she could peek in to see what was inside. It was her own fun game of Peek-A-Boo! Of course she got spoiled as did we. Tessa literally had "Santa's Bag" or should we call it "Nana and Pap's Bag" of presents for Little Miss Spoiled!!! She got so many new toys to play with. She is one lucky girl!

Opening her first present!

Peek-A-Boo... What's inside???

Oh My A Drum To Pound On :)

New books are always a hit :)

Showing Nana her happy face :)

We all had so many more presents to open that our hands were too full to take anymore pictures... ha ha! Thank you Houlton Family for starting off our Christmas with so much fun :)

Disney On Ice

We started our Christmas Celebration by taking Tessa to Disney On Ice. We went with my sister's and their kids. We really enjoyed the show and the kids had so much fun... especially the three youngest ones. They were totally into it and loved the music!

Tessa couldn't take her eyes off of the show!

The whole crew during intermission :)

Daddy, Tessa, & the Big Prego Woman :)

The show was World of Fantasy. It had Cars, Little Mermaid, Lion King, and Tinkerbell. We somehow managed to miss Cars. I think it was literally 5 mins. We took a little too long at lunch and got to the show a later than planned.

The 3 youngsters dancing away!

Tessa loved the Lion King and the ending the best! She also laughed when Mickey and Minnie would come on the ice between stories :)

The End

The little patch of "snow" the kids found on the way out. They wanted to have a snowball fight... ha ha

Tessa and Caden waiting for everyone to get ready to go.

I am so glad that we all went to see this show. We will have to do it again because we all had so much fun!

Our Christmas Tree Hunt

We were a little late getting our tree this year. We have been so busy that we didn't get our tree until a week before Christmas. So the tree selection was limited... but I think we found the perfect tree! We actually picked our tree in like 10 minutes. Tessa had fun walking from tree to tree and touching the needles. We had a fun time decorating the tree this year. DJ was the lucky one to do all of the work, but with a little direction and help from his girls our tree turned out beautiful :) Tessa loves looking at the tree and waving to the Santa ornaments. She also loves the sparkling lights! I think she will miss seeing it soon :(

Which one should we choose?

That one looks good!

We found the perfect one so let's go pay for it!

The Final Product

Holiday Firework Show

Yesterday, we went down to my sister's in Hermosa Beach and went to the Manhattan Beach Firework Show. My sister and her friend set up a bake sale to support pediatric cancer research sponsored by Glad. We all made bake goods and brought them down for them to sell. They ended up raising over $1,000, WHICH IS AWESOME!!! The cool thing to is that Glad will match that amount for the study as well. So the baking was well worth the time :)

We had such a good time listening to the band play Christmas songs and then we got to watch the most amazing firework show! After we went back to my sister's for dinner and got to hang out with the entire family. Thanks for the fun time!!!

All bundled up... it got cold!!!

Daddy bought Tessa the biggest Rudolph balloon ever!!!
Which he regretted after the fact because it was hard to get through the crowds with the monster balloon tied to the stroller :)


She loved it though and had fun playing with it.

Dancing to the music. Tessa is getting to be a good dancer!

Crazy Cousin Abby... Tessa's best buddy

Half of the crew waiting for the fireworks to start.

Tessa loved all of the Christmas lights.

The Fireworks Started!!!

Tessa was mesmerized by the fireworks. She cuddled with Daddy and watched each one. She loved all of the colors :)