New Year's Eve

We're sitting here, just about ready to go to bed. We're reflecting on how much life has changed since last year at this time ...
We had an action packed, fun weekend - here are some pics...I'll try to put them in some particular order later, but for now - Happy New Year!

2006 Bric-a-Brac Videos

We just got two videos from Karen's uncles camera this new year's weekend that were from a wedding in July - if you all remember the yellow dress and the beer episode - here are both of them:

Click To Play

We just got leftover camera videos from Karen's uncle Tom this new years...here's the first one, in her wonderful yellow dress.

Click To Play

Another yellow dress wedding episode...

Merry Christmas

She insisted that she get in her new wagon by herself...it wasn't pretty, but she got there!

Her new wagon (once she got herself in)

Mastering the half-step in her special yellow sweater...

She thoroughly abuses this cat and yet he still comes back for more...

All tuckered out after a busy day at Ria's.

These are from Christmas and the days before. I'll come by later and try to organize things...but I'm sure my father will be calling soon wanting his "Caroline fix"...oh, and before I forget...MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!

Karen's Favorite Clip From Sesame Street Old School DVD...

...is this bit with Kermit and a little girl named Joey, who has a serious case of the Cookie giggles...Caroline wanted to give this to Dada for Christmas early so she told Momma to play Santa early!

And Rest...

It's been a looooonnnnnggg week. Jim and I have both had sinus infections and we took Caroline to the doctor today to find out that she not only has croup, but an ear infection as well. At least she's doing better with the amoxicillin than she did last time. When it rains, it pours (as it appears we will find out tomorrow), I suppose. Our neighbor was so nice and brought over (in her words) "Jewish Penicillin". That's chicken soup for us Gentiles. And boy - it is good. And tastes much better than the antibiotics...

This was on New England Cable News yesterday. I'm not too involved in the stroke rehab (most of my clientele has orthopedic rehab needs), but I've seen enough of the Saebo Flex and the AutoAmbulator to know that they work. For being told that she was going to be on television about five minutes before they showed up, Liz did a great job.

One More...

...Picture from Shawn's party. This will definetly be the last (and only) year that we will be able to bring Caroline. She did great - but there is just too much for her to get into.

Shawn's Christmas Party

Every year, our friend Shawn organizes a great Christmas party (for the football crew and others on the left) where we get together and instead of purchasing new gifts for the knock-down, drag-out Yankee Swap, we get together some of the crap around the house that we want to get rid of and wrap it up really nice. We used to buy new gifts with a ten dollar limit, but one year someone brought a six pack of really good bear. But because it was such good beer, he had to drink two of the beers to get the gift under the limit. Since nobody really wants a four-pack of beer, we switched to used gifts after that...

This year we fought over the wrestling singlet and the Tinki-Winki phone (again). We got stuck with a posessed looking bear lamp and a box of stuff having to do with cows. I already am looking forward to next year...



PS - The pic up top isn't from the Christmas party - it's from a few years ago and it's really scary to see how many of us have gotten married and had children...with eachother.
oh - and I can't figure out why the picture on the bottom is so small, but it's the wrestling singlet. Sexy, huh?

Sleeping Beauties

Somebody is tired...

Another Famous Relative

This article in the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle is all about my cousin Sarah. She's a pretty great person and apparently some other people think she's pretty cool (and athletic), too.

Congrats, Sarah!

PS - Here is an article in the Ithaca paper about my cousin Sean. Guess he's a pretty good athlete, too.

I'll be sure to add more if I run into any more articles on people that I'm related to...

First Picture with Santa

This will be quick as I"m supposed to be filling out a jury-duty questionaire...

Caroline didn't seem to mind Santa - she just seem rather concerned that this strange looking fellow knew her name and had a present for her. Once she opened the penguin, she didn't seem to mind, though...

SCORE!!!!!!

I like to say that I am thrifty. Some people say penny-pinching, some people say frugal, some say that I'm plain old cheap. But I like the ring that "THRIFTY" has to it. I have no qualms about hand-me-downs, shopping at the Salvation Army, using coupons, or going to garage sales. Since Caroline has come around, I have been particularly into shopping at garage sales. The art of garage sale-ing was learned from my mother. She's simply the best and what I have done until now has just paled in comparison to her conquests. But I've got some really good deals on some baby stuff this year. There was the puzzle peice floor set that was still in the bag for fifteen dollars (cheaper and softer than a rug and I saw it in the Pottery Barn Kids Catalog for > $70), there was the red tricycle for $3 (barely a scratch on it) and there was the Little Tykes kitchen set (yup - the one that runs you about $80 new) for $6.
But I did GREAT today. There was a family having a moving sale off Flag St that we saw on the way to the Fairlawn pary. We stopped and I started chatting with the lady out front. She told me that they had new jobs, were putting the house on the market and moving to Bar Harbor, ME. They have a little girl that turned three in November (when she told me this - I was sensing a victory was within my grasp) and wanted to get rid of all her clothes that didn't fit. And boy, did they have some great stuff...now all this stuff won't fit this year - but most of it will be good for this summer and next winter. A lot of it is season-less and a kid could wear anytime. And ALL OF IT IS NAME BRAND and LOOKS BRAND NEW!!!!

We got...
-a pair of "Pategonia" brand printed overalls
-jeans from The Children's Place
-courderoy pants set with an applique fleece shirt with sheep on it (so cute)
-a Gymboree overall and hooded jacket set
-an embroidered fleece jacket from Gymboree
-a pair of Old Navy denim overalls with a heart on the front
-a pair of Osh-Kosh overalls with flowers
-a Carter's lounge set with a vest and pants
-a turtleneck sweater
-a BabyGap denim skirt
-BabyGap denim overalls
-BabyGap courderoy pants
-BabyGap emboidered jeans
-an adorable fleece jumper with a turleneck
AND
-a jumper for Christmas (for this year)

ALL for $20. I'm feeling particularly proud of myself because any two of those items new would probably cost more than twenty dollars.

I LOVE finding a good deal!

Fairlawn Children's Holiday Party...

Today at Fairlawn they had a Holiday party for employee's children. It was a blast and they did a great job with things. There was ornament making, face painting, henna painting, cookie decorating, snacks and the ever important visit with Santa. All of the kids even got a small gift to take home. Since our staff is so culturally diverse, they made a big effort to include everyone's ways of celebrating and it was really cool to see a lot of different traditions that people have during the Holidays.
Caroline had a lot of fun, too. She did sit long enough to get her face painted and we tried the whole sitting on Santa's lap thing. Much to her credit, she didn't freak out - she was just very concerned that she was sitting on the lap of a very strange looking man. She also got a stuffed penguin that she adores. They took pictures of all the kids and I'll try to post them when we get them. She did end up loving the balloons that the kids got when the left that Charlie was nice enough to give her two. Caroline has no problem making friends!
She was so tuckered out after the party that she has been sleeping for almost three hours. =-)
It was a great time and really nice to see my co-workers and their families. I really hope they do something like this again next year. They did a fabulous job.

The First Annual Holiday Baking Day

I just wrote this post. I was re-arranging the pictures and the computer froze. And I lost the whole, entire post. Somehow, it's just not as fun to write the second time around...BUT...

Yesterday was a great day. My friend Melanie and I got together and baked. All day. We made baby mounds bars, bourbon balls, fondant mints, peanut brittle, sugar cookies and scotcharoos. We had a blast. The hardest parts were finding the raw peanuts to use for the brittle, which Melanie's husband found in the North End and finding parrafin wax to use in the baby mounds bar's chocolate covering. It was hard work and we had a lot of fun. Caroline was even nice enough to help us out by taking out all the tupperwear and driving it around the kitchen floor as we worked (she helped us out more by taking a two and a half our afternoon nap, but we didn't tell her that). We learned some new and valuable lessons yesterday, too...

1-It always confused me why peanuts weren't really considered nuts, but legumes. After tasting raw peanuts it makes sense. Raw peanuts taste just like raw peas and green beans. Strange, but true. They're really pea-nuts. I get it!!!
2- If the bourbon balls don't stick together, drink (ummmm, I mean add) more bourbon.
3-fondant mints are a real pain in the butt to make
4- Klems is the best place in Central Massachusetts to buy tractors, clothes, animal feed, toys and (oh, yeah) parrafin wax / canning supplies.

Anyways - I took much of what we made to a gathering of work friends last night. Everything ended up being a hit - especially the scotcharoos. I can feel my hips getting bigger just thinking about them.

We decided that the day was so great that it needed to be an annual tradition. Like I need an excuse to spend time with Melanie and chocolate!!!

New Pics

Busy week this week. We finally got the tree up (no decorations, but it's up and lit). Most of the presents are bought and wrapped (after a near melt down on Tuesday) and tomorrow my friend Melanie is coming over and we're going to make cookies all day long!
Here are some new pics from this week - it has been difficult to make Caroline smile while looking at the camera. She's so active that I can't keep up with her!

I'm coming to get you...

See? I told you she was into EVERYTHING!

I SO Wish I Could Take Credit for Finding...

...THIS. I want to do this just about every time someone's cell phone goes off during their treatment time and they have the gumption to actually answer it (when it isn't a dire emergency - and trust me, most of the time it isn't).

But, unfortunately, I can't.

I found it on a friend's husband's sister's website. Can you follow?

Sunday Night...

There has been a rather long hiatus in blogging. I apologize. Frankly, this weekend we've just been party animals. It's been great, but I think that we're all ready to go to bed early and will need to take this week just to recover from the weekend.

On Friday night, we had the Fairlawn Christmas party. We had a lot of fun - it was at Wachusett Country Club and I have to say the food was great (any time someone offers me filet mignon - I really can't complain). There was, of course, the requisite new grad who got really drunk and was dancing by herself far too early in the evening, which also provided some entertainment. Matthew was nice enough to drive all the way out from Utica to watch Caroline for us and we really, really appreciated having the night out. Payment for the night's worth of babysitting was about $50 worth of Easy-Mac, Ramen noodles, Spagetti-0's and some Tupperwear, but I think it was well worth it for everyone involved.

A picture of the crew taken just prior to this next picture...

You mean to tell me you guys are leaving?!?!

On Saturday, Caroline's Grammy and Grampy were nice enough to drop off a gorgeous Christmas tree for us. Oh - and they left some things that Santa had somehow dropped off at their house for Caroline. It's got to be tough to be a middle-man for the big guy in red.

This pic was taken courtesy of Grammy and Grampy:

(there were more, but Blogger is being stupid and won't let me post them)...

Saturday night, it was a White Elephant Yankee Swap at our friend Shawn's house.

Uncle Shawn and Caroline go way back, so they enjoyed their time together.

The swap was vicious, just like every year, with everyone fighting over the Tinki-Winki phone, the wrestling singlet and some really old Jose Cuervo tequila. Even Caroline participated (good thing she didn't want the tequila). She ended up with a really cute stuffed rabbit and the Sex in the City book. We'll save the book until she's older. Somehow, though, Jim and I ended up with the most ugly cow lamps that you've seen and the homliest ceramic bear ever. We plan on wrapping those right back up for next year's swap.

Today was the IPT Christmas party. It was in Devens and it was a good time, too. We were able to put up the tree (but not decorate it) when we got home and by that time we were beat.

All this partying is really hard work - time for bed. Here are some other random pictures that we took over the weekend...

Oh - so this is how it works...(Apparently she's taking after her father with the whole engineering thing) =-)

Aren't I just the cutest? (and don't I know it)

YAAAWWWWNNN. It's (finally) time for bed.