Christmas Tree and Gingerbread House

Zach and Abby were great helpers decorating the Christmas Tree. Zach tends to cluster them all in one area, so we had some spacing out to do afterwards, but that's ok. :)

Ok, she did more of taking them off, than putting them on.

She seemed to like these little ceramic angel wings.

I love this picture. It is so rare for me to get a good one of both of them together, so I was pretty excited about this.

Ya, as soon as we got the previous pic, they were off!

Just cute.

Resting under the tree...

All done!

Our fancy gingerbread house that Andy and Zach created.

I love his expression here.

Concentrating hard!

My Latest Favorite Picture

Ok, so it's been established already that she likes to take her clothes off....anytime, anywhere. So the other night I was in the kitchen working on dinner, went to go check on her in the bedroom, and found this sight.

Makes one wonder what she is going to grow up to be.....hmmmm.

:)

Thanksgiving Weekend Pics

The four of us at the Christmas tree farm. As is tradition, we go Thanksgiving weekend to tag our tree, and then we always take a family photo.

Zach, (not looking at the camera as usual) Abby and their cousin, Jace.

Little girl amid big trees.

Our tree! So cute. :)

This was Thanksgiving Day at Colleen and Mike's house. (Colleen is Andy's sister) This isn't a very exciting picture but it's the only one I got of Zach where I could see his face!

Our hosts and chef extraordinaire's, Colleen and Mike. Mike really is a chef, so as you can imagine, the feast was darn good!!

He really is cute, you just can't tell in this picture! haha...he was just trying to make Abby laugh...seems to have worked!

All she wanted to eat were raspberries.
Andy and our brother-in-law, Randy, had to watch a little football of course.
This is Abby doing her new trick of pulling on her ear and sticking her tongue out as she's pulling on it. I think the tongue as just about to come out at this point. It's funny to see her concentrating so hard with it.
Nephews Austin and James. Such good looking young men, don't you think? :)

And that....is all for now!

Stuff From the Last Couple of Weeks...

The kids playing in the bath. Daddy was in charge of this particular bath, and in the usual daddy fashion, great fun and silliness ensued!

We had a Wii party last weekend. My brother, Matt and his wife were in town, so they joined us along with my sister and her husband. We ended up mostly playing Wii Music which, being the music nerds that we are, we had a ball with! I think Andy and Matt are drumming here.

Brother-in-law Brad concentrating on the handbell game.

Handbells! If you haven't played it, trust me, it's very fun but does take some concentration as you can tell by looking at everyones face.

They had a Christmas Celebration at 5th St. Market last weekend also. It was so pretty with all of the Christmas lights going. I love that place. Mmm, hot chocolate!

Zach taking his hot chocolate drinking very seriously.

Watching The Nutcracker performance upstairs. They didn't do the whole thing, but I think pretty much the entire first half. (which is the good stuff anyway in my opinion!) Abby watching on Andy's shoulders.

Zach was enthralled with the music and dancing. He did NOT want it to be over. I think it will be fun to take him to the real thing next Winter at the Hult Center.

I just thought this was a cute picture.

Their latest big fun....taking the play-yard and filling it with all of their stuffed animals and then getting inside with them. Reminds me of ET where you can hardly find them amongst all of the animals!

Abby decided I was slacking and needed help unloading the dishwasher apparently. I found her like this in the kitchen. She's a very good "cheese!" girl lately.
Zach dressed up in his Indian garb for his Thanksgiving party at school. They made vests, headbands, necklaces and drums. It was darn cute!
The Thanksgiving feast at school with his little buddies.

That's all I have the energy to post for now! Thanksgiving weekend pictures still to come!

Lock her up!

Abby has become a stripper by night. We'll put her down for bed, hear her in her crib talking to herself for awhile, and when we go in to check on her, she's naked. That's two sets of pajamas (cotton separates and her fuzzy sleeper) and her diaper...off. And the thing that is so funny about her is the expression on her face when we find her. She gets the sliest little grin and just really seems to know that she's pulled a good one over on us. So funny and so cute! Of course it's not so cute when she pees after she gets her diaper off and we have to change her sheets and put anything that's wet in the washer. Zach NEVER did anything like this...it's amazing how differently they think! So after we went through this three times one night, Andy decided to put a lock on her jammies so she couldn't get them off. We've had to do this a few times now, but she is getting better about leaving her clothes on. Although the other day at Zach's preschool she was standing there and just started to take her pants off, for who knows what reason! She's certainly got her own way of doing things! Her spunk intrigues me!
Daddy showing her the keys to her fancy lock. She seems pretty excited about it because she doesn't really know what it means...yet.

Sporting her lock and jammies and getting ready to boogie down with Zach. (They like to dance before bed)Busting a move!

Whew! Tuckered out and all disheveled.
And, sleeping peacefully. (We take the lock off after she falls asleep) Hard to believe this little angel can be so mischievious!

Vegas, Baby!!

Ahh, Vegas. We're back and we survived the infamous hot-spot. The hardest part was just saying goodbye to the kids and worrying about the plane crashing, but once we were on our way, I was feeling pretty good. Flights there were good - no glitches. We landed, got our bags, and made it to the casino at around 4:45. It was just fun on the drive there (in our shuttle) and seeing glimpses of the strip for the first time. We stayed at the New York, New York, which was very fun! It's the one with the roller coaster that weaves between the outside and the inside of the casino. And no, we didn't ride it...thought about it, but it just never happened.

This was our view from our window.

I tried to get a little glammed up for our first night there, but the end effect wasn't very good....I was so sleepy and my contacts were really bothering my eyes, so I really wasn't looking very good. Oh well. At least Andy's cute!

Inside the casino. Man, those casino's are HUGE! So much inside...I don't think I ever really got my bearings the whole time. Not that that is unusual for me who still gets lost in Eugene, even though I've lived here my whole life! Geesh.

I loved the little "streets" inside the casino. Felt like we were outside, wandering around New York. There were little shops and fun eateries all over the place. It was pretty cool! We ended up eating dinner at an Irish restaurant, which was good. Andy ordered the "bucket of sausages" which now when I think about it seems pretty gross, but at the time it was enjoyable. Bucket of sausages? Anyway, I think by about 8:00 I was ready for bed. To quote Andy, "Weak sauce!" Yes, he was right. I think I made it until about 10 and that was all she wrote for me. I just couldn't wait to get to SLEEP IN!! We've never stayed away for 2 nights before, so to be able to sleep as late as we wanted and be in no rush to have to pack up and hit the road was pretty dreamy.

The next day. Andy's dream. An ESPN sports bar where you could watch practically ANY game that was going on and even make bets on them. This is Andy (yellow shirt) looking at all of the screens and the list of games over to the right. We decided that it was a good thing we didn't live in Vegas or he would pretty much be living (or working!) at the ESPN place.

This is inside the ESPN bar, (other picture was right outside of it.) We had to wait a bit for a table, but it was pretty cool once we got inside. Two huge screens and lots of little ones surrounding them with all sorts of different games. And no, I'm certainly not a big sports fan, but it was exciting for Andy, so I was happy to share it with him. :)

Our table had it's own TV so we could watch the Duck game.

Me, watching sports, drinking a beer. Not a usual sight, but it was fun nonetheless.

Roulette. We had the most fun playing this out of anything else I think. We went between the game machine and the actual table, and mostly bet with our birthday numbers which turned out to be pretty darn lucky! It was fun!

Night #2. All dressed up and ready to hit the town! Our plan was to walk down the strip to see all of the other casinos that we were interested in, see the fountains at Bellagio, and get some dinner somewhere.

Outside the NY, NY....the Brooklyn Bridge.

The fountains at Bellagio. I LOVED them so much! Totally amazing. I swear I could have watched them all night long and not become bored. Andy agreed...they were our favorite part of Vegas. It was one of the more, I don't know, classier things to see right on the strip I suppose? Certainly beat out all of the people flicking their little call girl cards and trying to shove them in our hands the whole time we were walking. Pretty bad. I had to almost laugh out loud when I saw this old woman doing it too...I swear she was 85 and had on her shirt that said "call and get hot girls delivered to you in 20 minutes!" and was handing out her dirty girl pictures. Wow...it was interesting. Could have done without THAT, but hey, it's Vegas.

Outside Caesars Palace. I believe this was supposed to be a replica of the Trevi Fountains, in Rome. I could be wrong though. (Andrea? Is that right?) Anyway, it was pretty, whatever it was!

We found a cute little restaurant inside the Paris. I swear I could have fooled myself into thinking I really was in France....little cobblestone streets, crepe stands, bakeries, little boutiques. It was really quite charming.

Me and my cute husband outside Paris with the Eiffel Tower in the background. Man, it would be nice if we had really been in Paris, but this will certainly do for now. :)

More fountain shows! I told you I loved them.

I told Andy to look excited for this picture and this is what I got. Silly guy!

Aren't they beautiful? We took a little video on our camera that I will try to get uploaded later on. I'm sure a lot of you have seen them in person already, but if you haven't it's a treat.

So our second night was a lot of walking and site-seeing. I got some nice blisters on my feet, but that's ok. Sometimes a girl has to sacrifice for cute shoes, right? :) After we got back to our casino, I think we stayed up until about 2:30am gambling. We managed to break even though, so no complaints. I was certainly tired though. I can't remember the last time I was up so late. Hard to believe that used to be commonplace on the weekends for us!

This was our last day there. We went across the street to the Tropicana to see their Titanic exhibit and took this picture of the NY, NY since it gave us such a good view. When I look at it I can't get over how absolutely huge it is!

Here we are on the staircase of the Titanic. Ok, not really. They took our picture when we started the tour and then superimposed it onto the staircase. Kinda funny. (I scanned this in, so that's why it looks a bit blurry.) Anyway, the exhibit was pretty amazing and we really enjoyed it. Especially Andy who is my little history buff. When we "boarded" they gave us boarding pass replicas with real passenger information of people that were on the ship. Andy was a second-class passenger travelling with his wife and baby, and I was a third class Irish-woman who was working in the US as a maid. At the end of the tour they have a big plaque with all of the names of the passengers who were on board and whether or not they survived. Andy and his family all did, but I died. It was moving to have it sort-of personalized like that. Such a tragedy.

So since Andy survived on the Titanic, he thought it just must be his lucky day, so insisted on doing some more gambling. However, his luck had apparently run out because the end result was not so wonderful.

Our flight out of Vegas was at 7:30pm. We got to the airport at 4:30 (already PLENTY early) and then our flight was delayed by over an hour. Andy was happy reading his book while we waited.

I was just bored.

So we finally get out of there and realize it's going to be cutting it quite close to get to our connecting flight in San Fransisco on time. Like, really close. As we landed they made the announcement that a lot of people had connecting flights that were leaving in the next few minutes, so to please allow them to get off of the plane first. And of course, even with this, Andy and I were sitting in the VERY back of the plane and it seemed to take FOREVER to get off of there. So we rush out, find what gate we're supposed to be at, and at that point it was like the Amazing Race where we were running full speed through the airport, trying to make our flight. At one point Andy's backpack came open and he had stuff flying out. (underwear and everything, poor guy!) Once we actually realized this, he yells at me to "keep going!" and he gathered his stuff as fast as he could. I got to the gate, panting, and there was no one there. A United Airlines guy said, "Are you going to Eugene?" "Yes " I said. "Your plane has already departed. You're going to have to go to the customer service counter." Seriously???? Aaggghhh!!! So our flight was supposed to leave at 10:24, it was 10:24 exactly, and the plane was sitting there at the gate and they wouldn't let us on. Right there! We could see it! And we weren't the only ones in this predicament either...there were about 7 of us that all missed the flight, by NO fault of our own mind you, and now we were stuck in San Fransisco for the night. The next flight out was at 8:45 in the morning. The worst part was that we didn't get the impression that anyone really cared that we missed our flight or that perhaps this was causing some inconveniences for us. All they did was give us a nifty little voucher for a discount at a nearby hotel (which still cost us $65!) and a little complimentary toiletry bag. Gee, thanks United Airlines. That really helps when we have no money to pay for a hotel, I have no contact solution (since we can't bring liquids on the plane!) and my eyes are sooo ready to have my contacts out, nothing in the airport is open to buy anything we might need for the night, we're hungry but have no food, but most importantly, we have two little ones at home who are expecting mommy and daddy to be there when they get up in the morning. Made us feel pretty sad. Plus, my poor sister who was watching them and not expecting to spend the night at our house. I called her and let her know what was going on and of course she was wonderful about it, said no problem, and sacked out on our couch for the night. Good thing she didn't have plans in the morning that she couldn't miss. So anyway, we FINALLY made it to our lovely hotel at about midnight, conked out, got up at 6, and headed back to the airport, looking quite lovely in our same dirty clothes that we had on all of the previous day. Plus, I had taken my contacts out since my eyes were not going to handle me sleeping with them in after they were already so upset, so I was pretty much living in a big, blurry world until we got home. Oh well, Andy thought it was funny, leading me around, and laughed that he was probably better looking to me this way. haha

This was the window-sill at our hotel. Nice dirty tissue and bottle caps laying around, huh? And you can't see it, but out the window was an overhang with empty beer bottles and such laying around. Quality, total quality.

And that about sums it up! Sorry this post is so freakin' long, but I had requests (demands?) from certain people that I had better hurry up and post all about the trip, so there you have it....Andrea :) Plus, I want to make sure my family all gets a good picture of if since it was, after all, because of them that we were able to go. So to: mom, dad, Rita, Alice, Brad, Mark, Pam, Matt, and Ericka....the hugest THANK YOU for our wonderful adventure in Las Vegas! We really had a fantastic time and appeciated so much just getting away for an extended period of time to be together as a couple, and not mommy and daddy. Not that mommy and daddy aren't wonderful roles to play, but everyone needs to let loose and remember what it was like before those roles were in existence, right? Right. You guys are pretty amazing and we love you and are so thankful for you. And of course, to my mom who was super grandma for the weekend and took such wonderful care of Zach and Abby. They had a great time and I'm sure got spoiled by non-stop playing, creativity, wonderful home-made meals, and lots of grandma love. Thank you. And to Alice and Brad who thought of the whole idea in the first place, rallied the family and got them to contribute to the cause, let us know what to expect, where to go, and for letting me borrow your fancy jewelry, (Alice) help me me shop for some new duds, took me to get my fancy pedicure, and took care of the kids on the last night we were away......we're so lucky to have you and can't thank you enough for everything you did for us. Seriously, you are all too good to us and I'm not sure that we are deserving of your generosity. All I can say is, next time we should ALL go! Now wouldn't that be something? :) Viva, Las Vegas!!