Santa found our house this year

Wow the kids had an awesome Christmas. It took about 3 hours to open the presents because they would stop and play for awhile with each gift so they didn't rip thru everything in 20 minutes like I thought they would. The power went out Xmas eve so Joe and I were wrapping gifts by firelight.

Here are the kids at the YMCA..they wouldn't sit in Santa's lap but Joey had no problem telling Santa for 5 minutes that he wanted a "shooter gun" and a kitchen for his little sister

The kitchen was a big hit


Joey's firefighter outfit




Christina's lego's

Elmo book


We had fun with the nerf guns, aka Joey's "shooter gun" he asked Santa for, I wasn't sure I wanted to get him guns but that's all he wanted from Santa, so we didn't want to dissapoint him the first Xmas he really understood Santa




nerf gun bullets

Emily joining in, they are all aiming for the TV

Elmo was in the line of fire



This game is starting to get serious


Man down

Oh good, Santa bought me a truck to load up my nerf bullets into

Joe is sharing his hotwheels with Joey



Emily playing her video game

Our Christmas Party(s)

We had our annual? semi-annual Christmas party this year where Joe dresses up like Santa. We had so many kids coming if we had everyone RSVP yes there would be 42 kids, so we split the party up into two nights, friday and saturday back to back. Turns out a lot of people couldn't make it but we had a good time anyway.

Someone bought a hamster as a white elephant gift. My friend Kathy picked him, the couple that bought the hamster refused to take him back, and Kathy didn't want him, so guess what? We have a pet hamster now. He chewed thru the cardboard box the first night, and escaped in Emily's bathroom another night, luckily Joe caught him both times. Here's Kathy opening the hamster

Lisa, Renee, Kathy

Gee, I hope it's not another hamster

The twins Nate and Wyatt sitting on Joe's ooops I mean Santa's lap

Ok I know this kid doesn't believe in Santa anymore

Nice pictures of Christina that Emily took

Halloween

We came back to Atlanta for a week for Joey's birthday party and for Halloween. Here are the pics from Halloween, I forgot to take pictures of Christina, I was carrying her the entire time.

Last pictures from Orlando

We are back in Atlanta and I finally have time to post some pics.
Here are some of our last days in Orlando.
Here's Joey eating nachos holding the sugar packet he thinks he can have for dessert

Various pics of the kids at two different playgrounds







Christina putting stickers all over Daddy's face, he looks like he has the measles

Our visit to Kennedy Space center, we watched the shuttle take off

Joey's 3rd birthday party

Pictures from Joey's third birthday party, spider man theme. Got an awesome spiderman cake at half price from Publix, someone couldn't come pick it up. Got it home and it said 'happy first birthday jimmy'...scraped it off and icing over it. ooops....

update on kids

Seems like the time between posts on the blog just keeps getting longer and longer. I don't have any pictures because the hard drive on my new laptop crashed (what a pain because I have a lot of Joe's work stuff there)..

Christina is saying mom and mommy. Mostly Mom, she'll yell it while she's looking at me. We were reading a book and I pointed to a duck and said 'what does the duck say' and she said 'quack quack' so two words now, we're working on daddy next.

She is really independent, wants to do everything I do, plays with Joey and they are so cute when they are laughing .. last night after baths they were running in and out of the bathroom just laughing...but then they fight a lot....just when I think I can't take their fighting anymore Joey will hand her the toy they were fighting over and sweetly say "here baby, you can play with my toy"...so darn cute.

Joey is so big, he's excited that this is his last day of daycare for awhile, we're leaving for atlanta Sunday and I have a sitter coming into the house 3 days a week with her own 3 year old son, so Joey will have a playmate, in addition to his friends in the neighborhood. Still not potty trained, since I don't have a sitter next week we'll be working on that, without the sugary rewards I have been giving him. Joey did say he will miss his friends Aiden and Austin from daycare, his playground buddies.

will update more when i get my harddrive data and pictures back. I have some cute pics from Joey's birthday party.