Happy New Year's Eve!

Much to the horrors of our older children, this year Chris wanted to spend NYE with just the seven of us. We took the kids out to dinner to start our night. And YES, I did ask my family to smile nicely for a pic.....Thank you, Avery!

Meet Noelle

Here she is.....Madi and Kylie's new bunny, Noelle. She is adapting well to our loud, crazy, house. The girls are having fun taking her out of her cage, and letting her hop all around their bedroom. Right now they are trying to get her litter trained. Madi has informed me that Noelle is doing well with the litter training!

Mad

Hartman Christmas Party

On Friday night Geo and Denise hosted a 'Hartman Christmas.' Although we all had a great time seeing everyone, exchanging gifts, playing games, eating good food, it was an emotionally tough party for us. Tom and Dad were so missed.

Merry Christmas

Good Morning!!!!! Kylie and Madi were the first two awake AT 5:30am. We gave them instructions that they could NOT wake Kami up until 6:30. So, at 6:30 EXACTLY, all 5 kids came bulldozing into our room to wake us up. Here they all are about to walk down stairs to see if Santa stopped! But first, everyone dumped out their stockings. Apparently, when you don't have a fireplace, a staircase becomes a great alternative for hanging stockings.

Group shot!

Family gift!

It's a Girl. That's right, Santa brought a floppy earred bunny for Christmas. Here is Paulie meeting 'Noelle' for the first time.

Christmas Eve

Our Christmas Eve started out at our house with my parents and the C's coming over for dinner. Every year our township sends around a fire truck with Santa on top, waving to everyone before he heads out on his big journey! Here we all are screaming and waving and singing Christmas songs.

After dinner, we all settle in the family room to watcha a little "A Christmas Story." Here is CJ and PopPop relaxing.

Chelsey, Madi, Kylie, and Ally.

Kamryn's Christmas Party

Last week Kami had her 'Holiday Show' at preschool. Chris and I joined about 40 other proud parents as we watched our 3 year olds sing to a bunch of holiday songs. We were so proud of how great our 'baby' did.



Here she is posing with her best friend Ashleigh. Isn't it hard to believe that even at such a young age kids know who they want to be friends with.
Here is Kami posing with her other BFF.....her daddy!

The Christmas Card

On Sunday I realized that I needed to get moving on our Christmas cards. As I was sitting on my sofa Sunday night, ordering my picture cards online, I realized how far technology has brought us with card sending. 16 years ago we sent out our very first picture card of CJ. Way back then I actually had to take a whole roll of pics with a regular camera, take the film to a store to get processed, wait 24 hours for the prints, and hope to heaven that there was at least one decent picture. Then I had to take the picture we selected to a photo place and have them print my cards. 16 years ago I had to wait about 5 days for the cards to be done. When I finally got them home I had to write on each individual card, "Love, Chris, Jo Anne, and Christopher." SOOOO much work. Now, I snap a bunch of photos (still the most stressful part,) download the pics to my laptop, send the best one to an online site, select a cute design, and have our names preprinted on each card. Once I placed my order, I received a confirmation that they would be ready at 11am the next day for pick up. 16 hour service....amazing!!!!! Gotta love technology.

Here are a few that I liked, but didn't pick.

Santa Baby

Back in September, friends of ours, the McC's gave Kami a gift card to Build-A-Bear Workshop. Well, this past Saturday, Kami, my mom, and I snuck away to WG mall so Kami could build her own bear. Here she is placing the heart inside her new bear. When we were done making her bear we walked around the mall for a bit. When Kami saw the fountain she said, "Mommy, I need money to throw in the water...pleeaasseeee."

Here she is back home with 'Santa Baby'. She hasn't put her down since!

Coffee, Sweet, Coffee

Since I was a little girl, I have loved coffee. I have gone through various coffee phases over the years.....the grind your own bean phase........ store coffee in the freezer phase....... buy expensive, gourmet coffee phase.......WaWa hazelnut with Irish cream creamer phase.....and now......THE KEURIG COFFEE MACHINE phase. For those of you not familiar with Keurig, it makes individual cups of coffee. The coffee comes in individual pods that are placed in the machine. The pods come in too many flavors to mention. You can even purchase teas and cocoa. We set up our Keurig 3 hours ago and have already tried 5 different flavors. I have a feeling we will be up reallllly late tonight. I just love my new toy!!!