Scenes from Christmas Eve

Disclaimer: Many of these pictures are blurry, because the kids were moving so much!  

On Christmas Eve we went to my moms house to spend the evening with my mom, Art, Ethan, Bryan and Jaime (Ethan's dad and step mom).  Ethan's only here for a couple weeks, over his christmas break so it was great to be able to open gifts with him and let the kids play together.  

We decided to open gifts first, and let the kids play together while we socialized and snacked after presents.  

As you can see from these two photo's, once the gifts were open, the kids were wide open.  

You can see David holding Joshua in the background.  He slept almost the entire, with the only exception being a 15 or 20 minute snack.  

David got a copy of Jurassic Park on Blu Ray, I got a very nice necklace and earring set.  The kids got all kinds of goodies.  Riley got a band in a box, which I'm sure you can imagine how much she loves.  Hannah received some very nice roller skates.  The whole family ventured out to the skating rink this past Saturday.  I'll talk about that in another post.    

A pretty good family photo.  Only missing 3 Bergers in California.  

Both girls were asleep within minutes of leaving Grandma's house.  

Happy Halloween - 2012

Riley did this on her own. 

Hannah's costume.  The one on top was taken about a month ago, when she first got the costume.  The one on bottom was taken on Halloween.  

Me and my sister.  I miss her.  

Round 1.  We headed out a little after 4 pm.  Trick or treating hours lasted from 4 to 8 here.  That's the longest I've ever seen but it's kinda nice to head out before it gets frigid.  

Ready to go

And she's off

Me and the bear. 

The Griswold's House.  Or so one would think.  

I have never seen a house so decorated for Halloween.  Really.  You can't walk through their front yard.  But I like it.  I think it's great they are so into Halloween.  

Insert dinner break.  We had chili.  And Hannah got to hand out some candy, which she really enjoyed doing.  

Round 2, after dinner.  It took a minute for her to get back into it.  We explained that trick or treating in the dark is much better than going out during the day.  

Riley, all bundled up.  She enjoyed being out, babbling and smiling most of the night.  

Cherry Grappa and Coffee, a quasi cafe correcto.  It was quite yummy.  And I forgot how cold I was.  Okay, who am I kidding, I didn't forget anything, I just didn't care as much.  

Hanging in there.  

Hannah was super excited to go to this house because she liked the decorations.  

I liked this.  

By the end of the night, she was dragging her candy bag.  But she still wanted to keep going. 

End of the night candy inspection.  Also known as let's see what you got and what I want! 

David explaining something to Hannah.  Who knows what it was.  

Riley found a lollipop she enjoyed.  

Then Riley propped herself in the middle of Hannah's candy and played with it.  

It was a great night.  Hannah was more into this year than last.  She enjoyed being out at night, and seeing all the lights and decorations are they are intended to be seen.  And we had fun.  Aunt Debbie lives in a great neighborhood for trick or treating.  They have nice, wide streets and sidewalks everywhere.  It was obvious that a lot of people from around here travel to this neighborhood to go trick or treating.  

Independence Day 2010

I hope everyone had a happy Independence Day.  

Here's what we did:

  

Here's Hannah torturing our new kitten, Pierro.

Rossi, investigating the grill situation.

David, the grill master

Chatting and munching

Casey, Me and Mom

Vivian and Hannah munching

Vivian and the massive sparkler

Hannah and her massive sparkler

Pumpkin Carving

Hannah was not a fan off the pumpkin guts.  And David did not take a photo of the final product, since I was at H&R Block when this occurred.  So, I'll post one later.  

Easter

Here's a couple photo's from Easter Sunday. I have one of the three of us, but I haven't loaded the pictures from my camera yet. So I'll post that one when I get it on the computer. In short, Hannah had so much fun. The Easter Bunny left her lots of goodies, they were right outside her door when she woke up. And the goodies continued all day long. Breakfast consisted of a chocolate rabbit on a stick and milk. She had to have a little help, at first, but she got the hang of it pretty quick. We had a fantastic dinner of roast and potatoes, glazed carrots, and grilled asparagus, tomatoes, and corn. We topped of dessert with cheesecake and fresh strawberries. Like I said, a good day all around.

How I spent my Valentines Day

Picking out David's off duty handgun. That's right, we spent the good portion of Valentines Day in a firing range so that I could convey to David which handgun I felt the most comfortable with. For those of you curious, it was the Springfield XD 40 but it's a little bigger than David wants to have for concealment purposes so he's going to go with the XD sub compact, which is alright. Much better than the glock compact I shot. It wasn't bad though. I like shooting with David, because he teaches me how to shoot better. There are two pictures of our target on here, David's shots are in the head, mine are all in the chest. I hope everyone else had just as much fun on their Valentines Day as I did!