A New Year!

Happy new year, everyone! How did you all spend your new year's eve? We kept it pretty low key and stayed home with friends. Josh had the brilliant idea to make lobster tails (his first time) and they actually turned out amazingly delicious! We let the kids have champagne flutes filled with sparkling cider and they were cracking us up toasting and saying cheers! Josh brought home the virtual reality gear from work which was fun to try out, and then we pulled out the Pie Face game Wes and Oren got for christmas and all the boys took turns getting a face full of whipped cream. We ended the night with chocolate lava cakes (which is possibly the best way I can think up to end the year) and we all made it to midnight, even one extremely tired but very determined baby!

Reflecting on the past year, I have to say 2015 was just really good to us. We spent the majority of it focused on family, getting to know our new baby girl and adjusting to life as a family of five.  It was a year of a lot of personal and professional growth and for that I'm thankful. For 2016 I'm looking forward to focusing on some more improvements to the house, fostering friendships, working hard, playing harder and definitely squeezing in some more travel. Speaking of which, Josh and I are headed to Tulum in just a couple of weeks (without the kids!) so if anyone has been we'd love to hear your recommendations for food and things to do. Also a big thanks to you for sticking by me and reading along as I document bits and pieces of my life here in this little corner of the web all year long.  Hope you all had a safe and festive night yesterday. Cheers to a new year!

Christmas 2015

Another Christmas season come and gone. It always passes in a blur of fun and food and family. Ben was home! And we had our annual Christmas eve brunch which was born out of necessity (because we have so many other obligations this time of year) but which has quickly become my very favorite part. Mostly because of homemade cinnamon rolls though, let's be honest. Also, this year we threw in waffles, a fritatta and homemade hot cocoa with peanut butter whipped cream. Oh yes we did.

When we finally made it back home that night we set out cookies and hot cocoa (with extra marshmallows) for Santa. Then the boys threw fistfulls of their homemade reindeer food into the front yard and retreated upstairs for the annual reading of "The Night Before Christmas". Wes was too excited to sleep and by the time he was finally out I was so tired my eyeballs were rolling back into my head and I deserted Josh to put together the kids' play kitchen and set out all the gifts himself. Thank you Santa for a wonderful husband.

It was a great morning. The kids got everything they wanted and more. They were happy and grateful and totally into it. They even let me coerce them into a group photo in their matching jammies.

Ahh, I just love them too much. Hope you all had a very merry Christmas and have a safe new year ahead!

xoxo

Our Tree!

So apparently December got away from me. I'm not sure what happened there, but here it is already the 23rd and I'm just now posting photos of the trip to we took to the farm to pick out our tree. (I'm squeaking this post in here juuuuust before it's too late, if you didn't notice ;) And better late than never, I suppose. We had a good time, as usual. Lots of tree hefting and chicken chasing and petting of the goats. And most importantly, we found ourselves a pretty little tree to bring home. Photos below if you'd care to take a peek!

I won't go another month between posts, no need to fear. I'm sure there will be christmas photos aplenty to share here in the next few days. In the meantime I hope you all have a very merry holiday weekend!

xoxo