Bringing in 2012

Our New Yeas Eve celebration began with a toast to the final hours of 2011. Cheers!

There is no better way to bring in the New Year than with great friends and great food. So that is exactly how we celebrated New Years Eve and for us that meant two things - making our famous homemade pizzas with the Read family. 

David made Teri and I a gluten free pizza crust.

Hannah and Josh making a pizza to share.

Every amazing pizza begins with amazing pizza dough, and I make amazing pizza dough just ask my peeps. Of course an amazing pizza dough needs an amazing pizza twirler.

See how amazing my pizza dough is - Eli's face says it all.

I am preparing dough to twirl into a pizza crust. I take pizza night pretty seriously.

So does Jerusha...take food seriously.

Now on to the more festive time of the evening...

2012!!!!

Jerusha is showing off her large paws.

Anything you can do, I can do better...

It is a lovely beginning to 2012.

The New Year brunch feast.

Eli verses Gingerbread

Behold Eli's gingerbread house invaded by mutant, zombie gummy bears! It was not an easy task to wield the gingerbread or the mutant zombie gummy bears to his will, but Eli was valiant and courageous in his quest and he was triumphant.

In the beginning there was a boy with a vision. A vision of a gingerbread house that he and his mother planned to make from scratch. They found a recipe and purchased ingredients but those ingredients sat in the dark cupboard and in the back of the refrigerator forgotten for most of December until one evening around10pm just a week before Christmas the boy said to his mother, "Mommy, remember we were going to make a gingerbread house?" And the mother looked up from her book (or perhaps it was her knitting) and said, "That's right my dear boy, we need to get to work," or something like that. And that is what they did and it looked a little something this...

Eli the next day after he put the finishing touches on his Gingerbread house, meaning he skewered a couple more mutant zombie gummy bears with toothpicks.

Later on in the week Hannah and Jerusha, inspired by Eli's gingerbread house made houses of their own.

On Dasher...to Christmas

Do you sense the anticipation of the most wonderful time of the year? Christmas Morning when the house is full of joy and cheer and the groaning of a teenager as she collapses  upon the ground spent from the effort of climbing the stairs from her basement bedroom to join the family at the early hour of 10am.

It's CHRISTMAS!

Eli still eats the wrapping paper. (Not Really).

Jerusha contemplates her gifts from Chonie Clause.

Baconny Goodness!

 After opening stockings and gifts from Santa - also known as Chonie Clause because of his tradition of bringing a new pair of underwear (known in our home as chonies) for each of us - we take a break to indulge in a new Christmas tradition,

CHRISTMAS BLT's!

 I'm interrupting Christmas morning with a flashback to Christmas Eve when I was introduced to Daisy. As Eli put it, "At first Daisy was a little creepy and freaked me out but she's really quite beautiful." So it was not long after we arrived at Paul's home for our traditional Christmas Eve gathering that Daisy was  crawling in my palm and I have to say that I had warm fuzzies holding her, literally.

Back to Christmas Morning...
and it looked a little something like me tackling Jerusha. Okay, that is pretty much what happend. I mislabeled a present for Hannah with the name of my other daughter, "Jerusha". I realized my mistake too late, that is after Jerusha opened her art pencils and I realized Hannah did not have her art pencil shaped wrapped package in her unopened gift pile. I did ask first, sweetly, for the mislabeled gift. Jerusha refused stating, "If it has my name on it, the gift is mine." So I demanded, to which Jerusha replied, "The gift has my name, it's mine," and she snatched the gift pressing it protectively to her chest. So that is the exact moment I pounced, leaping over gifts, crumpled wrapping paper and a small child named Eli to tackle Jerusha in the attempt to wrestle the gift out of her clutches forgetting that she regularly wrestles with her father and fights dirty - biting, scratching, and kicking. So as you can see, our festive morning was interrupted by a... Beat-Beat match!
A special thanks to Aric for capturing this beautiful moment - Jerusha kicking my bum, which for the record hurt, real bad!

So may your days be merry and bright and may all your Christmases be full of 

collapsing teenagers, 

new chonies, 

baconny goodnes, 

warm fuzzies, 

which all equals 

a totally butt kickin' celebration!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS