Our Sweet and Sugary Christmas

Each year the girls get to choose a theme to decorate a Christmas Tree in their room. We have had lots of fun themes over the last couple of years.... a mermaid tree and a fairy princess tree are the most recent. This year we kind of have a common theme around our house for Christmas (you will see when you get our card)... it's all about CANDY this season!

The girls helped to pick out all of the ornaments and get to arrange the tree to their liking.

It's so hard for mommy to not get involved when they put all the ornaments on one branch...ha, ha! Actually, this year, they got better at separating them.
They picked a fun color theme too!
Ahhhhh.... two little decorators who love a theme. The apple didn't fall far from the tree.
(No pun intended...LOL)


Little Miss Decorator Ryan

Little Miss Decorator Charlie

Proud girlies. I wonder if Santa will find their little tree in their room.

Hmmmm, I wonder... I wonder... :-)

Rain or Shine... or Just Rain!

The USC/Notre Dame game was Saturday night. Shhh...No need to discuss the outcome of the that game! I don't really want to relive the aftermath around here so just ... shhhhhh!

Win or lose, rain or shine... we had a great time!

We took a shuttle over to the game which was such a nice treat!

We walked around campus a bit beforehand! I love people watching, so fun!

Momma needed a band-aid! I forgot how bad these boots hurt! I haven't worn them in a long while.

Ahhhh... the brothers! Great pic boys!

The brothers with our newest member of the Graces! Love ya Jules!

Finally, we found someone that would take a picture of all of us. Can you tell how freezing it was? Whoa, super cold! (That's in "Ryan Talk")

Great seats! One of the first times I actually was totally interested in the game. (Maybe, because the happiness of my morning depended on the outcome of this game.

Needless to say, the morning was LLLONNGGG!)

Rainy and cold but oh, so much fun!

Thank you honey!

FIGHT ON!

A "Grace"ful Thanksgiving

On the Friday after Thanksgiving, Jeff and Julie drove into town to stay with us for the weekend. We decided to take advantage of having our house guests and do Thanksgiving, round 2! Steve and Liz came down and we all headed to Old Town for dinner and a trip to the bakery afterwards!

The sons and the granddaughters...

Liz and Steve with the littlest "jewel."

Officially now, Aunt Julie and little Buggy...

All warm and ready to brave the cold...

Cool girl, Ryan, loves to put together the perfect outfit!

Sleepy girl is as happy as can be with her "Jeffy"

Charlie "milking" the snugglies from our guests... (above and below!!!)

Stay tuned for pictures from the USC game...

A Kudron Thanksgiving

This Thanksgiving we celebrated with the Kudrons. The three F's are what Thanksgiving is all about... food, football, and family! We had a very relaxing day remembering all we have to be thankful for.

Ryan started off our dinner with a special prayer that she wrote in her SRE class (aka "Catholic class").

We got the kids all set up at the kid table before the grown ups settled in to their meal.

The grown up table...

I loved my centerpiece but the best part was how I had to talk to Steve throughout the dinner! It makes me laugh out loud even now... haha!

After dinner and dessert, we celebrated Nonna's birthday.

Cameron had a big smile for the camera.

Nonna with all her grandbabies... I'm sure her favorite part of the night!

Momma looks tired... getting Thanksgiving dinner out on the table is hard work!

Getting everything out hot (or at least warm) is the most difficult task in the world... even with one of my famous lists! Whoa!

Luckily for tired momma, Ryan had a surprise homemade pumpkin bread ready for us to have with our coffee the next morning! She made it with her Daisy troop and cleverly hid it in the fridge so that it would be a big surprise! It was yummy!

So many things to be thankful for...

counting my blessings this wonderful weekend!

Lucky Number 7

7 years of marital bliss...

Steve and I celebrated our anniversary this week with an overnight trip to "The Beach House" in Hermosa Beach. Steve loved being in his old stomping grounds. We took our new bikes and rode down "the Strand" all the way through Manhattan Beach. We looked at the beautiful houses, people watched, and made some stops along the way at the local pubs. It was a great, much needed, night away!

The view from our hotel room.

Steve checking out our "digs"

And mommy too.

And then the bellboy delivered our luggage so we were able to have him take our picture together.

We locked up our bikes at each spot.

We watched the sunset from Hennessey's and froze our butts off.

Steve had some refreshing cocktails.... yummy!

Steve gets so embarrassed when I get out the camera because it makes him feel like a "tourist!" haha... sorry Steve, you don't live the bachelor Hermosa Beach lifestyle anymore!!

We went to the Chart House next, sat at the bar, and ate clam chowder and sushi. And then... we ended up here at Sharkee's with all the college kids. We met this guy (in the picture) who is a pilot for United. We asked him to take our photo and he said sure. Little did we know, his plan was to get in the picture too. Too funny. I will say... I don't think I would want to be on this guy's United flight the next morning. Ugh... I think he might have been feeling a little "rough" for that morning's flight!

I took a picture with a pilgrim! Ohhhh, I felt so old at this place!

Happy Anniversary to us!

Cheers to 7 more years like the first 7!

My New Camera

So, another camera crapped out on us! We've had some bad luck with cameras in the last few years. Today, we purchased our new camera (which explains the lag in blog posts). I am so very happy with it! We took a few random pictures of the girls today to test it out!

Isn't the quality of these pics so great? I'm very happy since I keep a photo blog and I'm the worst picture taker ever... those two just don't go together... LOL! Hopefully, I will "instantly" improve in my picture taking skills!