Holiday Review ~ part four

DRUM ROLL...please!

Yes, only 2 months late but "better late than never"....my favorite quote.

Lots of pictures...ENJOY!

{Christmas Day}

Our traditions have not changed much in the eight years that Chris and I have been together. There is a lot of traveling on Christmas Day but we always make sure Christmas morning is spent together. It was special when it was just the two of us those first four years, but now we know just how magical this day can be with the addition of Ryan and Kara to our family.

This year was the first year that Ryan was excited about Santa Claus. He finally understood who he was and that if he was a good boy, then Santa would leave him something under the Christmas tree. Seeing his excitement build each day with anticipation made us excited too. We completely understand this expression "seeing and experiencing everything all over again through the eyes of your children" now.

Chris and I were up late wrapping gifts, baking cookies and packing suitcases on Christmas Eve. So we were happy when the children slept in and I still can't believe we had to wake Ryan up that morning! It didn't take him long to realize that the day had finally arrived and he jumped out of bed asking over and over if Santa came to our house.

We started a tradition of video taping Ryan coming down the steps at Ryan's first Christmas in 2005. Of course the first few years he was carried downstairs by Daddy.

This year he practically ran downstairs!

Being camera shy!

The first gift Ryan saw was this....

Grandma High and I got it when we went outlet shopping on Black Friday. Can you guess which store it came from? We didn't know just how big this playhouse really was until Chris put it together Christmas Eve! I am still debating if I should allow Ryan to color on it...don't want to confuse him with the whole color on the walls with crayons again.

Ryan then saw all the gifts that Santa left him under the tree and he went to town opening them all in lightening speed!

I guess he was a good boy this year!

Then it was Kara's turn!

Santa knew she would love Taggies. Kara can't get enough of playing with tags....she is able to find them on everything. Ryan did not have the same obsession as a baby.

She loved her Taggies but thought the wrapping paper was even better. YUM.

I love this picture because it shows them enjoying a few of their favorite gifts.

Peek-A-Boo....I see YOU!

Can I eat it?

Chris spoiled me with Snowmen this year. The kids really loved this snowman snow globe. It pushes the snow around without having to shake it. Pretty neat! Oh how I love Hallmark!!

We ate a quick breakfast after all the gifts were opened, cleaned up and got ready start the day of travel! First stop: Pop-Pop and Mom-Mom Delps (Bobbi's side of the family) for Christmas lunch. We always enjoy a yummy meal of Turkey and all the fixings!

After our tummies were full, it was time to open more gifts! Due to my large family, we started a new tradition a few years back, where we have the kiddies pick each other to exchange gifts (we put their names in a hat in November). This year Uncle Richie and Aunt Jonna had Ryan. My brother plays the drums for a local band and we had a suspicion that Ryan might get a drum for Christmas. We were right but we didn't know that they would also get him an assortment of musical instruments as well! He loved them!

Ryan playing his new drum. I have to admit, he is pretty good at it but I am still not a fan of drums! Oh the noise!

As I was looking through my Christmas photos to put this post together, I realized that we must have been having so much fun spending time with our families that we didn't take a lot of pictures this Christmas. We were able to get a few pictures at my parents house but we didn't take any at Paul and Adrienne's house for Christmas dinner! I hope we are able to document our 2009 Christmas a little better this year.

What I did notice while going through the photos was that we got a picture of Kara with her Pop-Pops! So here she is with her two favorite guys (Daddy will always be #1 though).

Pop-Pop Delp and Kara

Pop-Pop High and Kara

Around 3:30, we said our good-byes and packed everyone up once again for a trip up North to visit with Chris' family for the rest of the weekend. We always eat Christmas dinner at uncle Paul and aunt Adrienne's house. Paul makes the most delicious Prime Rib with au jour, baked potatoes, cheddar biscuits and green beans! Just typing that makes me want to celebrate the dinner all over again...it truly is divine! Sadly, we didn't take any pictures but the kiddies were once again spoiled with tons of gifts and even more with tons of love from Chris' side of the family. One of Ryan's favorite gifts would be the cool air hockey game you put on a tabletop. He wants to play this every night with Chris and I have to say he is getting pretty good at it too! Thanks Paul and Adrienne!

It is always late when we finally get to Pop-Pop and Grandma High's house. But it doesn't stop us from wanting to open our gifts from them too. Santa knew Ryan and Kara were coming by so he left a few (or shall we say a lot) gifts for them there. Ahhhh so many toys, so little space to store them!

This picture doesn't show all the gifts but it does show the cool basketball net that Uncle Mike got for Ryan and if you look really close, you will see one of the many "Handy Dandy" notebooks that Ryan asked for this year as well. a clue...a clue!

Favorite Christmas Memories from 2009:

• Seeing Ryan's expression when he saw all the gifts under the tree!
• Ryan "playing Santa" and saying Merry Christmas as he handed out the presents.
• Kara's 1st Christmas
• Watching Ryan with his cousins playing the musical instruments and marching around the living room.
• Ryan and uncle Paul playing with Paul's railroad set (it's huge!).
• Yummy Food
• Getting the best gift from uncle Mike- a year subscription to Netflix...it's the gift that just keeps giving! Thanks Mikey!
• Watching the children enjoy spending time with their grandparents
• Grateful that we are able to share the holidays with our loved ones.
  
  So that's it. Another Christmas filled with fun, family and food! Sure traveling can be a pain but I wouldn't trade the memories for anything!
  

Can you guess the #1 word used in our house lately?

Here...I will let Kara tell you.


"Nooooooo!" from Bobbi-Jo High on Vimeo.

~ Weekend in Review ~

FRIDAY

My weekend started with a much needed Mommy Night Out! My two best buds, Wendall and Jammers (my creative nicknames), decided earlier in the week that we should all meet at a local restaurant for dinner. Due to Kara's qualms with taking a bottle, I wasn't able to stay out late. I guess you could call it a mini night out. Whatever you call it, it's a night out and I was sooooooooooo happy to get a few hours away.

Jamye and I arrived at the restaurant a little after 7pm. Thank goodness we choose a restaurant that accepted reservations because the place was packed! We quickly scanned the crowd for Wendy but didn't see her. We figured she was just going to be little late and got seated without her.

I forgot to bring my camera to document dinner...sorry. Just so you have faces to the names: here are the three amigas...at my beautiful baby shower that Wendy and Jamye threw for me exactly one week to the day before I went into labor with Kara. Wendy is located on the left and Jamye on the right in the above photo. I think it's funny that we decided to do a mommy night out a week after Kara turned 8 months old. Is she really 8 months old already?!

After several attempts to get ahold of Wendy, we gave up and ordered our food. We kept joking that we got STOOD UP on Mommy's Night Out! Around 8:30 pm, Wendy finally called us back and apologized for not making it. Turns out she got stuck at work and she has an hour commute so it would just be Jammers and me for dinner. We were sad she couldn't make it but it just gives us an excuse to organize another night out...thanks Wendy!

We decided to splurge and ordered steaks for dinner but we were disappointed when they came out way too black on the outside! I ordered a petite filet mignon and wasn't about to let 20 something bucks go down the drain so I ate it. It tasted like ash. Jamye and I worked together at a Country Club while in high school and college and we can't help but feel bad when it comes to complaining about food while out to eat. So we lied each time the server asked us if everything was ok. Just a little white lie because the rest of the dinner was quite yummy!

We splurged a little more and got dessert. Jamye ordered a chocolate mousse bocce ball and I couldn't resist the peanut butter fudge cake....they were heaven. As we ate dessert, the manager stopped by our table to ask us what our thoughts were on dinner and our service. Not wanting to make a big deal about the steaks, we fibbed again and said it was good. We thought she would move on to the next table, but she stayed a little longer and asked a few more questions. Some how she got us to confess that our steaks were not up to par and she whisked our check away to comp the food! We sat there slightly embarrassed but also relieved because the truth was out and we didn't have to pay for the yucky steaks! Our bill at the end of the night came out to be a little over $20 for everything. WooHoo!

Halfway through dessert, I received a text from Chris...this is the pix/text:

"Time is UP!"

Nice, huh? My husband has a way with words and pictures...

It was bedtime and I was needed back home. Those 2.5 hours went way to fast. It was great to get out and even better to spend some much needed time with my best friend. Thanks for the ride and the laughs Jammers. I love you bud!

Saturday

I started my morning with a trip to the hospital to have 5 tubes of blood drawn. I am having some issues with joint pain and my family doctor decided to have a few tests run to rule out Lyme Disease and Arthritis. More on this later...

Chris had plans to help my cousin, Sahira with her Chemistry that afternoon. While the kiddies napped, I cleaned. That's what weekends are for lately...this house is NEVER clean during the week. It's just impossible to keep up with when it's two (kiddies) to one (me). I need Chris or someone to even out the score and then things get done!

Saturday night I caved under pressure and joined....

I know...what was I thinking? Just another thing to keep up with. My reasons for joining were to keep up to date with events that were happening with Penn State Berks Campus and just like everyone else on there, to see what the people from my high school days were up too. Several months ago, I was asked to help out with events at PSU and also for my 15 year HS reunion. It seems Facebook is the place to go when you need to get the word out about events these days. My guess would be because your almost certain everyone has page. For example, I had over 30+ emails from people I knew in school asking me to add them to my page within 24 hours of creating my profile. CRAZY! The main difference between Facebook and Myspace (which I will never join) is that you need to be a member with Facebook to view people's pages. So I kinda had no choice but to join if I wanted to participate and receive information on these events.

There you have it...I am on Facebook. Wanna be my friend?

Sunday

Sunday turned out to be a lazy day. I have a love/hate relationship with lazy days. Why? Well I love them because we don't make plans, we snuggle with the kids and just let the day pass without worries. I hate them because the house always seems to be in worse condition come Monday morning then it was the week prior! But I digress...

I finally made the decision to wean Kara and have her take bottles of formula during the day. As stated above, this little angel is not a fan of bottles in general...let alone putting the dreaded f-word FORMULA in them.

Being the smart mama that I am though, I've been putting formula in with her cereal for the past several weeks just so she could acquire a taste. She is definitely not a fan but she is accepting it more and more each day we try...here are few pictures from our attempt on Sunday.

Hmmmm...what's this?

So I just pick it up and...

...and give it a try.

**coughing and gagging pursues...**

Why Mom Why?

Always ends the same way.

And that was our weekend in review.

The End.

Picture of the Day

What's that SMELL?

Somebody is STINKY!

~ announcement ~

We got a library card!

YES!!

What? Were you expecting something else?

We finally, after attending storytime with Miss Tracee for several months now, signed up for our very own library card. Did you know that when you sign up for a card, that your card can be used at any library in our county? And it's FREE!

I can not express in words how excited Ryan was tonight when he checked out his first library books. He looked so cute as he picked out the books he wanted to read, took them up to the counter, gave the Librarian his card and then thanked her when she gave him the books back.

I was one proud mama.

It looks like he is not sure of his picks in this picture. Don't let his expression fool you though, the books were great! Ryan has already asked me if we can go back tomorrow to get more books!

Just call us the High Family Book Worms!

when the blogging world meets...

...we do it with sweets!

Hershey's Chocolate World to be exact!

Last night I received a call from my good friend Christy asking me if I would like to travel to Hershey today to meet our blogging friend Jannica and her son, Owen. Jannica was in the Harrisburg area for the past few days visiting with her husband, Mark while he ran a stand at the Eastern Sports and Outdoor Show for his business Summit to Stream Adventures.

Even though I've felt like crap-o-la the past few days, I knew I couldn't miss out on this fun adventure and who doesn't want to go to Chocolate World?! It was the perfect way to end our LOVE weekend...at the sweetest place on earth!

Jannica & Owen

I was so excited to finally meet Jannica and Owen. I love reading about their family and watching Owen experience all his "firsts". He was born just three weeks before Kara and is a champion crawler already....she has some catching up to do!

After welcome hugs, we gathered up the kiddies and hopped on the Chocolate Tour! I have to thank Christy over and over for being my second set of hands with Ryan today. I couldn't have survived this trip without her help! Ryan really enjoyed the chocolate tour ride. I think we all loved the singing cows the best!

Ryan was up front with Christy and her son, Tony...

While Kara and I got to sit in the back with Jannica and Owen. He is such a cute, sweet and happy baby. I love his cheeks!

After the tour, we walked through the candy store area. I don't know how I got through that store without my son begging for candy but I did! I think he was having too much fun with Tony D. to really pay attention to all the sweets around him!

The boys thought the Hershey trolley was really neat. They weren't in the mood to take pictures today. I must thank Christy again for taking the majority of the photos for me today too! All good bloggers know that each detail must be photo documented. ;)

We decided to eat lunch at the local Red Robin which happens to be Jannica's favorite restaurant. As we left Chocolate World, I saw this neat sign. Hershey is such a fun place and I hope to visit again this summer with Chris and kiddies!

Our afternoon ended way too soon and we were sad to say good-bye. It was great spending time with Jannica and I hope we can make a trip up to New York in the near future to visit and have Mark give us a tour of the beautiful Finger Lakes. Thank you Jannica for visiting with Christy, me and our little ones. It really was a lot of fun.

(the boys got to pick flowers after lunch to take home for Valentine's Day...a nice gift from the staff at Red Robin)

Meeting Jannica today really adds hope that I will someday meet other wonderful blogging friends I've gotten to know in the past year. Even the mid to west coast gals! We are all just a bunch of moms who love our children and the friendships formed along the way are just an added bonus in our blogging world.

Nothing sweeter than that.

Love Day

This little cutie wanted to wish everyone a...

Happy Valentine's Day!

She also turned 8 months old today!

Want to know what I got for Valentine's Day??!

A sinus infection.

Now I get to take these lovely horse pills for the next week. Yuck.

I wasn't going to let this nasty sinus infection stop me from enjoying our LOVE weekend though. So Friday night after finally getting the kiddies to bed and taking my medicine, Chris and I snuggled in our bed to watch this movie...

It was such a great movie and I totally recommend it! We laughed. I cried. We even stayed up late to watch all the extras. Which was fun but then someone...ahem

... decided that 4:30am was a great time to wake up! My wonderful husband went in and rocked her back to sleep. Then something amazing happened...both Ryan and Kara slept until almost 10am!!

Now THAT was a great Valentine's gift! :)

Our Valentine's Day was a lazy day. I would get spurts of energy here and there but most of my day was spent napping in bed or on the couch. Chris spent a good chunk of the day in our office organizing paperwork while the kiddies played.

I did have enough energy to create this LOVE lunch for Ryan. He loved it and I loved that it was easy to make. Sorry this picture refuses to turn the correct way!

While Ryan enjoyed his yummy heart shaped grilled cheese and clementines, Kara received some extra LOVE in her oatmeal with peaches!

Of course we had to have a mini photo shoot of our LOVE BUGS!

And our day wouldn't have been complete without our handmade and Hallmark Valentines!

Happy Valentine's Day!