Belated Christmas Visiting/New Year's Day

Due to the weather, we were not able to get up north to visit with the Grandparents, so we decided to go up New Year's Day....what an adventure!

We picked up my car from the body shop New Year's Eve (long story...) and planned on taking it for our travels, as usual. Well, that didn't happen. We got to Kokomo, In. (North of Indy on the way to Elkhart) and the Explorer started lunging and jerking and Kevin and I were thinking we weren't even going to make it home, let alone make it to all the family up North. So we made a quick decision to take the truck back to Indy and drop it off at the service shop (Thanks for all your help and suggestions Dad!) and take Kevin's car for our weekend travels.

So eventually we made it to Elkhart, several hours after initially planned. It was nice to visit with my parents and my GP (Grandpa Martin) and Aunt came over to see the kids too. Here are some cute shots of everyone....

Late New Year's Day we made it to Peggy's house (Hobart, IN). Kevin and I were exhausted, but the kids were wired and stayed up LATE! The next morning we had breakfast and visited.

After nap time we made our way to Lin and Ideen's house (Valpo)....

We had planned on meeting Barb (and Earl too), but were surprised to be able to see Jenny a bit too! Unfortunately, Jenny had to eat and run back to work (We didn't even remember to get pictures of her and the kids), but it was nice to visit and catch up. After eating, the rest of us talked for awhile and let the kids work out some energy before the drive home. Hopefully the kids didn't tire Barb out too much, the kids were all over her!

All the running around and playing must have worked (Thanks Barb), or maybe it was just all the traveling in general, but the kids slept the whole way home.

We want to thank everyone who traveled to meet us on our "rounds" to all the Grandparents' homes. Hopefully we will make it around to see everyone soon!

New Year's Eve 2008

We usually stay home on New Year's Eve and invite our friends over that have kids to have a nice quite evening of eating a visiting. Usually, its just the Mortemores who come by, but this year the Dorans decided to join us too!

Believe it or not, we everyone but one (poor Gavin was so tired) made it till midnight.

I think all had a great time!

January Catch up

WOW am I behind!! January was a busy month for us. We did some traveling a celebrated a birthday so I'm going to break them down in separate posts to do them both some well deserved justice...

Aidan's first Christmas...

Even with some of the bad luck we had this holiday season, we feel very blessed and had a wonderful Christmas season thus far. We still need to visit our loved ones up north, but hopefully we'll make it up there this weekend. Here are some pictures we took before Christmas, I think they turned out adorable!

Christmas morning was nice, Rachel came down the stairs and her eyes lit up with "Santa really came". It was so cute! She managed to wait patiently until Mom and Dad were able to get a cup of coffee and she was ready to pass out gifts...

Rachel did well at letting Aidan "try" to open his gifts, but after opening his stocking he had no interest in opening any more...so Rachel got to open his too!

After everything was opened we got a kick out of watching Rachel play with Aidan's presents and Aidan playing with Rachel's...

There was no snow for us on Christmas, instead it was a beautiful, brisk winter day that allowed Kevin and I to get the fireplace going and relax a bit. Kevin made a wonderful dinner and between the cookie exchange and what I had already made, we had plenty of sweets to last us...

Christmas Cards...

This year we decided to take a family photo and make them into cards. Sounds simple enough, right? Well, do you realize how hard it is to find matching pajamas for a family of 4 that doesn't cost you a small fortune!? Needless to say, I gave up and rummaged through what we all had to pick out the right semi-matching jammies. Aimee was able to come over one evening and take the pictures for us....(Thanks again Aimee).

We ordered 50 and you would think that would have been enough for everyone to get one, WRONG! I am going to have to remember in the future to order 75, as once we were through addressing the ones for all the family, there were not many for our beloved friends. So we are sorry if you did not get a family photo this year, but I am enclosing a copy here for everyone to see. I thought they turned out pretty well, even if Kevin thinks he has a silly grin going on.
We are going to make the rounds to the family and friends in Elkhart and the "Region" later this month, but we'll have to make sure the weather cooperates before confirming.

For our friends in the area, don't forget that on December 19, 2008, we are hosting a Cookie Exchange! I am pretty excited and it looks like we have a nice group already RSVP'd to come. If you have accidentally deleted your evite, email me and I'll send you another one.

Whether we get to see you this holiday season or not, we are wishing everyone a MERRY Christmas and HAPPY New Year!

Sick home...

This says it all this past week in the Hammonds' home. We hope all of you are doing a little better...

Thanksgiving 2008

I started the Holiday by picking up Kevin's mom to spend Rachel's birthday with us, as well as spend the week. It was nice to have the extra set of hands, even if we all seemed to get her sick (Sorry about that Peggy). I was able to make home made pumpkin pie this year. I do have to say it was easy to make and tasted wonderful, so it may become a staple during the holidays. I was also able to make some zucchini bread, apple crisp and these cute little rice krispy treats for the kids.

This year was filled with lots of guests; the Mortemore, Miltz and Mooney families joined ours. We had a wonderful meal with contributions from everyone!

I especially liked Aimee's soup, but there were so many good things for sides that very little turkey was eaten. Do you like my thrown together table? I guess we are going to have to work on getting a real dinning room table if we want to do a big dinner again, but borrowing Judy's folding table to put with ours worked out well. It was nice to have the extra company, I know Rachel enjoyed playing with Adam and Caleb and all the extra adults (you know we never pay her any attention). Here are some of the pictures from the day...

By the time everyone left, things were cleaned up, turkey had been picked clean (Thanks Molly and Aimee), and everyone was full and tired. Rachel and Aidan took a while to finally go down, but I think they were both just overly tired and full of the excitement of the day...what do you think?

We loved having everyone over and hope to be able to do it again in the future!