Love is in the Air

I am the guy who used to send roses to his sweetie on Valentine's day, and the others in my wife's office I'm sure would tell their hubbies how sweet it was and why didnt they get any...well, i had neglected my duty the past couple years. This year, thanks to my recent absence of anything to do doing the day coupled with a good deal at Kroger, I hand delivered some flowers to Ally at her work. Altogether now...1...2...3...Awwwww.

In other traditions, the kids had new V-day gear, and we had heart shaped pizzas. Last year we had some ghastly heart pizzas from Papa Johns which were so bad that I complained and got some free pizzas! Again, with my newfound free time, I made our own heart shaped pies...

When Irish eyes are smiling

The kids were donned in their greens. No green beer though, but I made gorgonzola stuffed pork medallions wrapped in bacon...

Aidan's first Birthday!

As most of you know, we don't usually get a lot of snow in the Indianapolis area, but somehow this year has been the exception. For a bit we thought we were going to have to postpone Aidan's birthday party, as we got so much snow that week!
But this was the worst of it and though some people traveling still didn't make it due to weather or having to work, we had a wonderful turn out! Let me tell you this though....finding Blue's Clues items to accent Aidan's birthday decorations was a task in itself, but I think I did ok.
He was so funny eating his cake....

Aidan received lots of wonderful things! I think everyone had a wonderful time!

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...