Birthday Palooza...

As you may know January is a very busy birthday month for us. My Mom's birthday is the 3rd, Matthew is the 4th, my brother's is the 5th, mine is the 12th and Paul's is the 15th. I decided to throw a big party for all of us last Sunday. Luckily nearly all of our family was able to come and we had a blast. I decided to do something different and had a chili party, yummy! We had three different chilis, bread, beer and of course cake! Bill made his famous coconut cake (it is just beyond delicious) and I ordered two cakes from Ketchie Creek as well.


Wow....how did one year go by that fast?


The cakes


Anthony(my brother), Mom and Matt....three of the five birthday celebrants!


Anthony and Matt

Christmas 2008

We had a fantastic Christmas and New Year's. I just wanted to share a few pictures. The kids are really enjoying all of their gifts, but the Wii is certainly the biggest hit. Ben is the Wii addict in the family, followed closely by Paul and Anna. Santa also brought a basketball goal and Leapsters for the big boys. Our tree is now down and the decorations are put away, it all just happened so quickly!


Anna was SOOOO happy to receive Guitar Hero!


Paul is now decked out with Panther gear!


The kids and myself after opening presents.


The kids were so excited to open presents and they did a great job taking turns so that we were able to see what everyone received. This strategy really helped to control the chaos.


Matthew on Christmas Eve!

Santa letters

Ok, I am stealing an idea from Holly...here are the boys letters to Santa....and yes, they will be VERY happy on Christmas morning! So sorry that I can't figure out how to flip them.....I am simply not very computer savvy....so bend your head to the right!

Ok, I am going to try tagging.....

I have been tagged before but never done anything about it...so here it goes....

Go into your photo file folder.
Choose the 4th photo file within that folder.
And from that 4th file, choose your 4th photo.
Then share the photo and the memory that goes along with it.
Tag 4 more people.




this picture was taken in our backyard in Albuquerque on Easter morning. The boys were having a great time hunting for eggs....

so now I am going to tag Susan, Heidi, Becky and well that is it....

Getting ready for the holidays...

Well I think we are 100% ready for the holidays. I have finished all my shopping (knock on wood) and nearly all my wrapping!!! We have decided to have an Italian Christmas and I am really looking forward to the feast. We bought a beautiful tree last weekend and had a nice time decorating it all together. The kids also decorated a gingerbread house. I have caught Ben eating the candies off of the house several times so hopefully the house will still be standing in a few more days! The kids wrote letters to Santa and I sent them into our local paper. They were published last weekend, we all got quite a kick out of reading their letters in the Sunday paper.

Matthew in December

Matthew is nearly a year old now, WOW! He is such a cute baby, I really can hardly believe it. Here is a picture of him with Santa and another adorable shot of him. He is still crawling and cruising but isn't interested in standing alone or trying to walk, whew!!!

My soldiers

We went to Charlotte a few weeks ago to attend Paul's unit's holiday lunch. We had a great time seeing where Paul works and meeting some of his coworkers. Of course the boys went in their Army uniforms. There were a few other kids with uniforms as well, of course none as decked out as Joey and Ben. The soldiers got a kick out of seeing them and they loved being with Dad!