Christmas!!

This is by far my most favorite holiday, and to spend it in our new home was almost too much excitement for me to handle! We did our Elf on the Shelf, baked cookies for all our neighbors, visited Santa, drank plenty of hot cocoa and eggnog, watched all the Christmas movies we could and just had an amazing holiday.

Christmas Eve was very exciting at our house, the kids knew what was coming the next day and it was sweet to watch them talk to each other throughout the day telling each other to be "good because Santa is coming tonight" :D But really the whole month of December was filled with fun and it really just flew by too quickly.

One thing in particular that Alyssa really enjoyed doing with me was the cookies for our neighbors. I really wanted to get an opportunity to introduce ourselves to our neighbors, and what better time than the holiday season? I'm not a baker AT ALL, don't really enjoy it because it's such a science that you can't afford to make a mistake because it will affect the outcome; yet my little helper reminded me it was supposed to be fun and she was right. We ended up enjoying baking sugar cookies from scratch, and decorating them. Even though AJ managed to cause a few accidents, we successfully baked and decorated them and walked our street giving them out to our neighbors.

I really did take an insane amount of pictures throughout the month of December, but I'll only share our Christmas morning ones on this post. ;) Back to Christmas Eve, the kids behaved wonderfully and as all kids do, they went to sleep without a fight on Christmas eve lol. That was wonderful for this mommy Elf because I still had some wrapping to do, and with our Elf needing to "move", making reindeer food disappear, and eating Santa's cookies,and preparing our overnight french toast casserole for breakfast the next morning; I could not afford to waste any time that night lol.

Christmas morning came, and the kids woke us up and I told them to wait for 2 minutes as I ran down the stairs set up the coffee, turned on the fireplace and grabbed my camera and phone (for video clips). They were perfectly patient and I was set for them to come down. They ran down the stairs and saw the tree! For a few short seconds they just sat there and admired the tree filled with so many presents that I finally said, "well, don't just stand there guys, go for it!" LOL

Throughout the month, I was trying my best to remind the kids the real reason for the season. And although I know as a child it can be hard to not focus on the fact that you know you have gifts coming your way, I'm very proud of Alyssa because this was the first year she truly seemed to understand that everything we do is to celebrate the fact that Jesus came to this world and he is the greatest gift we could've ever received. She understands that while we don't know his actual birthday, this day was chosen to celebrate his birth, and she knows that it's fun but also important to not get caught up in the presents, decorations, and other things we do to celebrate the holiday. She makes me very proud to see how bright she is and while AJ still doesn't quite understand, I know he will come to understanding as well as Alyssa does when he gets older.

I hope everyone else had a wonderful holiday, spending time with friends and loved ones! Merry Christmas from our family to yours!!

Our 7th Anniversary

I can't believe it's been 7 years! We've been married for 7 long years. We've been together for 10!!!! We never celebrate in a big way, it's usually going out to dinner at a place that is kid friendly (we don't have any family that live here and we don't have any babysitter so date nights are only when we go visit my mom because she will watch the kids for us).
This year, since we just bought our home, we want to enjoy our house and celebrate everything here, in our home we love so much. We decided to cook a gourmet meal here, together and enjoy it with the kids. We were SUPPOSED to cook together (kinda sexy and sweet to have him in the kitchen with me) but he ended up doing the baked potatoes, and setting up the table. That counts, right?
We had smoked salmon appetizers, organic greens salad with cranberries and blue cheese, lobster bisque, and the main course meal was dry rub ribs with baked potato and sauteed brussels sprouts with pancetta for him. My main course meal was stuffed salmon with mushroom risotto and sauteed brussels sprouts with pancetta. To say it was delicious is an understatement! It was a lot of food, but it was special because it was what we both like to eat, and we have different tastes. We had full happy bellies and that was a great way to celebrate 7 years of being married. :)

Happy Thanksgiving!

This was our first thanksgiving in our new home, and we were excited to start our traditions here, just the four of us. For the first time ever, I would have enough space to have a little certain assistant chef in the kitchen with me, safely, without worry that the space is too tight for us. I had a menu planned out very last minute, in true Susan fashion ;) and it was a big juicy free range turkey in an organic herb rub, homemade organic cranberry sauce, homemade "skinny" stuffing, organic garlic mashed potatoes, and hubby's request of sauteed brussels sprouts with pancetta (also skinny-fied), Hawaiian rolls (those are this family's weakness, we all love them!!) and homemade organic pumpkin pie. For the most part it was as healthy as a Thanskgiving meal can be, without sacrificing good taste. We all loved it and ate leftovers for days! I have to say my favorite part of Thanksgiving was just simply, having enough space to have my little girl who absolutely LOVES to help me in the kitchen be in there with me, and not be cramped or feel like she's not in a safe setting which is how I felt in our old tiny cramped kitchen. We loved our first Thanksgiving in our new house and look forward to many many more being spent here. :)
My wonderful "assistant chef" mashing the potatoes

She also helped with the stuffing

we had so much space for everything it didn't look as messy as I'm used to a Thanksgiving meal prep looking.

Our turkey

Our First Thanksgiving Meal in our House :))