Look who made an early visit...

Every year, during Alyssa's birthday party, Santa Claus always seems to make a visit! This year was no different. Once we finished our dinner and got everything cleaned up, and on cue, right at 7:30, we heard bells outside of the window and in came Santa!

We unfortunately had 3 criers....Nick, Luke and Alyssa, but not Jack...he was right there and ready to jump on Santa's lap!!!
As you can see from the picture, Nick certainly warmed up...
But poor Luke just could not be persuaded! He did enjoy his GeoTrax train Santa brought him though!!!

Here I am with Luke desperately clinging to me for dear life....I could seriously have let go and he would have hung on! Oh and on one FANTASTIC front, Luke can now SAY /s/!!! That sure is the hardest sound for him to hear and subsequently say and our little dude did it!!! Here comes SSSSanta!!! :)
Daddy enjoyed Santa's visit too!!! :)
Hopefully next year, we'll have less little ones crying! :)

So Thankful for....

We had a fantastic Thanksgiving at Aunt Jackie and Uncle Steve's house. Aunt Jackie and Aunt Allie did an AMAZING job with the turkey...
And Uncle Steve did an amazing job at carving the turkey (with Papa's ever present watchful eye!)
After a wonderful meal (we all ate too much!!!) we had to do our next Thanksgiving custom...check out the ads and plan our Black Friday shopping trip!
After we finished looking through the ads, we opted to head outside to enjoy the wonderful, sunny weather! Nick, Jack, Alyssa, and Luke all had fun playing outside!!! (Look, no coats on the big boys!)
Of course, just hanging out got pretty boring, so in stepped PE teacher, Aunt Jackie with the simple game, "What time is it, Mr. Fox?" We all had fun with this one!!!
Uncle Bryan and Nana were pooped after a few rounds of the crazy fox game, so they sat out a bit!
After we ran off some of the calories from lunch, we headed inside for what else but coffee and dessert! Here, Dan enjoys some coffee...
And here is a picture of one of the many desserts...a Peggy Brown carrot cake!
And here, the women (aka "the workers!" of the day!) pose for a quick picture before calling it a night! (Aunt Jackie, Nana, Aunt Joy, me, Aunt Allie!)
Happy Thanksgiving to all! We have a lot to be thankful for this year...a successful cochlear implant surgery and excellent progress thus far for Luke, a cancer free Aunt Jackie who is now pregnant with her first baby...due in April (close to MY birthday!), Alyssa is making great progress in speech therapy...she is SO smart, Gigi is THRIVING in her new apartment and seems more alive than I have seen her for years, and of course, we can't be anymore thankful for Nana and Papa who are ALWAYS there for us whenever and wherever we may need them!

We love you guys!!!

Happy Birthday, Alyssa!

Thanksgiving is the one holiday when our entire family is together because Bryan, Allie, and Alyssa are able to come visit from Memphis! It also happens to be the time we celebrate Alyssa's birthday (November 16!) We celebrated in style this year with Wow Wow Wubbzy! Nana made some delish lasagna and of course we had my favorite cake lady's cake!

Here Alyssa is covering her ears (she musn't like our singing!) before she blows out her '3' candle!
Aunt Allie cuts the yummy chocolate cake for everyone...
Papa and Jack stop eating for me to take this great pic...smiles all around!
Here Dan, Uncle Steve, and even Nick get crazy with Gigi!!!
Happy 3rd Birthday, Alyssa! We miss you guys and can't wait to come down for a visit over Christmas!!!

America Runs On Dunkin....

Two weekends ago I had the opportunity to travel to Chicago with my friend and fellow speech pathologist, Jan, for the American Speech Language Hearing Convention! We had a wonderful time - stayed in a great hotel, found some fab places to eat, and had time to shop on Michigan Ave! Who wouldn't LOVE a 4 story Crate and Barrel? Oh, and not to mention that I learned TONS to help me at work in the school district, as well as some great networking opportunities with others in the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Community - educators from Gallaudet, audiologists from the makers of Luke's cochlear implant, the Phonak FM System sales rep that actually ordered Luke's FM System, and a really cool guy from the A.G. Bell Associatation for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. Unfortunately these all paled in comparison to what I saw on almost every street corner....

DUNKIN DONUTS! Many don't know this, but we actually named our dog, Dunkin, after our favorite coffee joint. And, we have definitely been missing this place since we moved to the midwest from New Jersey! There and in New York City they are as common as tractors are here in the midwest. Dan even has Dunkin' coffee shipped to his office for him to enjoy!!!

Anyhow, Jan and I stopped at this particular Dunkin, just behind out hotel, but their Coffee Coolatta machine was broken....UGH! They said it would be fixed in about 2 hours, so we returned after our morning session at the conference was over and get this, now they said they just cleaned it and we would have to wait 10 minutes.
Since we were in a hurry, we decided to continue on our way and what did we find....this Dunkin' Donuts mecca!!! I actually took this picture from Jan's car as she was pumping gas...I'm a true geek!
I rushed inside and asked if I could have 2 skim milk coffee coolattas and the Indian guy behind the counter said, "OKAY!" I was in HEAVEN!!!!! I wish it wasn't such a long drive or I would have bought one for Dan. I did however, manage to grab 2 dozen donuts for all my boys to enjoy!!!

Here is Jan enjoying her delish coolatta! She had never had one before and LOVED it...but then again, who wouldn't!
And here I am posed with mine....ah.....FABULOUS!!!
We are planning a few trips out to the east coast this summer. We'll definitely have to track down a Dunkin! For all my friends on the east coast, enjoy a Dunkin Coolatta for me! :)

The Birthday Weekend continues!

After a fantastic kid free weekend, we left the mansion (but not before taking a few quick pictures....)
And headed home to celebrate with the boys! No birthday celebration would be complete without a Peggy Brown cake!
And of course some presents!
Happy Birthday, Dan!!! We love you!

My wonderful husband turned 38 on November 15th and to celebrate we headed to a fabulous Bed and Breakfast - the Beall Mansion, for the weekend! Thanks to Nana, Papa, Aunt Jackie and Uncle Steve for watching the three boys!

Friday night we arrived to a butler, dressed in a tux with tails, and a glass of champagne. We were shown to our room and the butler even turned our bed down! He also suggested a fabulous martini bar, Bossanova, for dinner! We downed a few martini - delish!!!

Here is Dan enjoying his beverage...after a BAD martini, he opted for a long island iced tea...can't go wrong with that!
My dessert martini...
We returned to our room to find "fine, French chocolates" and champagne as well as rose petals on the bed!
I'm not a huge chocolate fan, but for those who are, this 24 hour chocolate bar in the dining room would have been a dream! I have never seen such fancy chocolate!!!

La, La, La, La, La, La Tonight!

I'm embarrassed to be typing this right now, but I must say that I do believe that the New Kids On the Block concert was honestly one of the FUNNEST concerts I have ever attended! Seriously, we were SO close to the stage and we NEVER sat down...picture a HUGE arena with thousands on 30 somethings rocking out to Hangin' Tough!

Perhaps the reason why the concert was so much fun was because of the great time we had at Maggie O'Brien's prior to the big event! MANY pitchers of Bud Light and a very nasty Irish Car Bomb could possibly make any event amazing!

Here are the NKOTB lovers....me, Christa, Lisa and Angie (notice the bright pink shirts...yep, we sure did use some puffy paint and glitter to dazzle our homemade NKOTB shirts!!!)
The "before" picture of the Irish Car Bomb....Bailey's in a tall glass of Guiness...and then someone screams out, "drink it before it curdles!!!" Yummy!
So if it wasn't bad enough that our mode of transportation to the concert was Angie's mini van (thanks for drivin', Ang!) but I sure did have to pop a couple of these (along with others at our table) after all the drinks and food!
One fun final note, this is Lisa, a friend from church who also happens to be Jack's first grade teacher! Nothing like doing shots with your child's teacher!!! Nice, eh???