Happy New Years!!

Happy New Years and welcome to 2009!! It's been a while since I've been able to blog as we have been either busy or lazy. Christmas was yet another wonderful event in the Bell household spending our time with great friends. Our Christmas season kicked off with our good friends Lynette, Charles and Nathan with dinner at our house and gifts for the little ones. Then Christmas Eve we divided our time between the Palafox family and the Lee family. However, before starting anything we allowed the kids one gift each from our house. They got to open their, yes, PJs. Jake being an ole pro that this tradition was not exactly thrilled that he got to open just clothes. Andy to his little delight, opened his gift and wondered where the toys were. Then when we were done, we left to enjoy the first of our evening with with the Palafox (to name them all would be a blog entry in itself) family. We enjoyed some munchies and the kids were able to get open their gifts (which included toys). After a short stay there, we drove to our other good friends the Lee's and had dinner and visited with their family visiting from CA. The kids got to open, yes, more gifts, and yes, which included toys. Dinner, presents, our gag gift games, drinks, more games made for an exciting night. We wrapped things up around 11:30pm and got home (they only live around the corner from us). The kids got into their new PJs and into bed for the big day. Our family isn't one to wake early, so Christmas morning excitement starts around 9:30-10am in our house. The kids made out like bandits. Jake got a plethora of Wii games, clothes, Bakugan, and a new guitar (for his upcoming lessons). Andy also did very well with adding to his Geo Trax collection, toys, and John Deere stuff. They were both very pleased (each kid has a chair in the picture above with their stuff... mind you this is only one half of our living room). Andy is just understanding the whole Christmas thing this year, and when the presents were all opened and everywhere in the living room, he looked under the tree and said, "That's it? Christmas is over?" We'll be working on the meaning of Christmas by next year. Steve and I spent the next 3 hrs after the present opening untieing twisties, separating our plastic and cardboard, filling garbage bags, and finding a home for all the great stuff the kids got. AND if that was not enough, Steve continued to put together Andy's GEO Trax town that now fills up and entire bedroom (our spare that only houses a dresser). It's so awesome! Andy just loves his new train set and we love that we have the space to allow him to leave it out at all times.

New Years - On New Years Eve we decided to start the day a little different than just getting ready for a get together. We hiked in the Cascade for a little snow tubing. It was awesome. What a great way to spend time with the boys. The thoroughly enjoyed their experience. We also say we have to do it more often, but the last time we did it was when Jake was 3 yrs old - so that goes to tell you how frequent we are.
We wrapped things up around 6:30pm and made our way back home on some pretty snowy roads. Actually, good thing we went when we did because on New Years, all the major passes were closed and we wouldn't have been able to go tubing. After getting home, and showered we made our way over to the Lee household again for some appetizers and drinks to ring in the New Year. We decided to call it quits around 2:30am when Steve fell asleep on their couch and Wendy's husband, Jarrod, decided that looked like a good idea.

Sleeping pretty much into the next day (I did mention my kids are not morning people), we jolted out of our slumber to take the kids out again. This time we spent half our day at a place called Charlie Safari - another indoor activity center that has mini golf, laser tag, an arcade, and one of the biggest climbing toys I've ever seen.
Alas, it was the end of another exhaustive day and we got home early evening as Steve had to work the next day for the first time in 2 weeks. I would love to say I spent that same day cleaning house, cooking dinner and all that good stuff, but it was a purely lazy day where the kids and I didn't get out of our PJs and read books and vegged in front of the TV. Steve came home to pretty much how he left us the previous day. :)

We both start our day jobs again on Monday full time. It's going to be difficult getting into the grind of it all... work, school, homework, after school activities, overtime, commuting, etc. Actually, it exhausts me from typing it all out.

So, far the best thing about 2009 - we can officially say we are going to Hawaii this year - 7 months and counting. 1st real vacation with the kiddos!