GG's 90th Birthday

On yet another snowy Saturday, we celebrated a special milestone birthday...

... with one very special lady!

GG's birthday party was at the Out Door Country Club in York, and despite the weather, it was absolutely beautiful.  Although the party itself wasn't a surprise, many of the guests and other aspects of the day certainly were - and her face when she walked into the room was just priceless!

People traveled from far and wide to be there to celebrate, including Aunt Erin from France...

... and cousins Melissa, Anya, and Brian from Oregon.

The weather had us nervous, but somehow they all arrived safely and in plenty of time to party!  It was such a fun family reunion, and I could think of no better reason to gather us all together.

GG and Grandpa

Uncle Jim and GG

GG and her boys

GG with all of her grandchildren: Shannon, Brian, Melissa, Tim, Jen, and Erin

To help keep the youngest generation entertained, Nana and I set up a little craft table off to the side of the room (thank you Cathleen for the fantastic idea!!).  The kids were all so cute making cards and Valentines for GG!

Gilbey, Aunt Ellen, Anya, and Liam

Colin and Joergen

 And then there was this little one!  Genevieve charmed everyone in the room with her happy and adorable smile.

When it was time for lunch, Uncle Jim offered a blessing:

Followed by a toast from Grandpa:

 And the "Happy Birthday Song" led by none other than this guy!

(I think she liked it :))

After lunch, we surprised GG with a slide show of photos and memories from the last 90 years.  Even though I must have seen it a hundred times prior, it still gave me "happy tears" (as Liam calls them) to watch.  Everyone had contributed so many fantastic photos from over the years (not to mention the ones I'd pilfered from Grandma's own photo albums), and it made me feel so fortunate to be part of this amazing woman's life.

After the slide show, it was cake time!

Make a wish!

As a side note, the ODCC has a seriously fantastic pastry chef.  That cake was awesome.

We rounded out the party with some photos with the guest-of-honor:

Sisters! GG and Aunt Jayne

Grandpa, GG, and Nana

GG and her children

Happy, happy birthday, Grandma.  Here's to many more celebrations to come!  xoxoxo

Let It 'No

Do you want to build a snowman?!

(Disney's timing for Frozen was impeccable!)

After a couple of relatively disappointing (for kids, anyway) winters in terms of snow, this winter has more than made up for it.  Even though we haven't had a snowfall of more than 10" or so, we have had almost a dozen snowfalls that required shoveling so far... not to mention freezing rain, high winds, a nasty ice storm, and yes, a polar vortex.  We seem to get hit with some kind of wintery precipitation every few days or so, giving us little time to recover - and plenty of time to complain!  And did I mention that it's been COLD?!

The local meteorologists have struggled to accurately predict much of our weather this winter (well, it had been quite a while since they had any interesting winter weather to predict I suppose), and after getting barely a dusting of snow during the predicted "major storm", followed by several inches of totally unexpected snow just a few days later, Liam astutely observed,

"You know, Mom, sometimes I just think the weather people should just look out the window."

Preach.

At least our new house came with one of these babies in the garage!

Villanova has had an unprecedented number of snow days this winter, giving me lots (and lots) of time at home with the boys.  What to do with all this time off?  We've worked hard to stay occupied, which is not always an easy task given the icy conditions and frequent sub-zero temperatures.  Whenever we could, though, we went outside.  We built snowmen...

shoveled... (the boys were really quite helpful in this regard, and they like doing it!  Bonus!)

... and had snowball fights.  The most epic being among these three!

Liam, Theresa, and Joergen.  Can you spot the snowball?

We did our best to pass the time inside, too.  We baked...

waited for snowplows...

played with Legos (and every other toy, game, and puzzle in the house)...

snuggled...

... and did whatever we could to beat the boredom!

"Hey guys, what do you think of winter??"

Yep.  I agree.

Q: What's Better Than a New Coffee Table?

A: The box it came in!

Thank you, Overstock.com, for days of entertainment in the dead of winter!

Ringing in 2014

Who's ready for 2014?!

This guy!

Since New Year's Eve was the last night of our Illinois family's visit, we decided to throw a little party to ring in the new year with our family and friends.  We were especially excited to have the NJ crew come hang out with us for dinner and some fun before they continued on to York for the rest of the weekend.  It was little G's first New Year's!

Uncle Tim, Genevieve, and Anthony

It took Colin and Joergen approximately 7 seconds to sneak away from the party and have one of their own upstairs:

Downstairs, we were just glad to have figured out how to heat the sun porch to have some extra space!  The "big kids" were so cute with their excitement about (and carefully planned outfits for) the night.  A few days earlier, Aidan was my #1 shopping buddy, helping me buy all kinds of fun stuff for the party - including a stylin' fedora and his own personal (plastic) champagne flute.  Everyone pitched in to help clean, pick up food, entertain the boys, and so on.  I wish I had a team like this before every party!

Such a festive crew <3 p="">

Oh, the noise makers... and these two wasted no opportunity to sound them loudly!

The problem with having a noise maker in each hand is only having one mouth!

As the night went on, our guests trickled out and Joergen fell asleep, leaving just 9 of us for the arrival of 2014.

I couldn't believe Liam made it to the new year!  He was so determined to stay up with the "big kids", and that was one resolution he certainly kept.

Aidan and Liam in the final minutes of 2013

 Let the countdown begin!

Happy New Year!!  After a toast and a kiss, Liam took this picture of us (not bad, buddy!):

And when we finally, finally got the kids off to bed, the four of us had one last celebratory toast to welcome the new year.  A few short hours later, our Illinois family piled back in their van and started the long drive home.  We were so sad to say goodbye but so grateful we had that time together!

Wishing all of our family and friends happiness and many blessings in 2014!

Christmas with our IL Family

A couple of days after Christmas, we got some visitors!

We loved having a house full of family, laughter, and fun at the holidays. Liam and Joergen absolutely adore their cousins (as do we!), and we couldn't have asked for better week with everyone together.

We had to get a little creative with sleeping arrangements and decided to put the girls (plus Joergen) in Liam and Joergen's room, while Liam and Aidan slept on the futon in the office.  It didn't take long for this sign to show up on the office door:

The morning after they arrived, we had a mini-repeat of Christmas morning to exchange gifts with everyone.  Thank goodness for Papa and his trusty pocketknife to open the tricky packaging on the boys' new toys!

Some of their favorites were Joergen's new Hess truck (they just keep getting cooler and cooler!)...

their awesome new ND blanket from Grandma (which is now always in one of their beds at night)...

and the gift-- Daddy's new train set.  I don't know that I've seen him this excited about a Christmas present in, well, ever!

We can't thank Grandma and Papa enough for such a generous Christmas!

As for the rest of the week, we found plenty to do to occupy our time - and in fact, the week went by all too quickly!  Grandma and Papa treated everyone to a fun afternoon at Dave and Buster's for lunch and games:

Speaking of games, we played many at home, too.  Liam and Joergen loved having opponents for every game their little hearts desired.  (Uncle Tim and Aunt Jackie, this one was a hit!  Thanks for the very fun gift!)

We also had a few enthusiastic games of Disney's Scene It- and with this crowd, I'm pretty sure there was not a single Disney movie that had gone unseen!

We can't talk about all the games played that week without mentioning the other kinds of games that also got some play...

I love Liam's face in that picture, as he tried desperately to learn one of Abby's Pokemon games for the DS.  There is nothing he loves more than being one of the "big kids" - and Abby was one heck of a teacher!  Even Joergen got in on the video game action with some fun preschool games on Grandma's iPhone:

When not playing games, we had a lot of fun just hanging out together.

Can you tell these two are related?!

Monkey pile of cousins!

Early morning PJ time with Papa

Kisses for Grandma!

Enjoying the mild weather with a game of basketball

Their last night staying with us was New Year's Eve- but that warrants a post of its very own :)  Thank you a hundred times over to Grandma, Papa, Toni, Aidan, Abby, and Kate for a fantastic visit!  We love you and can't wait to see you again this summer.