What a month!

Happy 2nd birthday Ainsley Marin!  We had fun celebrating her birthday on Thanksgiving Day at Uncle Sean, Auntie Kelley, Falyn and Ryan's house in Connecticut.  Ainsley loves Curious George and we themed her party after him.  We can't believe our baby is 2 years old.  Wow, how time flies. You would think we'd be use to the fact that the kids grow up so quickly, given this is our 4th time celebrating a second birthday, but it really doesn't get easier to think about how in the blink of an eye they grow so fast.   The things that we would normally be rushing to do at this age (transitioning from crib to bed, potty training, etc.) are things we want to postpone!  Ainsley's birth date actually fell on a day of the week when Keeley had a day off from School, so the youngest, oldest, and Mommy snuck off to the Children's museum in Easton for an afternoon of fun, followed by Nana bringing over her famous mini-cupcakes and the whole clan downing them all after dinner.

The middle of the month was packed.  Friend's birthday parties, Mommy volunteering at school, many, too many, snowstorms that had school cancelled!  However, great for building snowmen (see our 7 foot one--that broke Daddy and Mommy's back for a week afterwards!).  Luckily we purchased a snowblower this year, figuring we weren't moving back to CA anytime soon.  I think our neighbor Chris was glad to see it, as he surpised us by taking care of our long driveway more than once last year!  The snowblower has paid for itself already, no doubt! We also invested in a generator for those times when we lose electricity, heat and sump pump...Of course, we're sure we won't lose power this year, now that we have a backup system in place! 

We enjoyed Keeley's piano and voice recital earlier this month.  She played two songs on the piano and sang "Oh Christmas Tree".  Mommy almost had a heart attack when we got to the auditorium and realized that we didn't grab Keeley's piano book on the way out the door. We still had time to run home to grab it, but Daddy confidently knew that Keeley knew the songs by heart.  And, of course she did.  Although she still was the only one without the help of books (and the youngest student too!).

The kids begged us to start putting up the tree and decorating for Christmas the week BEFORE Thanksgiving, so we were well into the spirit of the holiday's before December even rolled around!  Daddy spent many a cold nights after work putting lights up around the outside of the house, sometimes near the rooftop in freezing winds with neighbors walking their dogs telling him he was nuts.  What they didn't know is that Keeley, our holiday queen (every holiday is a huge celebration for her!) was inside begging us to have the most lights of any house this year.  Mommy was a little overwhelmed at times with trying to plan for the holiday, travelling and buying tons of presents (thankfully, there were plenty of delays at the airport this month, lots of red-eye flights, and she got to do a lot of on-line ordering while relaxing at the Admiral's Club...).  Nice thing about this Christmas is that the kid's lists for Santa were much slimmer than in year's past (yeah wallet!).  Many more small more meaningful things were on their lists. We also "adopted" a less fortunate 7 year old child for the holidays and got to do some shopping for him and the kids were a big part of buying the items from his wish list for him.  We had fun with making our annual gingerbread house, and filling in Santa's calendar beard with a cotton ball every day of the month (this is a tradition from Tara's childhood, making tons of x-mas sugar cookies (we kept making them for Santa, then they kept disappearing!).  Some of their favorite presents from Santa this year included:  Keeley--real microphones, lots of hanna montana and high school musical stuff, an easy bake oven, Kaelin - tons of horses and a new barn, a panda bear stuffed animal and panda bear baby, Aidan - a new bike, a tri-bot ,and lots of remote controlled "stuff", Ainsley--she's so difficult to buy for because we have absolutely every toy imaginable big and small already. She got a very special new baby doll from Santa, one with bells and whistles, that talk, but she said "yucky" when she opened it!  She primarily concentrated Christmas morning on eating the goodies in her stocking!!  Keeley and Kaelin were especially suprised to wake up Christmas morning to their room redecorated. Santa had brought them new bedding, curtains, blankets, pillows, the works!  Keeley's theme was, suprise, suprise...Hannah Montana and Kaelin's was, suprise again...ponies.  We hosted Christmas afternoon and dinner at our house (because it's way too difficult for four little kids to leave their house on Christmas Day!), and had all the O'Shea family over.