Christmas

I have tried this year to make the Christmas season as stress free as I can possibly make it. By having a plan and crossing off SOMETHING from my list every day, I think I have actually accomplished this. I am not stressed out at all. The gifts are bought. My cards were mailed almost two weeks ago. My box that had to be mailed has been at its destination for three weeks. My gifts are mostly wrapped. The house is decorated. Much making of tasty treats has already transpired. I think we might just have to make some more, though. The choir has practiced. Sarah marched in a Christmas parade. Only one last party to attend. And midnight Mass will be beautiful. The only thing that is looming is what to do on the actual Christmas Day. I would like to see family, but it never seems to work out smoothly because everyone has their own idea about what makes that day special. It is hard to mix traditions and even after 19 years of marriage, we still wrestle with who is going to cook and host. I would prefer to host and cook here at our house, but not sure that is going to happen this year. Still working on it.

First Day of School

Here we are at the first day of school for the year. Sarah starts high school and Daniel is in 7th grade.

Here is Sarah getting ready to go to the bus stop. Her bus comes at 6:34 a.m. Daniel is ready for his bus, too, but his doesn't come until 8:45 a.m.

Pool Remodel

So recently we embarked on the adventure of a complete pool remodel. Here is the before:
The pool and decking was original to the house. 1995. The marcite had begun to chip and the coping had come loose on the shallow end of the pool. We had new waterline tile placed, new tile around the outside of the spa, the spillover for the spa was widened and also made into a three step waterfall, pavers were put over all the deck and new deck drains were placed.

Here is the pool finished:

Ashley's First Communion

My niece Ashley made her First Holy Communion yesterday. She looked beautiful and the Mass was lovely. Here are a few photos of the day.

Allison was an altar server for the Mass


They had a renewal of Baptismal promises. The children went up to the Baptismal font and blessed themselves. They then lit their Baptism candle for a prayer.
The family
Sisters
First Communion Girl

Boy Scout caving

The boys got the opportunity to go caving. I think it was a very cool opportunity, although it was a lot of physical work. I am not sure I would have been able to maneuver in small places like that and I think claustrophobia might do a number on me. Here are some photos of their adventure.

Oh! And who knew that Bill actually cooks while camping?

NYC

I decided to go to NYC with Bill two weeks ago. It was the first time that we have been away from the children.....ever! Oh, yeah, Bill has been away or I have been away, but not both of us at the same time. My mom and dad stayed at our house and took care of the kids' activities. All went well and I got some super photos with the new camera.

We got to go to two plays.
Avenue Q. and Shrek the Musical


During the day, while Bill was working, I walked around taking photos. We stayed in the Wall Street area. Here is where I have lost a lot of money this past year or so.

While we were there, it was St. Patrick's Day. They have a really big St. Patrick's Day parade in NYC. I couldn't fathom the thought of going to the parade. It has 200,000 participants and 2 million along the parade route. THIS is how I watched it. On tv.

I love this church. It is Trinity church. It is beautiful and also has a cool cemetery.
Love Times Square at night. Amazing, it really is the city that never sleeps.
Love seeing the typical NYC sights. Oh, and we had a gyro from one of these vendors one day. Huge, yummy gyro for $3.50!
On Wednesday afternoon, Bill had off. We decided to take the ferry over to Liberty and Ellis Islands. We ran out of time to go explore both islands and opted for the photos from the ferry of the Statue of Liberty and then got off at Ellis Island.


Ellis Island was really neat. You just had the feel of being one of the immigrants coming off of a ship in the early 1900's and what they had to go through to make it to our country.

This is the registry room, where the people coming off the ships would have had to register to enter our country. It was all refurbished not long ago and it was amazing.

Here is one of my artsy photos from the ferry.

The trip was pretty fun. It was pretty cold, though. It even snowed in the city the day we had to leave. I could do without the snow.

Bill's Birthday

Well, I am very behind in my blogging. I guess that means that we are busy living life and that is not such a bad thing. Here is a photo of Bill and the kids for his birthday. His mom and Eldon took us out for a birthday dinner at Carabas. Yummy! I think this photo of the three of them turned out really nice.