Yeah, We Match!

We thought it would be fun to get everyone geared up or "matching" somehow for our snow tubing adventure.  Nani  and Papa D ended up surprising us all with matching flannel shirts, and they were hilarious!  We each got one, and so did Nolan.  Some fit better than others, but they were the perfect warmth for our excellent snow tubing adventure day.




And of COURSE we got pictures :)

Christmas 2017 - Part 2

Part 2 of our Christmas celebration took place at Ski Sugar Mountain Ski Resort in the mountains.  It was SO much fun and it was great to do something all as a family.  I know Nolan will remember this for a long time, and it was cool for him to get to see some real snow and experience the mountains.


Even though it was 19 degrees WITH a wind chill, we decided to suit up and head up anyway to give snow tubing a try.  We didn't expect for it to be SO crowded, so getting in a getting all of our thousands of layers of clothes on was a bit chaotic, but we made it in time for the 2:00 slot.  I don't recall a time when I last wore that many layers of clothing, but I also don't recall a time when it was 19 degrees outside and I decided to play in it for 3 hours, so there's that!

That's the ski slope on that hill in the back...




Nolan didn't want to have anything to do with it at first because he was aggravated with his gloves.  I hated to fight with him about it, but having his hands exposed in that cold of weather was a no-go, so Nani and Papa were awesome and they took him to get some hot chocolate with Anthony, Paige, Cade and I did a few rounds.  It took a couple of tries to figure out how to position myself on the tube, but I figured it out and made it down to the bottom several times!

Some of the most fun we had was when we were finished tubing and hit up the lodge for some lunch.  We all were back together and warm and it was so nice!  We could see all of the skiers/snowboarders coming down the mountain, and had a good time cracking up at some of their "stops" at the bottom of the hill.  Nolan was ecstatic for his pretzel and I was happy to take my coat off for a second!

 

We sat upstairs in the lodge, and even though everything was SO expensive, it was really tasty!

Papa D and Nani were champs!  They didn't snow tube, but hung out all day!

We ended up heading back to the house around 4:00, and we were pooped but so glad we survived the day!  It truly was such a special experience to do - something that's worth doing each year at some point for sure!  We made it back to the house just in time to warm up and eat some amazing chicken and dumplings - the perfect ending to the day in my book! 

 

Christmas 2017 - Part 1

Christmas pretty much flew by in a blur this year, but it's probably because we have been celebrating ALL month long so the actual day felt quick!  We were at Nani and Papa's this year which was so nice - especially since Tio Cade was home from California!  That made all of our Christmas' right there!

We drove up on the 23rd, and spent a couple of days just hanging out and shopping.  A lot of our time was spent getting prepared for what Santa was going to bring us, which mean getting ALL the gloves, hats, warm socks, etc. that we could!  Of course, Nolan didn't miss the chance to make Baby Jesus his birthday cake, and this one had about 1 inch of sprinkles/icing on it - ha!  It may have had something to do with the fact that I knew I was going to be tossing the sprinkles when we were done, so hey, we might as well use them, right!?

Let the fun begin!

Christmas Eve night we went to church, and Nolan did great this year.  He was SO cute in his little outfit!  He made it through most of the service on my lap, and then headed down to Nani's lap for chocolate and coloring about 2/3 of the way through the service :)  Hey, I can't blame him!

The Church on the inside it just beautiful.

Amazingly, he went down to sleep pretty easily that night, and slept until about 6:30, so that was a win!  It was fun to wake Paige and Cade up since they pretty much woke me up at the crack of dawn for 13 years, so that was pay back :)  We got everyone up, made coffee, and then headed down to see what Santa brought us!  Nolan pretty much didn't get why his coat/snow suit made it to Hickory, but he would see soon enough!

We had a great time opening gifts (we each just drew one name this year which made things nice and simple), and played with Nolan's stuff.  Paige ended up with the most fun gift award - she is such a super Auntie :)  Although, some Spider Man string may have ended up on the ceiling...oops!  We can blame that on Daddy - ha!

Pretty sure that's NOT what that bar is meant for :)

Battle bumpers - he and Daddy love these!

Spider Man has pretty bad aim!

The MAIN gift from Santa was for us all to go to Ski Sugar Mountain ski resort to go snow tubing.  We knew that Nolan wouldn't really have any idea what we were talking about until we went, so we loaded up in the car on Christmas Day for our 2:00 slope time.  The drive was about an hour and a half to the mountain, so the boys loaded up in one car and the girls (and Nolan) took the other.  It was a beautiful drive, and I will chronicle more about it in another post!

 Matching overalls!

The aftermath...and Skye didn't even do it all!

Merry Christmas! 

“Glory to God in the highest heaven,

    and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”



Happy Birthday to Me + G and Ollie's Christmas!

Another year older and I would be lying if it didn’t freak me out a bit (hello, over the hump to 40 now!) but I am just trying to constantly be happy for each day and every year.  This year brought a lot of scary things into our lives, and to say I feel blessed to be healthy and HERE is a complete understatement.  So, I am going to embrace 36 and who cares about the number anyway!

 

I had the day off of work today, which was great because I had a ton of things to do for Christmas and then had some fun sprinkled in too!  We took Nolan to daycare and then wrapped up our chores/packing at the house before heading out to lunch with Mom.  It was so nice to have BOTH of them with me for lunch – we haven’t done that in forever!
 

We went to an awesome little hole-in-the-wall Greek place, and the food was fantastic.  I resisted eating too much because we had Christmas at my Mom’s house that night too, but it was so good.  I even got treated to a little slice of cheesecake.

 

After lunch we test drove a car (exciting!) and then headed to Nolan’s school for his classes’ Christmas Party.  He was so excited both of us could make it and they had it set up in station form so we could move to whatever station we wanted.  Of course the cookie decorating station was first!  He made reindeer food (glitter + oatmeal), and ornament and a bead candy cane.  It was so sweet and there were a bunch of kids and parents which was nice.  After that we headed to the Clayton Police Station to drop off some goodies for the police officers.

This was really cool because we found several of them outside hanging out, so we gave them our gift and they took a picture of all of us to post online.  Even cooler was we got to see the newest addition to the police force; a brand new out-of-training German Shepherd named Chase!  That night was going to be his first night on the job, which Nolan thought was awesome!

We headed to G’s house after that for Christmas with them, my cousins, and my Aunt Diane.  It was sort of a whirlwind but we had a great time and Nolan was super happy to see his cousin, Adelie.  They were so cute playing and watching videos on his new Kindle! 

All the "guys" take this picture every year...

Nolan and Adelie...

Yes, there is something large and LOUD in that box...haha!

We couldn’t stay super late because we had to leave early the next morning for Nani and Papa’s, but it was overall such a nice birthday with lots of family and food – just the way I like it! Here is to many, many more years to come!

Annual Cookie Decorating Party!

I am really into the Christmas spirit this year.  I am usually like this every year, but it’s just so much fun and I want to do ALL the Christmas things!  My plan to have a smaller cookie party this year was so that I could make it to the Christmas parade downtown on Saturday, but sadly, it was terrible weather so we decided to skip it.  I was bummed because I have never gone since I am usually getting ready at the house for our cookie party, but that’s how the cookie crumbles. 

Our hot cocoa station...

With the cutest little snowman marshmallows!

We still had a fantastic time at the house with all the boys – 4 of them under 4 – eek!  SO much for it being “lowkey,” but they all had a blast and that’s all that matters.  I made a couple of batches of sugar cookies (which didn’t turn out all that great but who notices that when they are piled with icing?!) and some baked ziti with salad and bread.

The face of cookie decorating success!

For some reason, the boys only stay interested in decorating the cookies for about 10 minutes and the moms usually end up doing the rest, but they each decorated a couple so I call that a win!  We ended the night with TONS of wrestling and sword fighting, lots of food and of course lots of cookies!  I had some super cute cupcake pops made from a friend at work that I sent home as favors – more sugar!

After the sugar crash :)

Clayton Christmas Tree Lighting 2017

The weather was great for Clayton’s Annual Christmas Tree Lighting this year!  Most years it has been SO cold and Nolan and I almost froze, but this year Anthony got to go with us and it was in the 50’s.  We found a good parking space that took us right up to the train ride.  Luckily, we got there pretty early so we didn’t have to wait to long.

Waiting in line for the train...

The line for Santa was longer than Nolan wanted to wait, so we decided to just make our way down the street.  Well, SCORE because another store had a different Santa right outside the door, so Nolan was perfectly fine to sit with him for a minute (and he was really eyeing the candy he had – ha).  It didn’t take long to get a picture so we continued on down the street where we passed the doggie costume contest.  It was the cutest thing and it made me wish Vegas wouldn’t have a heart attack if we took her in public!  Although I am not sure how happy she would have been with me if I had put her in some of the costumes we saw anyway.

The Clayton Police are always so awesome to him.

Not the real Santa, but he will do!

We made our way down the street to the tree, although it was unlit when we got there.  They usually light it around 9:00, so maybe once Nolan gets older will actually see the “lighting” part of the whole gig.  They did have a “snow/bubble” machine on top of one of the buildings, so we had fun standing under that for a little while.  I think it was actually soap, so I tried to keep Nolan from eating it!

 Our stomachs told us it was time to go soon after, so we headed back the way we came.  I don’t know WHY they don’t work out something with more food at this thing, but each year there is never anything to eat.  A couple of restaurants were open, but they were really crowded and we didn’t want to wait.  So, we headed to our favorite pizza place where we knew it would be good!  We rounded out the night with full bellies and lots of great memories – yay for Christmastime!

Thanksgiving 2017

As usual, the long weekend went by in a complete blur, and I barely got any pictures!  It was well worth it, though, because we had a lot of great family time and Nolan was healthy!  Win-win!




We drove to my cousin's house on Thanksgiving day for lunch, and Nolan loved hanging with his big cousins.  He has big "girl" cousins at my dad's with Bella and Marli, but never any big "boys" to hang with!  Although, his favorite of the whole weekend was cousin Maddie, who was SO sweet with him and he was totally smitten :)






We spent some time hanging out and eating, and then tried to snap a pic for Christmas cards...here is what I think we are going to use...spoiler alert!

After spending time in Concord, we drove to Hickory to meet up with Dad and Leslee and the other Maldonado crew!  It's such a great time - but SUPER noisy, rowdy and crowded, but everyone has such a good time with each other.  Nolan especially.  The girls shop late on Thursday night, and I got a ton of good deals.  The boys hang out, and everyone pretty much eats and watches football! 


The best thing I did this year was take the Monday after the long weekend off - I needed to recover! :)