100th Post!!

Booyah! After 2 years of blogging, I finally hit my hundredth post! Hooray for me!!

Although I said I wasn't going to retro-post. I did want to share some pictures from Christmas. Would you believe that we didn't even get a picture of the two kiddos together - well at least not all dressed up... or one of our family. Boo to that. That's one of the reasons I wanted to started blogging again though, I am much better about taking pictures when I know I'm going to be blogging.

The week leading up to Christmas was absolutely nuts. On Monday night, Andy got sick with the flu that's been going around. Although he was quarantined to our bedroom (and I slept on the floor in the living room) Ira and I both got sick on Wednesday. I tell you what, it was the sickest I've EVER been. I was sick for about 7 hours straight and by the end of it, I really didn't know how much longer I would live if I kept getting sick. I lost 10 pounds in about 20 hours. NOT FUN!!! It wasn't until Christmas day that I felt back to normal and had any kind of appetite really. Needless to say, not a lot got done at our house the week leading up to Christmas. But that's ok, that's not what Christmas is about anyway!

We celebrated Christmas with Andy's family on Christmas Eve. The kids wore their dress up clothes so we could take pictures (thank goodness we took some then!) We had a fun time with the kids and their presents. Ira and Hayden got RC cars from Toy Story. And Bill and Marilyn got Mario Kart for their Wii, so we had lots of fun playing that.

Ira & his cousin Hayden

Ruby in her pretty dress

Another take

I'd say that's a pretty good picture for having 4 kids four and under in it!

Ruby & I

We came home and put the kids to bed, but then got them back up a few hours later to go to Midnight Mass. Ira was SO tired, but stayed awake all through Mass and Ruby was hilariously awake and alert. Going to midnight mass is kind of a tradition for our family. In fact I think we've done it every year since Ira was born. To me, it is one of the most beautiful masses of the year (it and Holy Saturday are probably my two favorites.) I always have trouble holding back the tears while we sing "O Come All Ye Faithful."

Christmas morning dawned pleasantly later for us than most mornings (8:30!) Santa brought Ira and Ruby both some fun presents. We gave Ira & Ruby the EZ-Fort that I won (thanks to many of you!) on Facebook. Ira is pretty enthralled with it, but I must say, I'm glad that we didn't pay a lot of money for it. I am underwhelmed with how the pipes stay in the connectors. And it bothers Ira too when he builds an elaborate fort/house/boat/space shuttle and he's simply sitting inside it and it collapses (without even being bumped.) Still, he does love to play with it and has probably said no less than 20 times since Christmas, "This sure is a nice
EZ-Fort! Thank you mom & dad!" Does my heart good!

Building with the EZ-Fort

Ruby thinks the poles are fun to wave around

Ira can build triangles

Ira also got a tent and tunnel from Santa that Ruby thinks is pretty fun to crawl around in.

I just LOVE this picture!

Ruby got an adorable Seahorse from my brother and his wife. (Monica, if Gemma's looking at this, you better stop here!) (She told Andy that she wanted him to cut the seahorse in half with a saw.) Ruby loves her (the seahorse that is) and sleeps with her every night now. I'm pretty fond of her myself too! I walked in Ira & Ruby's room one night to see this and couldn't resist taking a picture!
Like I said, life is so very good. Christmas was wonderful and simple and truly beautiful. I still can't motivate myself to take our decorations down. I'm just enjoying them TOO much this year! Maybe I'll have to do a post of our decorations next...