HAPPY 2011!!

Let's start off with the picturesque snow filled mountains that can be seen from our home. So beautiful!

Hope you all had a fabulous New Year! One of these years, I would love to go to Times Square in New York to see the ball drop in person. Have any of you ever done that?

So let's see...let me start with what we just did recently and work my way back to Christmas. I'm just going to put it all in one post. Hope you don't mind!

Last week we went to the desert. A LOT of people go to the desert to celebrate New Year's. We didn't actually stay to ring in the new year. We came home on New Year's Eve. We were all too tired to stay up to watch the ball drop and this is the first time that I can remember missing it! That's okay with me though, we needed our rest.

So back to the desert...we stayed there for four days. The kids loved playing in the sand/dirt and digging holes and just getting dirty. They loved playing in the sand so much that Savanna didn't even ride her quad. That's okay, we'll have plenty more opportunities for her to ride. Owen actually rode his quad with Justin and loved it! It was so cute seeing his smiling face after the ride. He didn't want to stop. I got to ride in our friend's Razor and it was fun, as usual! I managed to get a few pics of Justin this time. I did miss getting a pic of him doing a wheelie though, maybe next time. We all enjoyed s'mores every night. It did rain one day but just for a little bit in the morning. The rest of the time, it was pretty chilly and windy. We had some pretty strong winds one night that we had to take down our canopy for fear that it would fly away!

Playing in the dirt: Out for a ride in our friend's Razor:

Do I look like I'm going to the Arctic? I was nice and warm and that's all that mattered!

Cute brothers:
Here's Justin on his quad:

One last pic before we left:

Now onto Christmas! Our Christmas was spent at home. We did our usual Christmas Eve activities to prepare for Santa. The kids helped me bake cookies and we set them out with milk and we also set out some carrots for the reindeer.

Savanna even drew a picture for Santa and was surprised the next morning that Santa took it with him! ;)

Then on Christmas morning, we always start with opening our stockings:

Then it was onto the presents! Owen was so happy with what Santa brought him and Savanna loved her bracelet making kit:

Then onto presents from family:

This was made by Savanna in her class:

Gavin was asleep through the whole morning of opening presents. When he finally woke up, we opened all of his presents. He sure got lots of great stuff!

Then I changed him into Santa Gavin :)

After we opened presents, my parents and Tita Penny came down to join us for lunch. Thank you to Tita Penny for cooking her yummy Filipino food! And a big thank you to my Dad for hand carrying our Christmas star to us from the Philippines!

We would like to say THANK YOU VERY MUCH to both sides of our family on the east coast and west coast for taking the time to shop for us and send us presents. It means a lot of us and we love you all very much!