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Christmas Recap

Merry Christmas everyone!! We had the most wonderful Christmas. Dad was home this year and Santa was extra generous with us. Fiona was so much fun this year. Her top two favorite gifts were her bike which she only left to play with her powerwheels from PopPop. she even ate her breakfast on her bike. she really was a hoot to watch. It took all day to open most of her gifts and she just loved them all.

Here are a few pics from the day. I will have videos of Christmas Eve and Christmas day up later today...The one from Christmas eve is hilarious at the end!!

I am a bad, bad girl cuz I didn't get my Christmas Cards out. So be on the look out for a special Valentine Card from us.

Love you all and Happy New Year!!

New Addition to our little family

Today was a big day in the Hyland household. We went to see Santa today and Santa had a little surprise waiting for us - Bridgett Hyland.

She is Labrador Retriever Mix, 10 months old and we rescued her from a local shelter here. It was a bit chaotic meeting her and getting all the dog stuff (I just got rid of all the stuff we had from Riley), but she is seriously a perfect fit so far for our family. She is the sweetest natured dog, loves Fiona they were running around and laughing this evening. Novi, our cat, as seen below, is not exactly happy about a new member - but he is tolerating her much better than the other dogs who have come to visit us.

Fiona thinks Bridget's crate is her new playhouse...
Novi not too happy about sharing his Mommy, Daddy and Fiona

We really missed having a dog as a part of our family, and now we feel that the house feels nice and full.

Snow Day

Well, if you hadn't heard it on the news, we had a HUGE freak snowstorm here in the desert. When all was said and done, we ended up with about 13 inches of snow!!! Can you believe it?? The city closed down (and still is closed today) all the highways in and out of the area also were closed, many people were stranded. lucky that Mike had taken off work yesterday so we could see Santa, but apparently even Santa was having a hard time getting around and we didn't get to see him.

Heather is in town also, and had planned to drive to Fresno to visit with a friend, but had to turn back after 30 miles - it took her over 7 hours to drive 60 miles yesterday. She is so glad she made it back here.

here are the picks from Fiona's first time in the snow - she HATED it. We took her out today to try and make a snowman, but no such luck. It is pretty beautiful, but it totally reminded me why I don't want to live in the Northeast again, LOL!!

Snow is almost gone already today it'll be gone by this weekend I am sure, but it was pretty amazing to get so much snow around Christmas...

SANTA CAME EARLY!!!!

Well, to my great surprise (sorta - cuz I have been bugging Santa alot) I got my Christmas present yesterday!! A Nikon D60 camera - my dream of all dream cameras!! It rocks I took like 150 pictures today just to play around with it!! Still getting used to the whole SLR thing but it is a load of fun and I got some good shots today. I figure the more I practice the better I'll get :)

And the other great cool thing?? Heather is coming to visit tomorrow and she is staying with us with a short little break until the 22nd!! How much better can Christmas get???

Here are some of the pics from today...

Advent Calendar...ooooohhh Lights

First, today we started our First Advent Calendar. We are doing for Daddy and Fiona since Daddy is also doing RCIA and I wanted to him to experience the joy of the Advent Calendar like all good Catholic kids do...

Fiona got a pair of Christmas Socks that light up. She wanted to play with them so bad so I let her. I look over and this is how I found her a few minutes later:



yes, she is wearing the socks like a headband!! LOL!! got to give her points for creativity.

Then there was the "stringing up the lights" portion of the afternoon. I though, hey, I can put the lights on the tree while Fiona watches her 2nd favorite guy, Handy Manny. So I pull out the step ladder climb up and start putting on the lights, only to have Fiona start climbing up the ladder after me. Apparently, since accomplishing our stairs and the ladders to the slides at the park, the step ladder was quite enticing. Now, I must explain one thing about Fiona, she is a sensitive soul and does not like being told no. The girl will take a tumble on her head, get up and rub it and be fine. You say to her, "Honey, this is dangerous, please don't climb up here." The Girl just melts down. - Ask anyone!! so I made the mistake of nicely asking her not to climb on the ladder, while I am at the 3 step, she just sits down on the second step and begins to melt down. Great now I am stuck and can't get down to get her off or to comfort her... Somehow I finagled a toe on the second step and made my way down. Needless to say we waited until Daddy got home and finished up the lights. Check out our beautiful lighted tree:



so then we started decorating the tree. it started out well, Fiona playing in the gold beads - in truest Fancy Fiona fashion, that is until Fiona, and seriously it was like watching it in slow motion, took a glass ball turned towards the kitchen floor and throws it as hard as she can and smashes it into a million peices. Kids and experimentation, Hey I wonder what would happen if I throw this over there?? ok, not so good - ball breaks. Hopefully the mental note to self not to do that again kicks in. Needless to say there are 3 boxes of glass ornaments that are safely in the box in the garage this season. but here are a couple of cute pics:

It was a lot of fun and I will post more tree pics later.

It's Beginning to look like Christmas...

Well, it really is beginning to look like Christmas here at our house. Most of the decorations are put up in the house. And we got our tree today - a beautiful 7-8ft Noble fir. Appropriately purchased at Nancy's Ranch, we had to go there just cuz it had my name:) It was a blast to do - this is our first Christmas as a family this year so we are going all out. Mike and Fiona had a blast playing in the hay and strolling through all the Christmas Trees.

On the way home we briefly began discussing what we would do to decorate the house outside - this is the first time we lived in a home where we could go all out - and boy do we plan to. And as we pull down the street what do we see in our Neighbor's yard but a huge inflatable carousel that actually turns. Oh yeah, its on!! Our neighborhood does have a "friendly" decorating contest and we are determined to win!!! Stay tuned for pics of our cool house!!! Who knows one day we may just end up on TV for one of those crazy houses that the lights are synchronized with the Christmas music.

For now I leave you with some pics of us from today's Christmas tree adventure:

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Well its a little late, again - notice this has been becoming a new trend for me...late for everything. Although, in my scatterbrainedness, I thought that today was the 29th and not the 28th and called Colin to wish him a very happy birthday, and the happy accident was that I was a day early this time!! WOO HOO! Anywho, Thanksgiving was really nice. It was wonderful that Mike was here this year. We had one of his coworker's family here with their 3 little guys - it was really a lot of fun. All the kids had a blast. Fiona had a bit of a tumble and now has a black eye - you can sorta see them in the pics... poor little girl :(

And here is a funny video of Fiona before everyone got here for dinner - hilarious!!!

Only Fiona knows what she is yelling, but this has become a new routine lately in the house and it cracks Mike and I up totally - why the running in circles with the yelling?? Who knows!!!

Dinner was perfect - everything came out cooked and not raw, edible and tasty and relatively at the same time!! Our Menu for the day was:

Appetizers

Veggies and dip

Artichoke dip

and Cheese tray and crackers

Dinner:

Turkey and gravy

Stuffing

Mashed potatos

Sweet potatos

green bean casserole

Cranberry relish

Salad with craisins and sunflower seeds and orange and honey dressing

and rolls

Dessert

Lemon Merangue pie

Chocolate silk pie

Yummy - I am still so stuffed check out our "Adult Table" and the cute place cards I made yes it was a great Thanksgiving because we are so lucky to have so many things to be thankful for. We did miss Aunt Meg's annual Thanksgiving - seriously its one of the only things that make me homesick. One of these days we'll get back again for that.

Also a little update on the health and well being of Fiona. As mentioned there was a bit of a tumble on Thanksgiving and she has a bit of a black eye, but other than that we did have a Dr. checkup on Tuesday and she is "perfect" - the doctor did say that. she is a little over 25 pounds now and is 33 inches long!!! Tall and sorta skinny - that buddah belly says otherwise. Well off to bed for now. Miss you all!!!

oh, and we started to decorate for Christmas...Here is Fiona in Mommy's Santa Hat

*camera is seriously on the fritz - word is that Santa is working on a replacement - Mommy cannot wait!!*

And then there was the Hot Dog dance - she loves this from Mickey Mouse club house. She stops everything to watch and dance to it. You can see how well she twirls - this usually lasts longer but the camera is apparently more interesting :)

wooosh!!

Wow, November is flying by. I can't believe that Thanksgiving is next week!!! Amazing how quickly a month goes.

We are having Thanksgiving Dinner here with some friends of our from Mike's work. I a stoked to get to do a Thanksgiving dinner again - I learned all I know from our Thanksgivng dinners at Aunt Meg's house - she throws a rocking dinner!! bummed I can't be there this year but I will be there in spirit.

Getting ready to head out to the outlet mall today - Fiona and her little Buddah belly doesn't fit into any of the 18 month shirts we bought last year so on to 24 months and it looks like she had yet another little growth spurt and 24 month pants are close on the horizon, so I better pick up a bunch of those too. Maybe a nice outfit for Mommy and Daddy too for the holidays. And hopefully a chunk off my Christmas list.

We have had birthday parties galore this month, and below is pic of Fiona and me at one. I'll leave you with that one...

Happy Thanksgiving if I don't get on here before then!!

Happy Halloween!!

Ok, its a little late with the pics, but better late than never!! Fiona was a pro this year, cracked us all up. She LOVED her Little Red Riding Hood costume. When I put the cape on her she just twirled around with the biggest smile on her face and then ran around as if the cape made her run faster. It was hilarious!! And I was so worried that she wouldn't want to wear the cape!!





So on Halloween night we went with our friends Wendy and Chris and their kiddos, Summer and Logan. Summer was Fancy Nancy - a girl after my own heart :) While we were waiting for them to arrive, I got Fiona dressed in her costume. Well, as soon as she was in it, she wanted to go cruise the neighboorhood - screamed and cried until we let her go outside. How in the world did she know that was what we were going to do??? So we walked the neighborhood and I took some pictures - the girl was a riot. Laughing and giggling and waving hi to all the neighbors.

When Summer got here we all went out trick or treating. It was great seeing the neighbors and all the little kids dressed up. Fiona was a pro though - she would run from house to house going straight up to the door and flashing that cute smile of hers. No words needed!! She really didn't even get scared at the scary houses and masks. She just amazes me!! Well here are the pics...Enjoy!!

Daddy comes home tomorrow!!

We are so excited!! Daddy gets home tomorrow!!! We've been busy lately getting ready for our Harvest Party this weekend and a birthday party too!! Plus Mommy got really sick on Sunday and was miserable so there haven't been a lot of posts or pictures taken. But just wanted to quick let everyone know what's up...

I leave you with morning bad hair day of a still very sleepy Fiona

A little behind

Ok, I know I am little behind on the postings but I have been snapping photos. Its been pretty busy here, but good. I am in the middle of a fall cleaning/reorganization of parts of the house and I am chipping away little by little.

But here are some pics from the last couple days:

This is Fiona playing dress up - her favorite thing right now is that shiny beaded necklace, she wears it everywhere. The headband and the tank top are mine cleverly styled over the pink striped jammies by the next Rachel Zoe!!

These are of Fiona "reading" her book:

And a little video as well...

She was talking up a storm before I took out the camera, of course...LOL!!

On Sunday, we went to the Palmdale Fall Festival. Now I like Festivals and all, but seriously this one is AWESOME. I always have a great time and they reall do a great job. They have a whole Fairy type theme with stilt walkers and a living garden where the vines and the statues all move. This year they added this Chalk area where local artists made chalk drawings on the park sidewalk - it was phenomenal the pictures seriously don't do them justice though...enjoy:

Busy, Busy, Busy

Just a quick slideshow of pics from thursday, an impromptu, 3 hour trip to our park. What is so funny is that Fiona made friends with the little boy in the photo in the first half hour, but our friends who we were meeting there - I didn't get a single picture of all the kids!! But with now 4 out of the 5 of them running and climbing and sliding, its a little hard to have the camera going too, LOL!!

Also some pics of Fiona and her friend Mason who came to play while his Mommy and Daddy had a nice night out!! those two are so cute together!!

Ever the observer

Today was fun, we went strollercising with our friends Ms. Kirsten, Cooper and Cooper's grandma. Then got to play at the park. Fiona was quite the observer, always watching what everyone was doing, and not a single picture where she was looking at me. LOL!!

I am tired today, so not much else to write but here are two pics from today:

And here is a cute video I caught of her while swinging today, too. The clicking is my camera - its very annoying but I can't help it...

nighty night everyone!!