Our New Years Celebration

Today I ran all over looking for New Years Eve decorations or confetti poppers. I couldn't find them at Walmart or Kmart! So later in the day I decided to call our local Longs Drugs and was so happy to hear they had some confetti poppers and horn blowers. We were able to get there in time to buy the last two confetti guns and the last set of blowers. I had previously bought some sparkling cranberry apple cider for us to have a toast as well.

Of course we celebrated on New York time--we have done that ever since we had children! I don't know who had more fun, Aly or Daddy!

The picture on the left is Aly and Mommy having their toast! The picture on the right is Aly and KK throwing all the confetti up in the air! What a mess!

My new haircut

Today I tried my neighbors salon out to see how I would like her. She is located down in town and I thought it might be nice to try someone closer. I got there a bit early as it was snowing and I wanted to leave myself extra time for the drive. She took me right away. I wanted a highlight job and a trim. The last haircut I had was 6 months ago in July. Since this salon is pretty old fashion she said she would only do the cap highlight job but the good news was instead of it costing 70-100 dollars it would only cost $30. While she was doing my hair a few other clients came for quick haircuts. They were all retired ladies and you could tell they really loved this salon. Here is how my hair turned out:














For whatever reason my hair is lighter than it shows in the picture.

A little Snow

Finally we got our first inch and a half of snow! Of course the girls were really anxious to go and play in it. I was lucky enough to get the Flip Video camcorder for Christmas so I took it outside and tried it out! Here is a video I captured of KK playing in the snow. We were just getting ready to make a snowman!

You have to click on the play button twice to play the video and you might have to turn your sound up on your computer.

Check out our pumpkin snowman, pretty cute huh!

Pumpkins in December????

Halloween is a very busy time in the Tregembo household. With all of the halloween parties the girls attend plus my birthday we didn't find time to carve our pumpkins. Since we live out in the middle of nowhere and no one trick or treats at our house it didn't really matter. Or did it????

Aly has been begging us to carve the pumpkins ever since. We had bought four and they have just been sitting outside the front of the house. So Daddy decided to take two of the pumpkins and Aly decided instead of carving them she wanted to use the halloween faces that we bought the year before. This made it much easier on Daddy so all was happy!

















Of course Aly had to have pig and pony in the pictures. Oh and I think she is holding Christmas bells in her hand. Check out the dusting of snow outside in the background!

Christmas Day in the ER

For the past two and a half days KK has been running high fevers around 105 which could only be controlled with around the clock ibeprofren. Well on Sunday, the first day she had the high fever I brought her to the doctors. They couldn't find anything wrong and told me to come back in two days if the fever continued. I told them that would mean Christmas Day. They said if I came back the next day it might be too soon to tell. So after a horrible nights sleep, KK still had a high fever. We hurried to open up gifts so that I could take KK to the Emergency Room. Unfortunately since it was Christmas day all urgent cares were closed. So I left the house at 9 a.m. and didn't get home until after 2 p.m. ER was packed and it took me 2 hours just to be put in a bed--I was in a hallway with her they were that crowded. The doctor discovered she had an ear infection and my guess is she had strep throat as well but I didn't bother asking them to test for it since they would be giving antibiotics already.

Aly was really happy on Christmas morning. Poor KK was tired and only lasted through opening two presents. She had a hard day!

Christmas Eve presents

Tonight we had a present we wanted to have the girls open. It is our yearly tradition of opening up Christmas pajamas on Christmas Eve. That way we dress them in their new pajamas and they are all cute on Christmas morning for pictures. I knew that Aly would be dissapointed that her only present she would be allowed to open would be pajamas so I let them each pick one present as well.

Aly opened the remote controlled cars and as you can see by the look on her face she wasn't happy. She said she didn't want that as a present. Once we took it out of the box and started playing with it she liked it though. Although I will have to say, KK and Daddy enjoyed the remote control cars the most! KK opened up the present Aly gave her which was a Dora doll. She was very happy!

Christmas Eve Dinner

For Christmas Eve dinner we decided to let everyone choose what they would want for dinner. Aly wanted to make a pizza from scratch and hubby was craving chicken curry. So that is exactly what we did. Poor KK was sick and running a high fever and hadn't eaten in the last day so she wasn't interested in dinner.















Aly made a smiley face out of the olives on her pizza. Of course once I cut it the face changed a bit. I took a picture of our chicken curry. It is much better than the way it looks in the picture. I can see why you need a professional photographer to make your meals look good in cookbooks! I hope to update this posting at a later date with the chicken curry recipe. It really is good, I use 1/2 can of coconut milk which makes it rather creamy and a little sweet.

Hosting the Tregembo Family Xmas

Well, this year we would be hosting hubby's side of the family for a Xmas dinner. The list included 21 people which isn't even all of the brothers. One of hubby's brothers lives on the East Coast with his three kids and for obvious reasons they wouldn't be making it.

When we first got married I had no clue how to host such a large group. Actually I had no clue how to host at all. All I was ever used to was having 1 or 2 friends over and making everything as I went along. So my first few years of hosting the Tregembo family were very hard and stressful. Through the years I watched others and how they hosted and learned a few tricks along the way. One of the best tricks I learned was to try and prepare everything before all of your company arrives. This is very valuable as I have a 2 and 4 year old and they need my attention too much to be able to be doing all of the cooking and cleaning as the party is happening.

I took a few pictures. We had to have three tables to fit everyone. Unfortunately all 3 tables wouldn't fit in the picture but you can get the idea.





















This was the center piece I chose for each of the three tables. Very simple yet elegant and each centerpiece only cost a total of $5 a piece. I was even lucky enough to find matching table clothes all for $5 a piece as well.











Check out KK having fun with her Uncle Jim. You may notice she is in her PJ's. Do you know why? She kept taking off all of her clothes like every 15 minutes and I just couldn't take redressing her anymore. She doesn't know how to get out of PJ's so I finally ended up putting her in those!

Aly's letter to Santa

Aly wrote a letter to Santa today, with my help spelling of course. She came up with what she wanted to say and I wrote it down on a piece of paper for her. Then she copied what I wrote.

You can click on the picture to view it larger. Anyway it says:

Dear Santa please bring my puppy a present he's been good Merry Christmas Love Alyssa

Aly's school Christmas party

Aly was so excited about her Christmas party. She picked out her dress and wanted her hair in a Christmas scrunchie. We even took a picture in front of our Christmas tree.

Aly posed so cute. She is getting really good at it. Now only if we could get KK to cooperate.

On the left is a class photo of the Christmas Performance. As you can see on the right, Alyssa chose to sit by her friend Maya.

Aly's picture with Santa didn't go so well. Ever since she found out one of her classmated Dylyn was afraid of Santa, she has been afraid. Fast forward to her getting a candy cane and she is all happy!