Happy New Year

Every year we throw a small NYE party that I like to call “Feral Child New Year’s Eve.” Basically, we let the kids run around the basement and watch movies while the adults have grown up time upstairs. It’s always a fun time and each year the kids stay up later and later. This was the first year without any injuries to any of the children! Woo-hoo! (I’m kidding people, stop dialing CPS.)

This year people brought over their musical instruments and just about everyone took turns playing or singing to the best (or worst, sorry Jimmy) of their abilities.

Here’s a little video of the night, though there’s a lot of people missing as I only started taking pictures after midnight; was having a bit too much fun earlier. What better way to ring in the New Year, than to be with friends and make our own music?

Xmas Half Pint X-games

Our new (as of last year) Christmas day tradition is to go skiing.  Last year poor little girl had to sit in daycare while the rest of us had fun, but this year she is old enough to start skiing! I was a little apprehensive but she has such a little go-getter personality that I thought she would be just fine.

I prepped both kids by showing them kids ski videos on youtube.  Some of those kids are a-mazing, like this one little girl who’s been skiing since she was 16 months old and competed in slalom races at the age of 6.

We dropped both kids off at ski school–don’t they look perfectly ready for the mountain?

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Eric, Sapana and I took off to enjoy the mountain for the day.  Even though there hasn’t been a ton of snow, there were still some great runs to be had and it was probably one of my most fun days on a mountain, ever. I kept waiting for my phone to ring, telling me that the girl was cold/tired/hungry/bored and I needed to come pick her up.

It never did! She LOVES skiing! As soon as I picked her up at the end of the day, she asked me, “We come back ’keeing tomorrow?” with a big, big smile on her face. I asked if she’d take one last run to show me how she did. She got very excited, and pointing to the magic carpet told me, “Mommy, dat wug moooves!” (“Mommy, that rug moves!” for those of you that don’t speak her language.) Up she went, and here she is rocking it down the mountain:

Not to shortchange the boy, he had a great day also:

Here’s hoping you all also had a fun holiday this year, filled with family, laughter, and good food! 🙂

Pierogies

Pierogies! As you might remember from last year’s post (and the year before) on the same topic, we make these half-moon delights each holiday season to devour on Christmas Eve, continuing a tradition from Eric’s grandmother. This year, the girl really got into it, starting by trying to eat all the sour cream that goes into the dough with her bare hands.

Don’t worry, germophobes! We made her wash her hands after that. And then the rolling:

and the stuffing

aaaand 10 dozen (yes, that’s right) pierogies, ready for boiling and sauteeing and gobbling up!

Of course, it was all a little too much for one of our helpers, and while the rest of us stuffed she snuck away and we found her here:

We’ll wake her up when the eating begins.

New Year and Holiday Wrap Up

Happy New Year!

Holidays were so, so fun this year.  We did our usual tradition of pierogies and started a new tradition: skiing on Christmas day.  There was no one on the mountain, the weather was beautiful, and we came home to open presents in the evening.  The boy had his first day on the mountain ever!  At the end of the day, he said, “I couldn’t stop or turn but I loved going down the mountain really fast!”  Sapana, as always, flew out for the holiday and it was so wonderful to have her here.  While she has no current plans to leave New York, I’d like to take this opportunity to point out that Denver is a fabulous place to live.

I love that the kids are old enough now to really enjoy things.  I know there’s some of you out there that are real baby people, but I’m a bigger fan of the walking/talking set.  It’s just so great to see both of them excited to decorate the tree, open presents and participate in the marathon pierogie making.

Oh! The doll! The knitted doll went over very well, and, as I suspected, was promptly named, “Baby.”  The girl received a set of baby accessories from her other aunt and was pushing her around in the stroller and putting her to sleep in the pack and play.

We also watched a few movies over Christmas, with varying reviews.  First up, “Scott Pilgrim vs. The World”–I loved it, Eric hated it, Sapana just thought it was weird.  “Get Him to the Greek”–we were expecting a “Hangover”-like comedy, and instead just got awful awful awfulness.  Three thumbs down.  “Black Swan”–creepy and scary.  Three trembling thumbs up.  And finally, an old favorite, “The Big Lebowski.”  Sapana and I were so tired we fell asleep halfway into our white russians and were only awakened by Eric’s guffaws throughout the film.  One thumb up, two lame movie snoozers.

And to finish, a wrap up of the year’s knitting and a slideshow of the holidays.  I hope everyone had a great month, and here’s looking forward to 2011!