Happy New Year's! Welcome 2009

Happy New Year's everyone out in the blogdom world! I hope you all had a festive time ringing in this new year. I did it in my traditional style . . .asleep. I haven't been awake for midnight in many years. It is pretty crazy considering I am up past midnight most nights for work, all I can figure is if I am off I am probably exhausted. We did go and party with Lowell's family at Mike and Sina's for a while--had to get the junk food in!--and then when the boys were too grouchy to be around I took them home and we celebrated when the ball dropped in New York. We did poppers and sparklers, fire booms are always a hit. My sis Hillary was kind enough to share in our early jubilation. I also got to test out my new 10mp camera, yea for me!

Happy New Year's from Davis and Carter!

So I spent the rest of my night with the hottest date in town, my cutie tooties. I rocked them both and got my snuggles in and really only got to bed myself 10 minutes before midnight. I thought about staying up, but why wreck the tradition!

So New Year's Day we joined up with my fam to go sledding. Yes, the much anticipated sled trip to the gardens. It was so awesome that Hillary could get us in, here was one of the best hills in the area and no one was there but us. Sweet! So of course I wanted to do the giant hill I have always looked and thought would be the best sled hill. All those times looking at it I don't think I ever noticed the slope. Or how it sloped directly into the trees. You can guess the rest, I flipped backwards going pretty fast, couldn't stop myself and slammed into a tree. My shoulder took the brunt of it and it still pretty sore. So . . .then we moved over the ampitheater (where the waterfall is for those who have been there) and it was much improved. Still, I was a little rattled so I spent a lot of time at the bottom of the hill playing photographer. Everyone had a great time. Carter is my fearless child, he kept flying down and several times biffed it pretty good. Once he hit a bump and the sled stopped but he kept going dragging his face in the snow. Poor bubba. he cried for a minute brushed himself off and walked back up! We talked about it that night and he said he hurt his eyes, his nose, his smile, and his turner (that took me a minute, he was talking about his neck--I thought that was a pretty good name if he didn't know it). Davis was less brave but still seemed to enjoy himself. My dad came down a bunch of times and then sat watching with my mom. We finally coaxed her down and I had to laugh, she got stuck and my dad dragged her around by her feet. This is all on the video at the end, but I wanted to give you the background. I loved the winter shot at the bottom so of course I had to get some family shots. Such a gorgeous place to be.

Carter baby
My sibs! I had planned to have a quiz and a prize with my 100th post, but I don't want to think up another one, so I am cheating and putting it on my 99th post. Thanks for the idea Jillian. So here's the game: anyone who wants to can guess the birth order of me and my siblings. Just post a comment and I will put all the correct answers in a bowl and let the boys choose the winner. If you can name the missing sibling, you will get an extra entry. The winner will receive a code for 2 free 20 page photo books from artscow. If you don't use artscow, well you're just out of luck! Left to right is BJ, Hillary, Robbie, and me
My favorite shot of the whole crew, the bonus child is Angela's little brother Jason, he was born the same month as the kiddos.
A "triple"--my dad kept wanting to stack as many people as he could on one tube, so this is my dad, me, and BJ
My handsome Lowell, just 'cuz the camera loves him (me too!)
Davis braving the hill

These and more are on the video, but I thought I would post a few in case it doesn't work for someone. We followed up the sledding with my Dad's chicken noodle soup plus cookies, hot chocolate (I can't say that without thinking of the song from Polar Express now), and wassail. Mmmm . . .what a fun day!

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Today Hill and I took the boys to Kangaroo Zoo to wear them out and reward some of their potty successes. Still not perfect, but we are getting there a little at a time. The boys were awesome, they can totally climb all the slides all by themselves now--some were tough for me the last time I went. Super climbers they are. Now as soon as they are consistently potty trained we are going to put them in gymnastics--future gold medalists for sure ;).

Well, I am shockingly tired. My whole body is sore from sledding and not just from where I hit the tree. I am definitely getting old! Work has continued its fever pace with 2 more bleeders since the last post. That's 4 in 5 shifts. Just craziness! I have now doubled in one week the number of units we gave my whole first year here! So just a friendly reminder that if you can, please donate blood. I have seen first hand the good it does. Loves to all!