Olivia turns 5!!

Bruno's brother, Paul's daughter Olivia turned 5 on February 5th. We had a celebration on the 2nd at Tony & Teresa's house.

Here's Big and Little Tony watching the festivities. Baby Tony getting picture time with the big cousins, and those two girls get so goofy when they get together!

Aunt Teresa made cupcakes and the girls got to decorate them. Nummy!

Jake's 2nd Birthday---January 27th

Michelle's cousin, Dani, and her husband Steve, celebrated their son Jake's 2nd Birthday. Nicole and Jake had a great time playing and running around his house. Happy Birthday Big Guy, we love you!!

Nicole goes "skiing"

We are taking the kids to Wenatchee on Feb 15th for several days of skiing. They have never been before so we have signed the boys up for snowboard lessons, and will be setting Nicole up with skiing lessons. So there's been lots of talk at our house about skiing. After playing in the snow in the morning (we woke up to about an inch and a half) Nicole decided to do her own skiing, indoors.

Wash cloth skiis, $2

(Bow and) Arrow poles, $4

Bicycle helmet for safety, $15

Snorkel goggles, $8

A 5 year olds imagination, absolutely priceless!!

Day of play in the snow

We took the kids up to Mt. Baker on Sunday to play in the snow. They have a great place to sled, but it is a lot of work! Those hills are steep to climb back up. After sledding for a while, then having lunch, we went off into the virgin snow and built a couple forts and had snowball fights. We finished up the day with a few more sled runs and hit the road back home. All three kids fell asleep within minutes of coming down off the mountain. It takes about 2 hours to get home, so it's not exactly something we can just hop in the car and do on the spur of the moment. There's a lot of planning, Marcus has to get the day off, and food to pack. We had a good time and need to do it more often. We're thinking of planning something during "mid-winter" break and actually having the kids take ski or snowboard lessons. It's something they've always wanted to do, but we've just never made the time to do. Maybe it's time!!

Marcus turns 17, December 29th!!!

On his birthday his Uncle John came up and took him, Alex and Bruno shooting. Marcus thought that was pretty cool and told everyone "I shot my first gun today". It was the highlight of his day, thanks Uncle John!!

We took him out to dinner at El Gitano where they put a big sombrero on his head and sang him Happy Birthday.

At home we didn't sing Happy Birthday, he's too cool for that. Here he is with his friends having cake. It's hard to believe our baby boy is 17 years old, where does the time go??

Christmas Day

I was a wake at 5:00, Nicole at 5:30 to use the bathroom. Much to Alex's bafflement we all went back to bed. I couldn't go back to sleep so got up at 7:00, Alex says it torture to make a kid sit there and look at all the gifts but to not be able to open them. The rest of the family got up at 8:00. Opening our stockings is my favorite part. Here Nicole finds a DS game in her stocking. She's thinking she's going to have to play it on Marcus' DS, but little does she know that Santa brought her one! Alex and Marcus get stuff for their guitars.

Santa brings Alex Guitar Hero 3 for Wii. Here's Marcus checking out his roadside emergency kit. You never know when you're going to get your beemer stuck in the snow or mud. Bruno helps Nicole with her very own PINK DS.

Nicole doesn't seem too excited to be getting clothes, but they're so cute! Marcus likes his new leather jacket that Nonna bought him.

Christmas Eve

Traditionally, our family goes to Michelle's Mom's for Christmas Eve. We were planning on going and having our first Christmas Eve at her new house in Ferndale, but sickness intervened. Nicole had the flu. It sure seems that there hasn't been many Christmas's when someone wasn't sick. She felt o.k. she just had terrible diahrea.....for 5 days. She did enjoy opening her gifts from Grandma and cousin Dani. Since we weren't prepared to make dinner Bruno went to the store and got stuff to make tacos, the kids' favorite. After dinner we watched a movie, then everyone went to bed and waited for Santa to arrive.