First and last trike ride of 2007

The weather finally cooperated today for Sydney to take a ride on her trike. She's been riding it inside but it's just not the same. It's still a bit big and she's still working on the pedaling, but it has a great long handle that attaches so we can help out a bit. It was cold and our ride was short-lived, she just wasn't feeling it. She was more excited to hang out with her friend Justin when he arrived home.

Her Puppy had to come of course

A little help from daddy...wheee! (by the way, it hadn't been raining, our neighbor had just power washed the street.)

Sydney and Justin-these two always act so shy around each other, yet they talk about each other all the time. It's too cute.

Goodbye 2007!

2007 has been a great year for us. We've done so many fun things this year, but most of all we are blessed with our wonderful family, friends and health.

I've enjoyed my first full year of being a stay at home mom. I feel so fortunate that I get to stay at home with my girl. We have a great group of friends and a lot of fun activities so that definitely helps a lot. Anthony is still working for IBM, and well...that is all I will say about that. Except that IBM is darn lucky. haha. Sydney is an amazing two year old and has us smiling, laughing, and thanking our lucky stars for such a terrific little girl.

We've taken some fun trips this year. We spent the first part of the year spending a long weekend with Gram-o and Pop-o down in Sacramento. Eddie, Alisa and Andrew were there too so that was great. We spent an awesome week at Lake Chelan with my fam in August, and in September we took Sydney to Cannon Beach in Oregon for her birthday trip. We hosted Thanksgiving at our home again for both our families and we always enjoy that.

Here are some of my favorite pictures from 2007. It was hard to choose since I literally take a good hundred pictures a month. Here are some of my faves, and I am sure there are a few more I will think about the next few days but here you have it.

1. Our fam at the Zevely wedding, Anacortes WA July 2007 2. My birthday Alki beach, July 2007 3. Sydney and Gram-o August 2007 4. Sydney and her new Mercedes March 2007 5. Seattle Mariners game with Jessica, Kristin, Cole, Sydney and I May 2007 6. Sydney with Nana and Papa April 2007 7. Sydney and Anthony March 2007 8. Sydney and her bff's December 2007 9. Sydney in Lake Chelan August 2007 10. Sydney's birthday at Cannon beach September 2007 11. Our little girl June 2007 12 Sydney's first day of ballet, sweet Ivy helping her September 2007

Thank you to my friend Emily for this collage idea!

Happy New Year everyone!

Cole buddy

What do you think-could these two pass for twins? They have the same color hair, beautiful long lashes, and are incredibly cute, if I do say so myself.

Kristin and Cole invited us over to play today. Cole has a ton of fun new toys he received for his birthday and Christmas and Syd had a blast playing with them and Cole. The kids did so well at playing together-I really love that they now play together not just next to each other.

Sydney has been in love with Cole's blue puppy (the one she is holding) for quite some time. She always hangs on to him when she sees him. Cole is not in love with the puppy as much as Syd so Kristin and Cole gave puppy to Syd. Sydney was so excited, she just loves this dog! The whole way home she kept giving him kisses and hugs. She wouldn't take a nap without him. She calls him Puppy...yes we are so original with the names. Anyway, thank you Cole for letting Sydney adopt Puppy!

Here's a video of Sydney this evening with her new friend:

Our Christmas

We had a wonderful Christmas yesterday! It's always so nice to spend the holidays with family, and it's also nice to have a low-key day thrown in there too.

Sydney went to bed pretty late on Christmas eve-10:30pm. Apparently the whole Santa thing tuckered her out as she didn't wake up until 10:30am Christmas morning. Merry Christmas to me! I love sleeping in and I know I don't have many Christmas mornings left to sleep in. We actually did pretty well on the presents. The past two years it is quite possible we got a bit carried away. This year we kept things to a minimum and it was probably better-both for our bank account and present overload for Sydney.

We opened all our presents, which took quite a while. Sydney would open a gift and then play with it for a bit. It took a little over two hours for the present opening. We were so hungry that we decided to open the stockings after our brunch. Anthony made us some yummy breakfast/brunch stuff and we opened the remaining stocking gifts. We hung out, played with our toys, the toddler and hub took a nap, played with our toys some more, and at 7pm we decided we didn't feel like cooking dinner and we went searching for an open restaurant. Hmm...not an easy task. There were several sketchy places open-Chinese bbq's and of course the typical Denny's and Shari's. We decided on Shari's restaurant. The food was fine, the service not as fine and we decided on the way home we'd probably NOT make it a tradition to hit up Shari's at Christmas. Perhaps we'd just plan ahead and cook a nice meal at home. Haha. Afterwards we drove around to look at the Christmas lights.

Anyway, enough of the chatting-here are the pics

The stockings


The tree and presents


Sydney's favorite gift of the morning-Santa brought her this trike. We didn't plan on a trike but
when we were at Fred Meyer a few days ago she loved a trike there so much and could actually pedal! Apparently Santa knows everything and picked this up for her. ;)



She loves her Kitty keyboard!


This travel aquadoodle is going to be great in the car


Think the kid likes Elmo? She loves these pj's and unfortunately her adorable Christmas pajamas leaked the night before....hmm.


Sydney received a ton of books this Christmas, which is great! Half of them are Dora books, even better! She loves to read so much so these were awesome gifts.


Sydney's new apron when she is helping daddy in the kitchen. I think it needs to be adjusted a smidge.


More crayons and drawing books


More trike


Sydney loves her new Austrian puppy puppet from Gram-o and Pop-o


I am in love with the "Life is Good" clothing, so I was so excited to find the kid sized hat and mittens


Ready to take a spin around the neighborhood


Back in the saddle again-Syd loves this horse, especially because she can get on and off by herself


Checking out the tree


My aunt Sue bought this Nativity scene for Sydney-she loves it, especially the baby Jesus.


Anthony and Syd at Shari's restaurant


A video of Syd opening a gift-



Merry Christmas everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday.

Christmas Eve!

The presents have all been unwrapped, the snow has fallen (but didn't stick) and Anthony and Sydney are both napping...time to add pics to the blog! We'll start with Christmas eve since there are so many.

Last night we celebrated Christmas at my dad and Kay's house with my dad's side of the family.

Papa, Sydney and Nana (sorry Nana, I didn't realize your eyes were closed! oops)


Aunt Sue and cousin Barb


Sydney's present from uncle Trevor! The horse and the boots to match


Barb's boys, Jared and Colin


Barb and her boys


Sydney and her cousins


And back on the horse....Syd rode this thing all night-she loves it!


Daddy and Syd


Excited about their Abercrombie gift cards


We always called Trevor "Alex P. Keaton" (from tv show Family Ties) because he was A LOT like Alex growing up. I saw this shirt and I couldn't pass it up. It says Alex P Keaton for President 08


I will admit this is my favorite gift-although I do love ALL of them, thank you everyone. It's the new Zune, and my bro even inscribed it with "To Stace, Love your bro. Christmas 2007." Aww. It has a heart tattoo on the back too....so dang cool! Nice work bro.


Dad is ELATED about his pink golf balls....can't you tell?


Anthony and Syd playing with the camera


Sydney actually took this picture of me all by herself!

Christmas two years ago and now

Three months old
Christmas 2005




Today-my baby is a little girl!
Christmas 2007

The last hoorah for the four musketeers

Or perhaps it's the four mouseketeers since the kiddos love Mickey Mouse so much!

Friday was our last playdate with Maddy before she moves to Chicago. It was fun and sad all at the same time. The kids get along so well and of course we like Traci so much too so it was hard to say goodbye.

We met up for lunch and then headed over to Country Village to ride the train and play a bit. Here are some pictures and videos from the day:

Traci and Maddy


Samantha and Lisa


Cole

Sydney


Our train ride:






The kiddos-it's very difficult to get four toddlers to stay still and pose. Seriously.




The fun merry go round:






Saying goodbye:

Apparently Maddy doesn't believe in saying goodbye




Here are a couple videos

Doing whatever it takes to get the kids to stand still and look at the camera



The merry go round