Happy New Year!

We wish you all a safe, happy and healthy New Year!!! I know this year is going to bring some very special things for some of my good friends. In fact, a few of them hope and plan to meet their daughters this month. I am so excited for them and their families.
Thank you for spending another year with us at 3 peanuts. I realized that in a week, I will have been blogging for 3 years. In fact, my first posts are about Christmas 2006 before Kate came home. This little blog started as a way for far away friends and family to be able to share in our adoption of Kate. It has grown into a journal/scrapbook for my children and a creative outlet for me.
We had planned a quiet night of a good dinner, fire, roasting marshmallows and playing games at home for New Year's Eve. However, at the last minute our good friends put together a fun little party. There were lots of boys running around with nerf guns and sitting outside around the fire pit. Will and Harry did not want to leave. We all had a great time!
I also showed the peanuts the Christmas slideshow I made for them. I am not sure it is really appreciated now but hopefully one day, they will be glad to have them. It is a little rusty. I still prefer Windows movie maker to I-movie but it is the best I could do with the time I had and my lack of knowledge. I need a tutorial or two at the genius bar someday. I cannot incorporate video clips from the flip no matter how hard I try.



On New Year's Day we usually write down a hope/dream/goal for the coming year. I save them and we look back on them to see what has happened. This is a fun tradition to do in your family. However, if you are anything like me, thinking about your goals might induce a small mid-life crisis.

Christmas Day

I take so many photos during the Christmas season and although most of them are poor quality (indoor, dark lighting, snapshots)...I really treasure every single one. So, the last few years I have made a Christmas video that our family watches on New Year's Eve. I will share it here (it is almost done) but I am also posting photos of Christmas Day because I know most of you will not want to sit through that video and I don't blame you:)

On Christmas morning (at abut 6:30), I heard the boys talking in Harry's room. They had a plan. See, we take turns opening gifts as the whole family watches. So, Kate opens a gift and then Harry and then Will and the Mom and then Dad. It teaches the kids patience and gratitude but it takes a long time. Anyway, their plan was to look for a gift that might look like a DS for Will and let him go first so that he could immediately charge it and they could play together later in the day.

We woke up little Miss Katie Ru at 7:00 and down the stairs we went....

Kate was still 1/2 asleep but she was excited about her pink kitchen. All she asked Santa for was a pink kitchen and a yo-yo.....

Dave gave her some yo-yo lessons after breakfast and she caught on rather well. Her biggest challenge is her height at this age:) And she is tall for her age!

Kate also loved her Princess make-up kit from Aunt Dooney, her pink tea kettle from Mimi, apron from Ruby and Ainsley and kitchen stuff from fairy Godmother, Staci! Her pile was quite pink this year (see above).

Will opened his DS first. He had one but it was lost in our move a year and a half ago.

He was thrilled with movie tickets in his stocking to go see Avatar with Dad. They saw it last night and loved it.

Will is obsessed with bacon and found some bacon gumballs in his stocking. He also loved his nerf guns, pottery wheel and DS games.

Harry loved his nerf gun...

and his watercolor set.

Here he is thanking Dad for tickets for the two of them to a hockey game.

He also got several DS games that he has played with quite a bit. I force him to take breaks. My kids never ask for much for Christmas. Harry had two things on his list and I think Will had five on his. I can honestly say that we do not go overboard at Christmas and I am so glad.

Harry knows how much I love a foot massage. He saw this and bought it for me with his own money. Please excuse my first morning no make-up look. I was thrilled with his selecton!

Will made me a beautiful pink and green star sculpture star. I did not get a photo of it but will take one soon. I love it.

Every Christmas we have the same things for breakfast~a baked french toast casserole and an egg, cheese and sausage strata. I alter them to make them gluten free but they are a yummy favorite family tradition.

After breakfast, Dave painted Kate's nails with her new purple "sprinkly" (she means sparkly) nail polish. Is he the GREATEST or what?

Kate's yo-yo lesson. Dave is a very patient teacher.

In the afternoon, we headed over to Uncle Joe's and Aunt Wakita's house...

The kids wrestled with cousin Jamie.

Kate tried to Judo flip Harry. She has picked up quite a bit by watching the boys.

We hung out with cousin Olivia too. Olivia, Kate and I played a painfully long game of Princess Memory. Let's just say Kate is a little like Dory.

A few more presents were opened and

hugs were given.

We had a fabulously delicious dinner!

We were treated to a lovely after dinner concert.

And we posed for a few family photos.

We had a really wonderful Christmas. I am so glad this post is done. It exhausted me! I am quite impressed if you made it this far.

Christmas Decorations

I hope you all have been enjoying the week of Christmas! I have been very unproductive these past few days. We have been hanging out in front of the tree, eating, watching movies, etc... I guess I did clean out the playroom and Harry's room to make room for the new Christmas loot. But other than that, I have done a whole lot of nothing.

We are waiting for our gas fireplace logs to be delivered and installed (our anniversary present to one another) but they missed our appt. due to our road construction again! We have big plans for roasting marshmallows and hanging out in front of the fire this week. I have never really been a big fan of gas logs but it is not cold long enough nor frequently enough here to warrant building wood fires and cleaning them up, so we are going the gas route. This way, I can push a button on the remote and have a fire. If we get too hot, I will just push the button and turn it off. I hope we don't regret it. We have always had wood burning fireplaces.

I did promise that I would post some of our decorations so I put them in a slideshow. Here are some of our Christmas decorations.

I will do a Christmas Day post next (very soon) and then I am done with Christmas until next year!

Our Christmas Eve

If you have been reading 3 Peanuts for a while, you know that we have a lot of little family traditions around Christmas. Therefore, these posts tend to be even longer and more picture laden than the others. It is really important to me to have all of this documented for the kids.

Our friend, Jennifer sent us this great ornament of Santa in a Chinese Dragon.

Kate hung it on our tree.

We always go to Mass on Christmas Eve.

As soon as we are all dressed for Mass, I torture the family with the obligatory photos in front of the tree.....

Scout even joined in.

Brotherly love.

Then I torture them further by arriving at church an hour before Mass so that we can get a seat. These photos are at our church.

So, we have had a tradition for several years (as long as I can remember) that we have pizza on Christmas Eve. This began because it is hard to cook a big meal when you are at Mass from 3:30 until 6:00 (remember we go early to get a seat). Also, I have always cooked a big breakfast and dinner on Christmas Day. Our family LOVES pizza so it was easy and we all were happy. Even when we discovered that some of us were sensitive to gluten and dairy, we still had our pizza once a year. This year, we were informed that Harry should never eat dairy or gluten at all. So, we began a new tradition of going out for dinner after Mass. We chose Fleming's because they have a gluten free menu and they were open. The boys had Alaskan King Crab legs and I think they thoroughly enjoyed them.

Will and I did sneak out for lunch on the 23rd and had our yearly slice of good pizza though. I think we all missed our old tradition but we will eventually find a new one that works for us.

After dinner we drive around and look at Christmas lights.

Then we come home, out on our PJ's and continue our traditions...

We hang our stockings by the chimney with care....

Harry took this which is why I look tall:)

Then, the children open a gift. The boys always get a nutcracker. Usually, I get them one that represents their interests of that year (baseball, soccer, pirates, chef etc). This year, I bought the Charlie Brown and Snoopy because it is a big tradition for us to watch the Charlie Brown specials as a family for all of the holidays. I even posted about it once.

Kate gets an ornament (and a bracelet sometimes). This year, she got a ballerina since she did ballet and had her first recital.

Then we always read Twas the Night before Christmas and the story of Jesus' birth.

Kate had some snuggle time with Daddy.

Then she was off to bed. The boys and I watched the Heat/Cold Miser Christmas special and they monitored Santa's whereabouts on Norad. They loved doing that all day.

We are having some friends over for dinner tonight and enjoying having Dave home for the week! I will post Christmas Day soon.

I hope you all had a fabulous Christmas!