Oh Christmas Tree...

Another Christmas has come and gone. This year, Dylan was another year older, yet still didn't really understand the concept of Christmas. He wasn't really interested in unwrapping gifts, as much as opening the toy that was wrapped. He would say, "WoW" for everything, then want to open it. Being the mean mommy I am, we let him open very little. You might remember that I like to spread the gifts out as to let him be amazed with each new toy, instead of being overwhelmed with a ton in December. So now his playroom closet is chalk full of new toys to break out over the next 12 months!:)

This year was special because we got to spend Christmas with Aunt Laura. She got to spend some time with both of her nephews and get to know them. We also spent time with Aunt Erin, and Great Grandma Lou and Richard. Christmas eve was spent opening all the gifts at Adam's parents house, followed by going home to meet Aunt Erin who came for the night. We ate Indian Food and watched Forest Gump on TV. A new tradition? Christmas morning, both the boys slept in ( thank goodness they don't understand yet, no 5 Am wake up calls for us) Adam went to get Dylan and down stairs awaiting a Easel for him,from Aunt Erin, as well as a toolbox of tools from us. We don't buy him much, since he has grandparents who like to buy him lots of things. He will probably always get necessities from us, and the "fun stuff" from grandparents.
After gifts, an Ipad, jewelry, and massage gift card for me, underwear and float session for Adam( I really failed this year with gift giving), we headed on over to his parents again for a Christmas feast, stockings from Santa, and football. It was a couple of long days and nights for my kids, but I am happy to say, they both did so great. Dylan didn't have any tantrums, despite being up past 10 a couple of times. Graham, as long as he was fed, he was happy. As many people have commented. We are so very fortunate to have children that can adapt to any situation. If Dylan doesn't get a nap, well he doesn't get a nap. I'm sure most days he wishes he didn't have to nap. If Graham has to sleep in the car, well then he will. I hope that their easy going personalities continue on past toddler hood. Fingers Crossed.

Merry Christmas!

Totally Addicting

So who doesn't know about Pinterest? This website is the new "hot" thing. I'm not sure why, it's just posting things that people see online, you can pin, and others can as well. The sad thing about this website is that it is sooo addicting. Luckily for me, I've benefited from it.

I've made several recipes I've found, if I had more time to do them, I've found lots of cute crafts. I've found playrooms that I want to create for Dylan and Graham. The website really does have a lot of great things on it.

This is the first time I can remember I've ever given a teacher gift. I think this is a new trend, I don't ever remember giving my teachers gifts in school. But for this year, Dylan has two teachers. Both of which adore him, and tell me all the time they will take him off my hands. For Christmas I decided that instead of baking something for them, I wasn't sure they would eat, I would get them something useful. Gift cards to Barnes and Noble. But giving a gift card is kind of boring ya know? In comes Pinterest. They had this cute idea for make a snow globe with the card inside.

These were a hit with his teachers! I also made his class some M&M treats like I did for his birthday party. I think they all enjoyed them, and they were easy peasy.

Needless to say, I didn't need another website to suck me in like Facebook and Twitter have, but alas, Pinterest has done just that! Are you a member? I need more people to follow! Not a member? Comment and I'll send you an invite!:)

Beep Beep Beep Beep

Thanksgiving has come and gone. Seriously, where did November go? I'm kind of sad at how fast our lives are going these days. I guess that is what having kids does to you. Thanksgiving was pretty low key this year. No traveling, unless you count a trip to Adam's parents house. They got lots of visitors though. Adam's Grandma and her husband, his aunt and uncle, and a cousin and her boyfriend.


The weekend started off with a beep on Wednesday night. Adam and I were waiting for his sister and cousin, Erica, to arrive at our house. It was probably 9:30 or so ( way past my bedtime) when we hear Dylan's carbon monoxide detector going off. Right. By. his. head. That thing is really freaking loud and I'm not kidding you when I say it was about 4 inches from his ear. Amazingly, he slept right through it. So we were kind of freaked out, Adam took Dylan out of his room until we could assess the situation. I on the other hand was like, oh it's probably just a battery going dead, the thing is 2 years old. I know I know, we are bad about changing batteries. So once we figure out that the beep that was going on was a dead battery beep and not the " four quick beeps with a 5 second pause" we felt we could sleep better.

Erica and Laura get to our house and we tell them about it, then we hear four beeps. all of us get kinda of freaked, we considered calling the fire department just to be safe, but we didn't. It wasn't a continuous beep like the instructions said it would be. We were fine. We changed the battery and plugged it back in, all was good. We all chatted for an hour or so, mean while the damn detector would beep randomly freaking us all out. I think we stayed up so late because we were afraid to go to sleep. We joked about leaving a note that it was beeping, just in case! Morbid I know.

Finally, we were all upstairs and the thing beeped four times again. But it wasn't as loud as I thought that it should have been. I had the idea to go and rewind the TV to see if that beep had been on there. Sure as shit, it was. It was Top Chef the whole time. They were being timed on a challenge and the timer would go off, beeping four times. So every time the carbon monoxide beeped, it was just the stupid TV. Other than the first time of course, that luckily didn't damage our child's hearing.

That is the long story sorry. The rest of Thanksgiving was great. WE went to Adam's parents house for turkey, stayed and watched too much football. Friday all the "kids" went to the Stars game. It was fun. We pimped the Mini of course. I knew it would come in handy!:)

Oh Santa...

Even with Dylan's terrible reaction to him, we were all 110% spoiled by Santa this year. We were lucky enough to have three Christmas'. One with my sister and Michelle on Christmas Eve, Christmas with Adam's family, then when more family arrived, Christmas the day after Christmas with Adam's extended family. It was lots of gift opening, and Dylan I don't think opened one thing. He slept, or played with the things that we opened.

Christmas Eve at Erin's kicked off the festivities. We ate homemade manicotti, which was so good, we ate it for three more meals after that, Salad, garlic bread, and finished it off with a homemade Italian cream cake, made by yours truly. Dylan was gifted with MUCH needed bath toys, and building blocks that he has yet to figure out, in due time I'm sure. He was in such a good mood for the whole trip, we also found out he would drink out of a sippy cup if we laced his water with about a table spoon of juice. Who knew!

Christmas day started with Adam and I opening our gifts from each other, along with the few small things for Dylan, which I'll be honest, I didn't even wrap because I knew I would have to turn around and open them all, so I just saved myself the trouble! My big gift from Adam is a "Face Machine" as he calls it. It's a Clarisonic. I'll do a review of it in the future. Don't worry. Dylan went down for his nap, and we headed over to Grandma and Grandpa's for what was sure to be a overload of gifts! We ate a turkey dinner, which Dylan was having none of, he would only eat crackers, finished up with pie, then got to work on this.


I will be honest and say, there were so many gifts we didn't even finish, we left some for the next day. Spoiled we are. That's all I can say. Between gift cards galore and toys for Dylan, we got everything we asked for an so much more. We are so lucky to have a great family that loves us and their first grand kid so much. I can only imagine how much worse it would have been if my mom had been here also. Man, I would be tripping over Dylan's stuff forever.

The next day we went back to Adam's parents, because another aunt, Uncle and cousin came into town, as well as Grandma and her hubby. We feasted on a brisket meal, then followed up with the opening of more presents. I'm telling you, Dylan doesn't even know what was happening. He loved playing with the paper and the things that came from the paper! After loading up the car with all of our goods, we headed home to figure out what in the world we were going to do with all of this stuff!


Dylan and I got a gift certificate to Gymboree that we are pretty excited about. We got gift cards for food, clothes, shoes everything. Dylan got so many awesome toys, that I plan to " time release". He will get ONE new toy every month. I am pretty sure I won't ever have to buy him any more until his birthday. Though I do have a gift card for toys r us!

I will have to say, even without Mom, and this being the first holiday season without her, I had an amazing holiday. I was able to spend it with family. Could I have asked for anything more?

Hello 2009, Good-Bye 2008

While, 2008 was a GREAT year, I can tell that 2009 is going to be the best yet, even though it hasn't started out too great for Adam and I. ( We've both been sick with the stomach flu). 2009 wow, I remember when I thought that 2003 would never make it! We rang in the new year in Connecticut, at The Mohegan Sun Casino. Couldn't have been more perfect for Adam right? The day started out in Vermont, where we woke up to what many, even in the northeast would call a blizzard. To bad it didn't happen earlier, we probably wouldn't have a broken bone in the family! Once we woke up, because the snow was coming down so fast, we rushed to get out of there, seeing we were staying on the top of a mountain, and had to get down! Just to let you know, there was probably only about 2 inches of snow the night before. The snow was coming down so fast, that by the time Pete wiped the windshield and moved to the other side, the previous was covered again! It was crazy, and like I said, a few days late. We finally made it down the mountain and we were on our way to Connecticut. I just loved the bright yellow sign in this picture!!!

We finally made it to the hotel just in time to shower, and change for dinner. We were eating at a restaurant in the Casino called Tuscany, a Todd English restaurant. It was really good food, and of course FAR to much of it! So after dinner, the parents went to a concert, and us kids hit the tables. For once, Blackjack was kind to Adam and me. We won about $120! After we gave Adam's mom her investment of 100 back! We were a great investment for her! The casino was beautiful, though very different from any in Vegas, or even AC.

Nothing much happened that night, we ate, drank and gambled, is there a better end to a year? The next day we spent at Pete's side of the families house, with good food and more wine. I consumed so much wine over that break, I think I should lay off for a while! So finally, on Friday Jan 2, we made our way home to bail our dogs out of jail, and man were they happy!

Husband, Family and pets, does it get any better?

Do you think he was sharing or stealing?

I know that I said I probably wouldn't post until I got back from skiing, but we had such a FANTASTIC Christmas I felt the need to post. I guess you could say that Christmas in the Fenner home started last night, well evening really. We had a fantastic meal, complete with turkey, stuffing, rolls and all the sides you could think of. Following that, we headed off to church. ON our way out we hear the Catholic church playing Christmas carols from their loud speaker, it really just set the mood! After church we came home to pumpkin cheesecake and presents.:) Who wouldn't like that, come on now!

What was left of the cheesecake on the plate!
Between, both sides of parents and Adam's sister, we made out like bandits, we got EVERYTHING on our list. We couldn't be thankful enough. We really do have so many people in our lives that love us. But I would have to say that MY most exciting gift, is my new CAMERA. I got a Canon Rebel XS. It is pure bliss. I had a Canon Rebel 35 MM back in high school, where I took three years of Photography, so I'm REALLY looking forward to playing with my camera and learning it again. The poor dogs have had their picture taken so many times since last night, they probably want to eat the thing. We got so much more, we got a stick blender, that has all these cool attachments, Gift cards galore, I got a heart rate monitor, to make my workouts more productive, A subscription to Food& Wine, because Adam and I DEFIANTLY need more recipes and wines to try;)

Well we left some of the gifts to open this morning, following the family tradition of Creamed turkey and eggs which was delightful of course. To days big gift was for Adam ( and me of course) and it is an HD canon video camera. We had been wanting one since last year, and this was the year. It's pretty cool, because it's HD so when we play it on our TV, it will be just as clear. With that came a Tripod, and a disk maker thing. I'm not sure what it does, but Adam does. It makes it where we can Easily make CDS of the videos, and I can even make slide shows of my pictures and put them on the disk. Haha, Adam's comment was " Oh yea, we get to become those people that make people watch their slide shows." We're getting so old. I guess being together for almost 8 years will do that to you. We had MANY years of pictures we can put into slide shows, it's going to be cool. So I'm going to go and eat my turkey pot pie now, but I'll leave you with some of my pictures. Keep in mind, I was just playing with all of the settings on the camera!:) Have a good rest of Christmas:) And have a HAPPY NEW YEAR

They love each other!




Louie, " getting some love"

Merry Christmas Eve!!!

To everyone!

Adam's parents made the long trip from Dallas yesterday where we picked them up from the airport! Last night we went to the tapas restaurant that Adam and I had gone to called Distrito! We all got the tasting menu, which was amazing. The waiter really sold us because he said they were going to be closed for the next few days so the chef was going to be giving a lot of food in the tasting, so we did it! Man, he was not kidding, for 4 people, we got 14, that's right 14 different tapas plates. Yes, they are small but 14 kinda adds up on you. That along with a pitcher of Margaritas, it was a fantastic night!

Today, is cooking day. We decided that we would cook Christmas dinner today, since we'll be leaving on the 26Th to head up to Vermont for our skiing trip! So we didn't want the left overs to go bad since we'll be gone a week! So tomorrow for Christmas morning we'll be doing the Fenner family tradition of creamed turkey and eggs ( I know it sounds gross, and the first time I ate it I was a little unsure, but it's pretty tasty!) Then we'll be making Turkey Pot Pies! That should probably do the turkey in, and any sides we have left over!

Tonight we're going to the 10PM service at church. I hope that it stops raining, and warms up about 25 Degrees, but I don't think that will happen! Oh well!

So since I'll be in Vermont, I probably won't update until we get back around the 2and, so I hope that everyone has a GREAT Christmas, and a Happy New Year!!!
I leave you with a picture of the dogs, sunbathing, in the sun room the other day!

Better late than never!

So I ( Adam) finally took the pictures off my camera. So here are a few from the first snow, and Thanksgiving. In no particular order!


This is at like 6 AM, and it's just starting to fall!


When I got home from work, this is the bench in our yard!!! Not a whole lot but it was still there!:)



And some Thanksgiving ones!

Adam preparing the Sweet Potatoes!!



Our table. I can't wait to have a dining room table!! Though I did enjoy using our China for the third time!!



And our turkey! It was SOOO BROWN, Adam did a GREAT job! Yummy!


I will not bore you with all the other food pictures that I have of our home made Thanksgiving, but it was probably the best one yet, every year we get a little better with making food.


The boys were going at it. We did a buffet style in the sun room on the table out there. We didn't have enough room for everything in the kitchen!

I'll leave you with this picture. You see how much my husband loves our dog, and how much our dog love him? It's sick really! But I love them both!:)

Merry Christmas to us!

Adam and I decided that we would buy a mutual Christmas gift, then have a set amount to other gifts. So after thinking long and hard about it, we decided we wanted a home theater system! We watch TV, it's what we do. We have two DVR's for our tv down stairs and one for our upstairs, becuase we wanted to watch more than we were able to record!!! We have a netflix subscription which we also watch regularly. So we bought ourselves a home theater system today! It's a Samsung system that has a Blu-ray player. We are sooo excited, netflix has blu-ray disks for $1 extra a month. Can it get any better than that?
Alright, so I have to admit, that our buying this was a little selfish, becuase it's really thrown the dogs and cat for a loop. When we were testing the speakers, Bailey just about freaked out. Which should have been expected since she is so afraid of thunder, it's kinda the same thing. Siren also didn't like the noise, but she is more disturbed becuase there is a speak on top of what used to be her spot, the cable box! So even though we feel sorry for our "Kids", they will get used to it. We love it to much to take back!:)

Thanksgiving was a blast. Almost everything we made was homemade, from homemade dinner rolls, to cheesecake. Everyone had a great time and the food was great. I'll post pictures whenever I get a chance!! Hope everyone had a great break from school, and had some quality time with family!!!

It's so close!

Thanksgiving, it's right around the corner, which is a good thing. I'm tired of going to the store!:) I feel like that's the only place that I've been in the last week! Though Friday night, Adam and I had a date night. We went to this resturant called Distrito, it's a tapas place right by campus. The chef was actually on Iron Chef America against Bobby Flay, and he WON! Though I have not seen this challenge which kinda suprises me, we didn't even know he was on the show until after we got our reservations. But the food was amazing. After that we headed over to see new new Bond movie. Only knowing that we HAD to see Twilight this coming weekend. But it was a lot of fun:) Sunday night we went over to a friends for a Thanksgiving Dinner. A guy in Adam's class and his wife hosted it, and it was GREAT. I was excited becuase I wanted a Turkey dinner, but I knew I had to wait until Thursday, lucky for me we had one early.

I think I finally have EVERYTHING we need for Turkey Day! Laura will be here tomorrow night, and Eli, a friend from school ( Actually went to A&M also) will be coming to join us in a day of eating and football. Hopefully, I can stay awake for football, that might be asking to much though!!

Oh yes, and my Christmas cards arrived yesterday, now I have to look into who is going to be lucky enough to get one;) Just kidding, I already knew who does!

Have a Happy Thanksgiving everyone!:)

I need a cookie jar...

Last year at work, we did a gift exchange and my gift was a snowman cookie jar, filled with homemade sugar cookies:) ( it was passed around as many times as the game allowed, though I think it was just for the cookies) Anyway, as I was making snicker doodles last night, to offset my calorie expenditure from my boot camp class, I was thinking how I to needed a Christmas cookie jar! Something like this but BETTER!

I also realized last night, that Thanksgiving is TWO weeks from today, and I haven't really even begun to think about what all I'm going to be cooking! Laura is coming in from NYC to spend the weekend with us, so between the three of us, we'll have WAY to much food for just three people! Oh well, more leftovers for the football games!

Not a whole lot going on with us, Adam is getting closer and closer to finals, which means I'm seeing less and less of him. I guess that comes hand and hand with going to am Ivy League school, to get your Masters Degree! I can't wait until he is done!