Happy Year of the Dragon!

One of my goals this year is to do more fun stuff with the boys.  I have a calendar that show just about every national day there is.  I saw Chinese New Year was coming so I decided to teach the boys a little about it. 

We made paper lanterns then found out what our birth year's animal was and colored pictures. 
Can you guess who is which animal?

 I showed the boys dragon and lion dances.  Then we made our own dragons (I guess it is really a lion) from egg cartons.  I was so impressed- after they made the dragons they put their lego figures in it like in the clips we watched.  Adam even added a drummer.

 Then for dinner we had egg rolls (my friend's authentic recipe) and fried rice.  For snack we had moon cakes.   After dinner the boys made dragon mouths and pretended they were doing the dances in front of stores trying to grab the lucky red envelopes containing money (it brings good luck to the store).

I think the boys may request doing this every year!

Best Idea Ever!!!

Occasionally I come up with a fun idea.  This one time I came up with a fantastically awesome idea that ended up being better than I thought.

I made a menu for a few months which means we have a lot of leftovers since I am actually cooking.  The boys HATE leftovers.  So I decided we would pretend we are at a restaurant for leftovers night.  I made menus and laminated them.  Whatever food we have in the fridge I made paper pictures and tape it to the menu.

I put a tablecloth on the table with napkins and decorations and candles.  Then we play music in the background and I take their order.  The boys LOVED it.  And I mean LOVE!  They asked if we could have leftovers every night!!

The best part of this dinner was most of the food they didn't even like when I first made it, but they were so excited to order it!  These pictures are from last month, but we just did it again tonight.  Earlier in the day I had mentioned we might have leftovers.  "Please mom can we do it?" they begged.  "Only if you guys are good today".  Anything for leftovers!  Whodda thought?

Last Day- DC trip

Sunday, New Years Day, was our last day with the May clan.  It was a gorgeous day, so Garett, Grandma, and I went for a walk.  Then all us "kids" went to play at the park.

I love it when Ryan kisses me

Think Titanic

Hello?

Please insert coin

Se habla espanol?

Cooking a hot dog

Neal, jump off the swing and I'll take your picture

An idea is forming

1, 2, 3, jump!

Wait for me!

That looks fun

Me too!

What's a girl to do with all these boys?

We had some yummy soup made by Grandma then started getting ready for our flight.  Ryan decided to lock the door to the room they were staying in because "there was someone trying to climb up to the window" and alas there was no way to unlock the door.  Daddy had to climb a latter in the rain (of course it started raining) and go through the window.  Ryan- "why is daddy climbing the latter?"  Uh, let me see here...
Luckily, he made it through the window fine, no more doors were locked and we headed for the airport.  It was sad to say goodbye, but it was a wonderful trip full of good times and great company. 

DC Trip for Chirstmas- New Years Eve

To help complete our trip in DC we went to the Great Falls Park at the Potomac River in Virginia.  The water was brown, but the rapids were pretty wild and neat looking.

Going on a wabbit hunt

Ohhh- Uncle Reid has a cell phone!!

Sqawk!

The next day was my birthday so went to... the beach of course!  It was the perfect day so we drove down to Maryland to Point Lookout State Park Beach.

Then we went to Red Robins for dinner.

Now I have 3 boogers

And then had cake and ice cream at Grandmas.  Thanks Grandma for a Wonderful Birthday!

For New Years Eve the boys decided to try and stay up.  They watched a movie while the adults played games and ate snacks.  Five minutes before New Year's Ryan decided he was just too tired to stay up and went to bed.  We coaxed him out, watched the ball drop on tv from NYC, and drank our sparkling cider.  Ryan wondered why we dragged him downstairs for this and went right back upstairs.
It was fun being able to celebrate the New Year with family!  We usually don't do anything for New Years and just go to bed early (because our kids don't sleep in). 

New York- Because 30 ROCKs! Day 2

One of the highlights of being on vacation without the kids is SLEEPING IN!!!  I can't tell you how wonderful it is to sleep in until 9:30am.  Ahhh- I think its been about 7 years since that was possible!  So with that said, we missed breakfast which was too bad because there was a little diner near our hotel that had wonderful HUGE breakfasts.  We walked by a pizza restaurant that smelled good so we went inside for brunch.  It was really yummy and again BIG portions.  Those New Yorkers don't mess around!

View from the hotel (in the fashion district)

We had to go to Rockefeller Center because 30 ROCK is one of my favorite shows and with me turning 30 it was perfect.  It was sooooo packed there, but fun.  We went to the Top of the Rock since we didn't get a chance at the Empire State Building.

We took the exciting subway to Central Park, walked around, and then went to the MET.

We were hungry and walked back to the fashion district (LOTS of walking on this trip! In fact I ended up having to buy tennis shoes since I left mine at home).  We walked into a restaurant and unfortunately ended up finding the worst restaurant I have ever been to in my life!  If you ever go to NYC do NOT go to Lindys!  The service was horrible, the food was horrible, and the price was super high.  We had been waiting a long time while waiting for a server to come to us and then for our food so we had plenty of time to watch the other people's problems around us- uncooked chicken, no one bringing the check- so we ordered simple food and payed in cash.  HORRIBLE restaurant!  When we got back to Penn Station to catch our train I had to get some yummy chocolate cake to get my unpalatable food taste out of my mouth.

We got home late and luckily Reid and Pierce were so excited for us to get home they were waiting for us at the station (for an hour).  The kids had a fabulous time with Grandma and the Uncles- not sure how exhausted Grandma and the Uncles were but we are so thankful they watched the kids for us so we could have a fun trip!!!