Happy New Year!

What a wonderful evening we had to ring in the new year! Darvin, Lindsey, Thomas, Briana, Ivan, Alex, Emmett and I welcomed the new year by inviting our friends Wendy, Aaron, Mason and Evan Middleton over for a party. We enjoyed chatting with each other, eating tons of yummy food and also played some fun games including 'Scum' and 'Would You Rather?'. Alex and Mason met for the first time last Sunday, but I was pretty sure they'd be fast friends as they are both OBSESSED with monster trucks. And...well...pretty much they were both in heaven! I think we'll be having some pretty regular play dates between those two boys! Funny thing is Mason is a couple of months older than Alex and Emmett is a couple of months older than Evan. So it will be really fun to see all four of them play together in the future.

We celebrated the gift part of Christmas this past Friday as we wanted to wait to open presents until Thomas would be able to attend. We got a tremendous Christmas present on our 'Christmas' day. Ivan had a job interview at Bob Hall's auto dealership and learned that they want to hire him.


They'll be doing the background check on Monday, so he should know for sure if he got the job on Tuesday! Way to ring in the new year with a new job Ivan!! And HOORAY for a job in Yakima where we'll be able to continue to love on our little Pascual brothers!!

We got a White Pass Ski area gift card for Ivan for Christmas, so he and Thomas will be snowboarding at White Pass on Monday. Darvin warned Ivan not to break anything before he starts the job at Bob Hall's! lol I got a really nice Chi hair straightener from Ashley and a cool GPS from Darvin (it has lifetime free updates on it!) The Sesame Street jammies were an 'after Christmas sale' purchase made just for Alex's pleasure. And pleasure it was, he was enthralled with Nana's Elmo, Cookie Monster, Oscar, etc jammies. Yeah, I might just be the coolest grandma around!

It was a wonderful Christmas! As I mentioned we didn't open gifts until this past Friday, so on Christmas day we went to church and then had a family day the rest of the day with food and games. It was nice to have a more relaxed day on Christmas day to allow more time to celebrate the birth of the Savior as opposed to getting caught up in opening presents. Of course it was still fun to have the gift giving this past Friday. Between their parents and their grandparents the Pascual brothers made a big haul! It's really hard NOT to spoil the grandkids when they live with you! Alex got a bit overwhelmed with the present opening a few times, so he had to take a bit of a break for a little while. But overall it was a lot of fun.
Sweet little Emmett was quite content to either a) play with the bows from the gifts or b) play with Alex's 'discarded' new toys. So cute! And Emmett is becoming a bit of a monster truck lover himself. He's starting to 'play' with them.

Grandma and Grandpa Clement came over. They didn't make it for Thanksgiving dinner, but they never miss Christmas. They seemed to really enjoy themselves and didn't seem to want to go home.

A family Christmas tradition we have is to play the gift exchange game. We each get a gift that cost $10 or less and wrap it. We draw numbers and the person with number 1 gets to pick a gift first and open it. The person with number 2 either steals from player 1 or picks another gift and unwraps it. We continue in order of number.

A gift can be stolen twice and is considered unstealable on the 2nd steal. If your gift is stolen you can either steal from another person, or get another gift and unwrap it. This is one of the highlights of our Christmas each year. We can get pretty creative with what we are able to purchase for $10!


I fixed a pretty traditional Christmas dinner this year, although I kept it simple with ham, 'funeral' potatoes, brown sugar carrots, a veggie tray and fruit salad. For dessert I'd made M&M cream cheese brownies. They are pretty darn yummy. I also had made oreo truffles, peanut butter balls and cherry, raspberry, rhubarb truffles. If anyone went home hungry it certainly wasn't MY fault! lol

Emmett will be 8 months old on January 4th. It's so hard to believe! But you can sure tell that he's growing up. He's very 'interactive' these days. He doesn't like to be left alone when he's awake. He wants to be in the room where the 'action' is! He likes to hold his own spoon when it's time to eat, so you have to give him one to hold while using another one to feed him. Emmett doesn't crawl yet, but he doesn't really need to as he's perfected the art of rolling where ever he wants to go! He IS getting up on his hands and knees now and rocking back and forth, so he may take off any day now! He FINALLY cut his second tooth. Poor little man has been pretty doggone miserable for the last little while trying to work that tooth through his gum.

It's going to be a fun January. Two weeks from yesterday we'll be attending 'Monster Jam' at the Tacoma Dome with the Pascual's. The Middleton's have tickets as well, so hopefully we'll be able to hook up with them at least for the Pit Party. I can't wait to see the expressions on the boys faces as they get to meet the drivers and get up close and personal with their favorite monster trucks! Then the following weekend we'll celebrate Darvin's birthday by heading back to the western side of the state to attend a couples massage workshop. I purchased a groupon for the workshop and gave it to Darvin for our anniversary. We're attending the workshop the day after his birthday. Do you think I can get 'credit' for it as an anniversary AND birthday present?? Darvin's back problems continue so hopefully I'll be able to learn some good techniques to help alleviate his pain! We plan on meeting up with Mike Park for lunch or dinner while we're over there. I sure hope it works out as we haven't seen him in ages and really miss him. Mike sent us a game (Dominion) for Christmas. We've thoroughly enjoyed playing it over and over and hope he'll come visit us on this side of the state so we can play it with him too!

Actually I have a couple of pretty awesome birthday presents for Darvin's birthday. He tends to order his own present for his birthday. This year is his 50th and I told him NOT to order his own as I already had a present for him. He was pretty cute about it, he said, "You DO realize it's my 50TH birthday?" with the tone of "that's a BIG deal"! Of COURSE I do honey! I think you'll be pleased with my gifts!! OOOOooo, the suspense is killing me! And hmmmm, I wonder if he's been thinking about what to get ME for my 50th birthday, it IS a big deal after all!!! ;^)

Our church time has changed from 9 a.m. on Sundays to 1 p.m. Hip hip hooray!! I'm still not a morning person, even after 4 years of Seminary. It'll be so good to be able to sleep in on Sundays!