Blizzard!

Here's a picture of Nick shoveling snow in our driveway, on December 27th. On the 26th, the snow started around 10 a.m. and was still going early the next morning. It was a good day to just stay inside!

We had an average on Long Island of about 20 inches, but the drifts were as high as five feet! All you could hear all night was the wind howling.

Our backyard animals are our little friends, and Mike was nice enough not only to shovel a little area on the deck for them, he also bought two big bags of seeds! There were five male cardinals and 3 females out there this morning. There's nothing prettier in winter than a red cardinal on white snow. Of course, we also had blue jays and woodpeckers, wrens and more of the usual suspects. Poor things were probably starving as there was no way they could get out for food yesterday.

Haven't seen our skwerlies yet, but I'm sure they will show up.

Right now the sky is blue, but the temp is 29 and there is a still a winter weather advisory. And I'm off from work tonight, woo-hoo!

Christmas Day

Noreen and John served some great food--Prime ribs, baked ziti, twice-baked potatoes, vegetables and more!

Katherine and Erick check out their 'stocking' goodies. Actually, I couldn't find the stockings, so they got a gift bag.

John Joseph enjoys his new toys. We gave him a dinosaur, some "Cars" toys and a gift card to Toys R Us.



John and Noreen (mostly John) are 'babysitting' a friend's St. Bernard. Bruno is a big ball of mush weighing about 200 pounds. His head is about as big as my dog's whole body.

A blizzard was expected for the 26th. John and Katherine are tracking it on John's cell phone.

Nicky enjoys good food and amusing conversation.

Mike and Noreen's brother Mike listen to talk about the upcoming storm.

All in all, this was a very Merry Christmas for the P family!

Christmas Eve Party

Our Christmas Eve Party was a success, as usual. I always worry, and everyone always has a good time. They enjoyed my appetizers (including cranberry meatballs and stuffed mushrooms) and Mike's scungilli and sauce was a huge hit!

That's Michael playing Rock Band with Sabrina, who is the daughter of our friend Theresa's boyfriend (on the phone behind Michael).

Erick, future son-in-law, is sitting with his dad (visiting from Puerto Rico) on the couch.



Here is Katherine with Angelina, who is enjoying the soda-pop flavored lip gloss I bought for her. I had several gifts for each of the kids.

Our guests were: the four kids and Erick and Erick's dad. I met some neighbors through my job and invited them: Carol, her husband rob and their two kids, Alex and Sarah. Then there were the Gannottis, who always come: Theresa and her daughter Angelina and Christina and her little girl, Julianna. Theresa's boyfriend, Edwin and his daughter Sabrina came. Mike had a friend from the spa visit, Jimmy.

I probably forgot somebody, but all in all we had a great time!

Tree Decorating

The kids came over last night to decorate the tree. We had a nice dinner of baked ham, salad and challah bread, with homemade cookies and eggnog for dessert. After dinner, and before decorating the tree, the kids had a 'conference' in Jamie's room and told Mike and me to stay out. Discussing Christmas gifts, I suppose.

Nicky surprised me because he has gone out and bought gifts for everyone this year. It is the first year he actually has money in the bank. The kids don't usually exchange gifts so I hope Nick will start a nice tradition between them.

The kids did an amazing job with the tree. I probably hung one ornament myself. I told Mike it is nice to have adult children who know what they are doing, LOL!

Got my Christmas outfit

Well, the blouse for it. I am almost finished making a blue and silver brocade vest and I needed a white blouse to wear under it. I found one on sale at Macy's. I also found a nice casual top that looks like a sweater over a shirt and a really pretty pink blazer. Plus a Totes umbrella for a gift. All these cost me about $45--the receipt says I saved over $90. And it didn't really cost me anything. Mike has a client that gives him a $100 Macy's gift card every year so I used that, plus a 20% off coupon. And everything I bought was already on sale. I should shop at Macy's more often. There are some great deals there.

Finally have Katherine's birthday gift to give to her. She will stop by tonight for it. She knows what it is--an iPod. It's a pink one. I love mine. I use it when I exercise. Speaking of that, I burned over 100 calories with the Wii yesterday. Bad allergy/cold/whatever day today--I didn't do anything. But I'm still exercising a hell of a lot more than I did, so that has to help.

Meals together

It is rare we get all four kids here (not to mention the future son-in-law) for dinner. Well, me missed Erick yesterday but, wonder of wonders, Michael, Katherine, James and Nick were all here for Mike's sauce. Which, of course, came out great.

Michael had fun trying out my Wii Fit. He beat a lot of my scores so the bar has been set higher for me. Frankly, I'm more interested in calorie-burning than scores. Although it would be nice to rank higher than 'amateur.'

Today I did a few balance games and aerobics and burned 54 calories. So far I have lost over 2 pounds!

No matter what else I do in a day, if I get in exercise it is a productive one.

Tree Day

Mike, James and I went to get the tree yesterday. It's been unusually cold for early December (it's 22 degrees this morning) and Mike had the smart idea to get the tree during the day. We usually go at night, but it was so much nicer in the sunlight, which offered a little bit of warmth at least. Can you believe we picked the perfect tree on the third one? No gaps, perfect height. We don't usually get that lucky because we tend to wait too long. Mike said he saw a big truck unloading trees at Home Depot the night before, so we had some good pickin's. When I was on line, I saw a woman staring at our tree. I think she was jealous, LOL!

Nicky was at work again. I told Mike I needed to get him, and me, into a picture or people would think only Mike and James were celebrating Christmas. Mike said Jamie could take a picture of me taking the tree back down from the car...ha, ha, ha. I've been good about using my Wii Fit but I'm not THAT strong yet.

The other cool thing is that Grandma McNally's box came in the mail. I will call her today to let her know. We started a tradition a long time ago to open Grandma's gifts when we decorate the tree. It was a way to make the gifts stand out from all the others. Of course, nowadays they don't get a bazillion gifts, but that's mostly because buying gifts for adult kids is a pain in the dupa. It's hard when they can afford to buy most anything they want for themselves. There's little element of surprise.