So much happens in a year!

Happy New Year to EVERYONE! Looking back on 2006, I really can't believe how much has happened and how much we've done.
January brought on Steve's 27th birthday and my dreaded surgery. What was supposed to be day surgery ended up being 8 weeks of HELL.
February brought on wedding plans while still recovering from the 8 weeks of hell
March brought us our beautiful wedding day! Still can't believe we're married!
April... hmmmmm Happy Easter?
May brought me my 27th birthday and a new kitten.
June brought us summer weather and kids got out of school!
July brought me day after day after day of HOT grueling rehearsals for the musical The Fantasticks.
August brought even hotter weather and my performance of the Fantasticks. My dad stayed with us for a week (?) which was nice too. August was also our much planned and enjoyed Family Vacation! SO MUCH FUN! WOOOO!
September brought the relief of having a routine. Kids back to school and normal bedtimes for everyone.
October brought us a super fun Halloween!
November brought Makenna's FOURTH birthday! It also brought on days and nights of rehearsals for the play Bed and Breakfast that I was in. As well as the beginning of Music Man rehearsals.
December brought Mayanne and JP's 9th and 6th birthdays and a really great family Christmas! Haaaappppyyyyyy New Year!

JP's new room

JP has patiently waited for his new room birthday present. It's 18 days late, but done! And darn it all anyway, I forgot to take a before picture!!! I'm so mad at myself for forgetting that. It's not as dramatic or as impressive of a change as what the girls had, but we're happy with the results.

I asked JP what he thought, and he said it's the best room in the whole house! His opinion is the only one that matters really. He's got sooooo much stuff! We had a really hard time organizing it all. Poor thing has the smallest room in the house.

Wow, Christmas Mania!

Christmas was so much fun this year. The kids were super spoiled of course. I had not intended on spoiling them at all, but somehow everytime I went to the store I saw something that one of them would love. My dad and farmor (gramma) came to visit us this Christmas, which made everything even more special. Anyway, here are some pics of our great day!

Sushi anyone?

I try to make something somewhat original for every party we have at the office. So this year for christmas I made candy sushi! It's so cute, easy to make and tastes good too!
For halloween I made kitty litter cake. I thought the girls at the office would get a kick out of it considering we have 2 insurance kitties at work.

Inga (named after ING Insurance) and Aviva (named after Aviva Elite Insurance).

If anyone else wants to make candy sushi just go to the food network website and type in candy sushi in the search area. It's so easy and makes an interesting party snack!

Mayanne is growing up

I was near tears this evening as I dropped Mayanne off at her very 1st dance.
She says to me before we got there at 7:30, "Mom can you please stay with me till 8 or 8:30?" She was really nervous and worried about the whole event, but wanted to give it a try with mama by her side. So of course I agreed to stay. WELL... we got there, she saw her friends, they came running, she dropped my hand, and she yelled "BYE MOM!"

So that was that. Now that she's 9 years old, she's too big for mom. I had such a weird pit in my stomach as I left the gym. My eyes were welling up as I approached my van. I remember clear as day being 9 years old. What has happened to time? Wasn't I just nine? I remember beginning to mature at that age. Talking to my friends about all of the somewhat unknown. That was the beginning of "I know everything, you can't tell me otherwise".
Next thing you know there will be the drama of boyfriends, 1st kisses, who-likes-who, hormones, arguments with friends being the end of the world, I-dare-you, spin the bottle, babysitting jobs, going for walks with friends alone, and more dances!
I just can't believe Mayanne is growing up so fast.

Could this really be my basement?

My basement has officially been totally torn apart pretty much. There are no more floors and the bottoms of the walls have all been removed. It's weird. I went from a completely finished basement to well... a disaster area. My laundry is piled to the sky again. Our washer and dryer have been disconnected while the men are working down there. Off to the laundry mat I go! Makenna has been wearing pajama pants for the past few days because she's got no more clean pants. She looks like an orphan. I hope to at least have the washer and dryer hooked up soon. But the restoration company says they have to clean out my appliances because they've got poo water in them too. Anyway, here are my last few pics before they start making things like new.

POO IN MY BASEMENT AGAIN!

And so the cleanup starts again. On Monday night our basement flooded with poo water AGAIN. This time instead of starting to clean it up ourselves, we got out the camera, called the city, called a restoration company and our insurance company. The City guys were on the scene within 10 minutes of calling them. I was quite happy with that considering it was 9:00pm. Turns out the sewer line on the street outside our house was super plugged. They fixed that and within minutes the poo water started draining through the drain in our basement floor. I guess I was wrong about it being our ancient toilet the last time. It was the sewers all along.

The restoration guys sucked out the remaining of the water and sprayed some kind of sticky antibacterial stuff all over the place. Because this is the 2nd time in just a week that this has happenend, the lino downstairs started peeling up. I had no idea how toxic this water is. I was not supposed to clean up the stuff the 1st time, apparantely everything this water touches is considered garbage. So, the past few days, i've been taking inventory as things go into the garbage.

This is a huge loss to us. However, on the bright side... Steve gets the ultimate christmas/birthday present of new flooring downstairs! The walls also have to be restored. This I'm a little sad about because we took so much time in painting every single wall down there when we moved in. I was very proud of my laundry room paint job.
Anyway, this will probably end up being a 2 month ordeal. We won't have our house to ourselves for quite sometime.