Happy New Year!

We are about to crash and hit the hay before the clock strike's midnight but I wanted to share pics from tonight's great dinner with Cheryl and her daughter Olivia. We ate AWESOME sushi and now are home in our jammies ready to say goodnight to 2008.

2009...here we come!

Friends

Cooper had a great visit last night with the Radlien family. He loved the attention from all the kids, especially Jenna! Justin is 15 and going to get his learners permit this year, I can't believe they are getting so big. I told Jenna I was her age when I met her mommy and she said "that was a LONG time ago Ann-Marie!" Yeah...thanks...I know!

Here's a little video of Cooper dancing with some new Christmas toys. I love having all this time off work to visit, take pics and blog! This is the life :)

Also...more pics from our day at the beach this week.

Can't wait to celebrate New Years Eve tonight! Cooper in bed by 8:30pm, Rob and I on the couch catching up on TV shows we've missed and eating snacks all night until we fall asleep before midnight. There is no where else in the world I'd rather be ;)

Sea World!

We had a great day with Meredith, Danny and Brody at Sea World! We love our new yearly passes Grammie!

Sausage Bread Recipe

I have promised you all the recipe for my family's sausage bread and with New Years right around the corner...there's still time for some holiday bread making!

I have no idea why we eat this at Christmas/New Years but...here you go. (PS- I have no real recipe but I am sure you can follow along- also, obviously you can vary what you put in it and just make pepperoni bread or sausage bread, or whatever you like)

First piece of advice: feed your "supervisor" cheerios and keep him busy so he lets you bake!

Buy ready made bread, let it rise per the directions. With this Bridgeford Bread, it has 3 pre-cut loafs and I separate that again to get 6 loafs of bread.

Cook Italian mild or sweet sausage. (1 package either of the big links and cut up or if you can find the package of the ground sausage that works too)

Cut up pepperoni in to small pieces to add into the bread.

Roll out dough and combine with cheddar cheese. Pack it up good but no so good the dough rips.

Wrap it up and tuck in the edges!

Cover with egg wash and sprinkle with poppy seeds. Bake on greased sheet (anything you can find as you can see below!) for around 1/2 hour or until brown.

Cut in slices, serve and enjoy! (I just ripped into this one and ate it but...you can get all fancy too you know!)

Footprints

(click photo to enlarge)

Christmas Pictures

Merry Christmas!

More pics to follow...but really quickly...we had a great day! Cooper LOVED all his gifts and visiting with his Nana and Papa. We all ate and drank so much we are overstuffed! Cooper was amazed by the presents and loved the Live Elmo and his new cottage the best.

Hope ended up back in the hospital (no nurses could come out to the house, since it was a holiday, to help with the overnight swelling that occured and she had to go back to the the hospice care center in the hospital to get the drugs needed) and I ran up there for a few hours. She had a good day today with all her family around her...it was a Christmas blessing in deed.

The gift of friends and family was more than enough for me today. I feel so very blessed and know that God's greatest gift is that of love....and I thank you my family and friends for that gift all year long!

Oh Holy Night

Christmas Eve is always my favorite night of the Christmas celebration. We attended the children's mass, ate a ton of sausage bread (recipe coming up folks!) and Cooper put his first set of milk and cookies out for Santa!

Christmas is coming....

Cooper's first big Christmas present came this weekend! Thanks family for the great gift! He loves it, it's in the porch now but will making it's way outside very soon :)

This weekend flew by so fast. I made yummy Christmas sausage bread, bought all my goodies for my chocolate candies and all the food for this week. Cooper also went with me today to Hope and Jake's and while I was with Hope, he got to play with Nathan and Reese all day. The boys had a ball!

Christmas Pictures

This year I took Cooper to get professional shots for our Christmas cards (in the mail tomorrow those of you wondering!) and here are some of the pictures from the photo shoot.

Getting ready for Uncle Bobby's visit

Cooper has been saying "Bob" all morning...looks like he is getting ready for his New Years visit from his Uncle Bobby in Texas! He does say Papa and Pop Pop but today he was "all about Bob".


Since this video above is dark..here's another one where you can see him this morning.

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

A day in the life of Cooper....

Get pumped up for football watching with Daddy.

Supervise Mommy and Daddy decorating the outside of the house and play with the neighborhood cat.

Hide from Mommy and Daddy.

Decorate the tree.