Speaking of Ten.

1. Snow. Snow. Snow. That is our life these days. We have between 3-4 feet of snow at our house, and there is more in the forecast. It is totally crazy. I don't think I have ever seen anything quite like it. The snow is piled up so high, we just have a narrow passage way in our driveway. We barely have room to get out of our car and walk around it. The snow banks are so high in our backyard that Boden keeps sneaking out and into our neighbor's yard. He can just jump right over there fence. It is seriously unbelievable!

2. Speaking of unbelievable....Jonathan and I bought each other the same Christmas present this year. It was a set of wireless speakers that we can use with our Ipod, our projector to watch movies, our TV, etc. etc. etc. I opened mine first and just chuckled, and then I let him open his so he could chuckle! It was pretty funny.

3. Speaking of chuckling and being funny....Holland was so incredibly funny this year about the presents she bought for everyone. She gets to go to a little store called "santa express", and shop with an elf for anyone on her list (No parents allowed). We get to tell the elves how much money she can spend, and they make sure she stays within budget. Everything is priced from .50 cents to $7.50. Anyway, she begged us all to open her gifts on Christmas Eve for our "open-one-gift-on-Christmas Eve-family-tradition", and she could hardly contain herself. She was dancing around the living room saying, "you're gonna love it",{insert happy dance} "hurry up and open it (fill in the name of whosever turn it was)",{insert running around, jumping up and down}, "just open it", "you won't believe it", {dance, dance, dance}. It was absolutely priceless, and definitely one of the highlights of this year's celebrations!

4. Speaking of celebrations..... We celebrated Christmas, Hannakuh, my niece's 19th birthday, and Shabbat, all in one week this year! My niece, Gabrielle, is a wannabe Jew and has been for quite some time. She has always been intrigued with Jewish traditions, and has celebrated Hannakuh for many years so this year she was at our house for the whole week, and asked us to celebrate with her. It was nice to be introduced to a different tradition and to take the opportunity to explain to Holland how there are many different faiths and belief systems. She goes to school with a couple of friends who are Jewish so I really wanted her to learn how important it is to respect others and their differences. She got a kick out of playing Dreidel!

5. Speaking of getting a kick.... I am getting a kick out of Dylan each and every day. She is just a crack up, (most of the time). She wasn't a crack up tonight when she refused to go to sleep though. Anyway, she loves to tease these days and she will take off running when I try to give her a kiss and shout "no", "no", "no" and giggle the whole time. She also loves to bounce and jump, although she hasn't quite figured out how to pick her feet up off the ground, so her body does the action of sqatting, and then she quickly raises her arms waaaaay up high, and then she squats back down again, and repeats these actions over and over again, all while looking so incredibly proud of herself. Occassionally, she will get slightly airborne,and she just lands right on her bottom with feet straight out in front of her! You probably need to see it to get the full picture, but I have a pretty vivid visual as I am typing this, and I'm the one that wants to preserve the memory so that's all that really matters, I guess!

6. Speaking of preserving memories..... I haven't preserved any memories in the form of scrapbooking in over a year. Poor Dylan doesn't even have a scrapbook to speak of (second child syndrome). I even have a couple of pre-made ones that I made while on bedrest, but I haven't put a single thing in them. Pathetic, I know. I am hoping to get back on track a little bit as this New Year is rolling around. I don't know if I will do the same sort of scrapbooking that I did for Holland, but I do love telling stories, adding pictures, and preserving the wonderful memories. I just need to figure out a system that works for me.

7. Speaking of a system that works for me.... I am hoping that the quickbooks system I just ordered will work for me. I am so NOT a business person, and I really need to get a system into play with all this photography business that I've been doing! I've heard it is super easy to use, and it has quite a few features that will simplify my current, convoluted (no rhyme or reason) system that I have not even totally set up, yet!

8. Speaking of having a few features, I got a new grill, griddle, and panini press combo (that I asked for) for Christmas. It has interchangeable plates that are pretty cool. I have always LOVED paninis, and I have been kinda on a little panini kick since our trip to Italy. Yum-o.

9. Speaking of our trip to Italy..... we had gnocchi for dinner tonight. It was delish.

10. Lastly, speaking of dinner tonight.... Holland asked me (over dinner) when she could get her ears pierced, which was not too long after she had asked me if she could color her hair(while riding in the car earlier today), which was on the heals of going nuts over a poster of Troy, from high school musical, that she saw at the dentist office today! Nice, huh? I tried to redirect her to the snow each and every time! : )

Happy (almost) New Year, Everyone!