I declare VICTORY!

As my very confident husband said last weekend...read 'em and weep ;)

games, games, games

Here are a few pics from our Christmas holiday. We had spent most of it trying to stay warm, relax, and spending time with family. One night we did go out with my HS friends for our yearly Christmas get together. We decided on Stonefire Pizza this year since we are starting to have kids so we are looking for places which are kid friendly. It was the perfect place for both the little & big kids. The best way to describe this place is that it's a collison of Chuck 'n Chesse and Dave & Busters with a pizza buffet. They had an area for little kids (under 4) to play as well as a bigger area. Tom & Owen got into a serious game of bowling - I'm not sure who won. Then they teamed up to take down SkeeBall however, not many tickets were won.

Before we left, we had spent some time at Von's house where we broke in his new Rock Band for the XBox 360. We had it all planned out - We would arrive a little before Owen's nap time and convince him to nap in Uncle Von's bed while we then would begin forming our band, 'The Gong Show'. Owen did nap for a bit however when he got up, he wanted to have his turn on the drums.

Lisa/Carol - the best part...after he was done performing, he picked up after himself - he made sure to push it across the room to its proper resting/storage place.

keeping order with legos

It was an Owen & Wendy day today. Lucky me, we got MLK day off and decided to spend it at the Children's Museum. We got there pretty early in the moring (about 1/2 hour after it opened) and I was surprised to see all the cars but knew they had a special exhibit going on...What I didn't expect was the widget zoo at the Children's museum! There were SO many kids that it was a little scary. All I can say is that parents need to do parenting sometimes. Owen was quite adventurous and we explored a section which we hadn't explored in the past - an area where the bigger kids tended to play. We had a blast hammering nails and twisting screws - i think he was inspired by all the time spent putting his room together.

What cracked me up the most was what he built over in the lego section. There were all sorts of towers being built and endless pieces to build them with...instead, Owen's orderly side took over -

no couch potatoes here

Yikes! It's been forever since I blogged - Merry Christmas & Happy New Year to everyone. We got back into town on the 31st and rung in the new year here. Tom & I also resolved that our first project for 2009 was to get Owen a proper bed (he only has a mattress on the floor) which prompted us to begin painting his room. It wasn't that simple, we needed to do some musical beds and extra furniture to empty the room which helped to identify project #2 - painting the basement bedroom so that our next guest wouldn't have to try falling asleep with the orange walls screaming at them. The first week of work felt very long after 2 weeks of vacation bliss. Friday couldn't come soon enough and we made sure to celebrate the first weekend of 2009 with Don Q.

We woke up saturday morning to no cable - note: we still are without cable and not sure what went wrong, cableperson comes tomorrow. The weather was gray and icky and made for a prime couch potatoe weekend. However, I actually enjoyed this past weekend without the TV - I've been very productive with pulling together mom's birthday gift, finishing my book, and putting Owen's big boy bedroom together. We shopped at IKEA on Saturday, spent 2 hrs and could've probably spent another if we had the option. I've put together the nightstand and dresser with Owen's help finding the hardware needed to assemble as well as his pretend screwdriver handy work.

Luckily, our internet works and so Owen & Maia had a chance to draw together.

Winter Wonderland

We're up in Milwaukee for Christmas. We decided to leave a day early so that we would improve our chances for not having to drive through a snow storm. I didn't realize all the snow that was already on the ground - we will definitely be having a white Christmas!

bye bye baby bed

This week, we had the chance to catch up with Maia & Patri via the webcam. Maia made us some coffee and eggs for an after dinner night cap. Owen could care less about the virtual meal but was much more into Maia's bed. After we said goodbye, we began the nighttime ritual. As he said night, night to us and every inanimate object, he insisted on sleeping on his big choo-choo bed. We've officially have moved on - now if potty training was just that simple...hmmm.

a little more asian

Last night, we were at our first Christmas White Elephant party of the season. It was with a group of Asian leaders (and spouses) within our company. Tom decided to give himself a temporary new last name for the evening so we were Tom & Wendy Gong for the night :)

The group still is learning what White Elephant gift really means...we walked away with a $25 gift certificate to Beluga, a trendy sushi restaurant in Hyde Park. It's definitely the nicest white elephant gift I've received. I would've like to have seen their first White Elephant party, someone was telling me that people were gifting VERY nice gifts like Mikasa crystals.