Happy New Year! An End To 2010

I feel like 2010 just began and here we are at the end of another year. 2010 is coming to a close and in less than 12 hours. New years to me means new beginnings; new growth; a fresh chance to start over.

As with any new year, I come up with my list of New Years resolutions. (Which I'm sure you have to). Instead of coming up with a huge list that I know I'm never going to accomplish in the next 365 days, I'm just going to have a few on my list: (1) Mail birthday cards to my nieces and nephews (2) Lose weight, and continue down my road of being healthy. I have my sister in law's wedding in May and want to look nice and feel good about myself too. We've certainly had an amazing year. Some tough times, but overall the majority of the year was truly an amazing and a blessed one. It had to be a great year because I'm still here!

I took some time to find out what I am truly grateful for from this year:

(In no particular order)

1. My wonderful, loving, handsome, helpful, supportive, kind husband, Jeremy
2. My adorable Madore-ables, Samantha & Sarah
3. My family (Sims & Thompson side)
4. My in-law family (Madore, Burnham & Ramsden)
5. My faith
6. Sarah's Occupational Therapist coming to the house once a week for therapy
7. Free early intervention programs for Sarah
8. No more early intervention needed for Sarah
9. No more trips to Boston Children's Hospital for Sarah
10. The girls saying "please" and "thank you"
11. My friends
12. New friends
13. Old friends
14. My blog
15. Netflix
16. Pandora
17. Wii Fit
18. My weight loss
19. Being introduced to my friends on the Charlie's Angels walking team
20. My weight loss
21. Being able to get rid of a ton of my "old" clothing as a result of my weight loss
22. Friends becoming engaged
23. Friends becoming married
24. Family members becoming parents again
25. Friends becoming parents
26. My part time job
27. Having some extra income coming into the house
28. Having a savings account at our bank for the first time in six years
29. Our new flat screen t.v
30. My new stock pot from my Mom
31. Asking to be Matron of Honor in my sister in law's wedding in May
32. Sarah expanding her vocabulary by the day
33. The success of our photography business
34. Library story time
35. FCC children's programming
36. A working vehicle
37. All the Freecycle items we've obtained...especially the girls clothing
38. All the Freecycle items we've disposed of. Love cleaning my house!
39. One of our student loans has such a low balance, we can use our 2010 tax return to pay it off!
40. Finally finding an great fantastic amazing wonderful awesome babysitter for our Madore-ables!

Here are some of my favorite photos of the Madore-ables from 2010

So, I hope this year you have had fun reading up on our Madore-able adventures. Only because I have received so much positive feedback (and also, because I enjoy writing these blog entries) I'll continue the blog for next year too ; ) For now, I do have to tell you that this is the official last blog entry for 2010...plenty of new adventures of the Madore's and the Madore-ables coming up for 2011.

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYBODY!!!!!!!

Welcome 2011!!!!

Five Things Friday

Five Things That Made Me Smile This Week

1. I spend every day with my Madore-ables, but with the snow storm that we had last weekend I spent a lot of time with the girls during the week. I told Jeremy to take my car with him to work which left me home for 2 days without a car. We spent a lot of time playing with every toy that the girls received for Christmas. Of course, this also helped me brainstorm for more Madore-able blog ideas ; )
2. Heading to Maine this coming weekend for New Years. We'll be staying with my future brother in law at his beautiful beach house. I have to laugh at how my tastes have changed over the years. When I was younger I wanted so much to head down to Boston for New Years "First Night" to help ring in the new year, but looking back I'm so glad that didn't happen. I was able to stay home in a warm house...who wants to be out in freezing temperatures and smooshed with all those crowds of people? No thank you! Give me a comfy couch and a television to watch Dick Clark's Rocking New Years Eve party.
3. This past week has been especially long on Jeremy as he's put in a lot of long hours and also traveled to Washington D.C for a business trip. As of last night, he's home safe and sound and we're happy to have him back home : )
4. Training has gone extremely well this past week. I've seen and heard a few of the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer commercials, and I'm getting excited! To see how I've been doing, feel free to take a look at my Training Page or you can click on the "In It To End It" tab at the top of this page.
5. I know it sounds strange, but we received a Christmas gift from our landlord: a new faucet for our kitchen sink. We noticed about a year ago that there was a small leak underneath our sink, and we mentioned something to our landlord. Well, he never made his way over to our apartment until last week. So after a lot of persistence and patience, my landlord finally came over with a gorgeous, shiny, new faucet and boy does it look good!

Look Out! I've Got Cookie Monsters!

I have found it doesn't take much to entertain the Madore-ables these days...baking cookies is their new hobby lately.

YUM!

B - I - N - G - Oh So Much Fun!

Last week, my Mom and I took the Madore-ables to visit my Grandfather at the nursing home. We had some reasons to celebrate: one, it was my Grandfather's 92nd birthday. Two, we hadn't been to visit my grandfather in over a month due to colds and sickness running rampant through the home so I didn't want to expose my girls to that. It was a great visit and the girls had a great time.

We found out that there was another resident who shared the same birthday as my Grandfather. The woman had a cute little stuffed Snoopy musical toy that the girls absolutely loved...especially Sarah. When you touched the little button on the side, Snoopy started "playing" his piano (actually, he just wobbled back and forth).

Sarah cracked up the whole time.

There were crayons and markers and lots of coloring books and things to color for the residents. We visit my grandfather so often enough that the nurses aides always grab a fistful of markers or crayons for the girls. They love love LOVE to color.

Then it was announced that the Bingo game was about to begin.

Here comes Samantha with her lucky chips!

Sarah's All Set and Ready To Begin

Sam Did a Great Job...She Seemed To Grasp the Concept After 2 "Calls"

She's So Adorable When She Concentrates!

Nanny? I Don't Get This Game At All

I Still Don't Get It, But I Know I LOVE It!

Samantha Won A Game Of Bingo! She Was So Excited

I don't know if she was more excited that she was able to play the game or she won a Hershey Bar as a prize : )

Mittens and Hats, Hats and Mittens

My grandmother (the Madore-ables Great-Grandmother) on my mom's side lives in Florida. She's always been a fantastic seamstress, and a great knitter. As long as I can remember, "Nanny" has made several pairs of mittens and hats for me, and now she's making hats and mittens for my Madore-ables.

Nanny (or Nanny "O" as the Madore-ables know her) mailed a big package full of mittens and hats for the girls...and they LOVED them!

Christmas Day 2010

In case I haven't mentioned it by now, Christmas is my absolute favorite holiday ever. I always start to get excited Thanksgiving night about the music, the decorating, the shopping, the ending of a year and the beginning of a new one.

Now that Jeremy and I have the Madore-ables, things are so different now...for the better of course. The girls have certainly put the magic back into the day. We've started some new traditions and stuck with some old ones and look forward to continuing them year after year.

We started off Christmas eve going to a 4:00 church service. Now that the Madore-ables aren't napping anymore, we were very nervous that if we went to a later church service, there may be tears. They were absolutely perfect. It's amazing what a sippy cup and some gold fish crackers can do. One tradition that I started last year was to buy matching pj's for the Madore-ables and have them open them up on Christmas eve after church. When we got home, the girls opened up their pajamas.

Christmas morning with the Madore-ables opening up their stockings and one present each. We had my father and my brother over for brunch (which was quite yummy: french toast with syrup and powdered sugar, breakfast sausage, and fruit). After we ate, the Madore-ables opened up their presents from Bapa.

After my father left, we had my Mother and brother over for Christmas dinner (which again was very yummy: ham, mashed potatoes and mashed butternut squash with cinnamon and nutmeg). After dinner, we opened up some more presents. While the girls played with their new toys, we served dessert (Lemon, raspberry cheesecake and Cherry Cheese pie).

After my Mom and Brother left, the girls clearly had a long day and were showing it. I was shocked when I looked at the clock and realized that it was still a full hour earlier when the girls normally go down to bed. That didn't matter, both girls went to bed and were asleep by 6:30 Christmas night. They certainly had a fun day.

Here are some of my favorite photos from the day:

Samantha Was SO Excited About Her Slippers...Can You Tell?

Hugs For Bapa & Uncle Chris

Hokey Pokey Elmo Was a Big Hit With Sarah...Good Job Uncle Chris!

Mommy Scored On Freecycle...Samantha Was Excited About Her New Ice Skates!

Sarah Absolutely LOVES Dora The Explorer...Backpack Is One of the Main Characters, And Sarah's New Best Friend

Merry Christmas!

From our house to yours

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeee wish you a Merry Christmas
We wish you a Merry Christmas
We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!






No need for figgy pudding ; )

Five Things Friday

Five Things That Made Me Smile This Past Week

1. Every year, I usually wait until last minute to get everything together. Everything from wrapping presents, to shopping, to baking/cooking. This is the first time in 6 years where I am fully prepared and finished with wrapping, with shopping with time to spare. HOORAY!
2. This past week, I started my training for the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer. Now that the Madore-ables are not napping I can't work out in the afternoon...however they do go down to bed early as a result so I have the option of working out at night, or waking up early. Feel free to check out my Training Page (underneath the "In It To End It" tab) to see how I'm doing!
3. I haven't baked Christmas cookies since I was about 6 years old. I wanted to wait until both the Madore-ables were old enough. Last weekend, the Madore-ables had two opportunities to decorate cookies and they had an absolute BLAST! Seriously, had I known they were going to love cookies and decorating I would have done this a long time ago! (Thanks to Tina & Kristina for testing the idea out for me ahead of time!) Today is my baking day, so I know Samantha is going to be in absolute heaven.
4. I've had a lot of time to reflect in the last month or so. I can remember when I was a kid my most exciting Christmas was when my parents bought me my first bicycle. I can remember to this day riding the bike around in my parents unfinished basement. Back in the day I didn't know the effort that went into those kinds of gifts. Last week we introduced the idea of writing a letter to Santa/Saint Nick. It was nice to see Sam get excited over what she would like. Jeremy and I have decided to not exchange gifts to each other, and instead we decided to budget and spend that money on the Madore-ables. I was very teary eyed wrapping the girls gifts seeing that we were able to get some of Samantha's requests :)
5. Sarah is doing such a fantastic job with her speech and increasing her vocabulary each day it seems. This past week, Sarah has really made Mommy and Daddy proud: she's saying "please" and "thank you" without much prompting. Actually, to you and me it's "please" and "thank you" to Sarah it comes out as "peeeeeease" and "Kay-q" or "No kay-q".

Every Tree Tells A Story

I feel every tree tells a story. You can learn a lot from one. The more rings in the trunk means the older the tree is. Leaves on a tree mean they'll turn color in the Fall, lose their leaves over the Winter and come Spring will grow back again. Balsam Christmas trees smell up the house with their nice pine scent where the Frasier trees don't have that pine smell but last a whole lot longer. See? You learned something new by reading today's blog : )

At our house, I think our tree tells the story of my life and it's progression. Are you confused? Don't worry, I'll explain.

Life for me began in 1980

My grandmother needle pointed a Christmas ornament for every Grand-Child

Then I started school and started making ornaments for my Mom

And more school ornaments...

And soon I met an angel...

...At my alma matter. We'll call him Jeremy 0: )

Jeremy and I were married in July 2004

Then life became exciting again...we welcomed Samantha in July 2007

And life became a little more exciting...Sarah arrived in December 2008

These are my new favorite ornaments...

I can't wait to see what ornaments will be added by my Madore-ables as the years go by to continue our "story tree"

Samantha...What Time Is It?

Samantha has known her numbers for awhile now. I thought it might be a good idea to start teaching her to tell time on a digital clock. Seeing we have several digital clocks in our kitchen, and in my car Sam knows if she asks what time is it, she can run to the kitchen to tell us. I've been trying very hard to let her answer her own questions, especially if I can use it for a learning tool. She asks great questions (sometimes, I'll admit they're overwhelming) but nonetheless Samantha has been doing a great job.


The other night, we were at dinner and Samantha looks at the clock and says very seriously,



"Mommy! Daddy! It's six hundred o'clock!"

The Madore-ables Have A Boyfriend - Don't Tell Daddy

Last Tuesday, I had the pleasure of babysitting for a little cutie named Branson. Branson's Mommy, Melissa works with Jeremy and Melissa's niece Kristina babysits for our Madore-ables. We've become very good friends with the family, so being asked to babysit such a well behaved, handsome little guy was not an issue.

We had a great day. I never told the girls that Branson was coming to visit, because I knew I would hear about it for a week straight. You should have seen the Madore-ables when I carried Branson upstairs at 8:00 to get the girls. If I had a dollar for every time Sarah said "BABY!" I wouldn't have to work for the next few weeks, ha ha. Either way, my Madore-ables LOVE LOVE LOVE Branson. They were such a huge help for me, and love helping Branson.



Here are some of my favorite photos from the day:

Letters To Saint Nicholas

So here we are...the final week leading into Christmas. I can't get over it. As long as I can remember, I start to get really excited about Christmas right around the week before Thanksgiving. I still love Christmas. Now things are different now that I have my own family. I get more excited at watching my Madore-ables opening up their presents. I love everything about it: the Christmas music; the preparing with decorating the tree; the brainstorming of what Christmas card are we going to do this year; the shopping; keeping quiet about my presents for Jeremy.

Since Jeremy and I have started our family, we thought it should be important to start some traditions for Christmas. Last year, we decided to start a new tradition that the Madore-ables can open up 1 present on Christmas Eve after church...shhh, don't tell the girls but we decided to buy them matching Christmas pj's to wear overnight and wear for opening up presents on Christmas morning. (Plus, the photographer geek in me can have some uniformity in my photos when we take pictures on Christmas morning, ha ha).

This year, we're going to start something new: Saint Nicholas is Santa Claus and Santa Claus is Saint Nicholas. Growing up, all I heard was Santa Santa Santa. There was no sacredness in Christmas because commercialism took over. I understand that everybody has their own views, and their own beliefs. I'm just saying that this is what Jeremy and I believe and this is how we want our girls to learn a valuable lesson. Jeremy and I want the Madore-ables to know what the real reason for Christmas is so why not start now? We're trying to teach the Madore-ables to share their toys and share with one another...so what better example to lead? To us, Christmas is not all about Santa Claus, and it's not all about the presents. I totally admit that the element of surprise, and the magic of miracles is awesome. We are acknowledging that they do exist, but there is more to Christmas. We've been teaching Samantha (and eventually Sarah too when she's old enough to understand) that Saint Nicholas was a real person who did exist in Europe years ago and shared many gifts to good little boys and girls. He dedicated his life to giving and sharing which is why (our beliefs) he was named "Saint Nicholas" because only truly good people can be named a saint. We want the Madore-ables to know and understand that Christmas is not all about receiving gifts...even though the surprise element is fun I do admit, but we want them to learn that Christmas is about sharing and giving.

The other night, Samantha, Jeremy and I decided that we should write a letter to Saint Nicholas. We thought it would give Samantha the chance to sit down and quietly put her thoughts together as to what she would like for Christmas this year. Jeremy and I felt that writing a letter to Saint Nick can be compared to saying a prayer. Whether you're speaking words or saying them onto paper, it's still a wish. Samantha seems to understand that just because she asks for it, and just because you pray for it, doesn't mean that it's going to happen. It gives us an idea on what the girls would like for Christmas.

We felt that Samantha's requests were very reasonable and so very thoughtful. It's amazing that a three year old can teach me and remind me about the simple things especially when we're rushing around getting everything ready for Christmas. This is why I love my Madore-ables...even though there is craziness and temper tantrums that brew in our house, there's also innocence and love. So I thank you Sam for remind me that.

Here's Samantha's "letter" to Saint Nicholas/Santa:

• My own Chapstick - Vanilla with a blue wrapper like Mommy's
• Candy Canes for Daddy
• A sticker book
• A notebook like Steve has on the show "Blue's Clue's" with a special pen
• A choo choo train - A yellow one for me and a green one for Sarah
• Ice skates

Sarah Visits The Pediatrician

This morning I took Sarah to her 2 year old pediatrician appointment. Sarah's Pedi and I are so excited about Sarah's progress. Sarah was able to:

1. Identify her ABC's and her 123's
2. Jump on command
3. Identify her body parts...belly button is always her favorite ;)
4. Sarah said "please" and "thank you" when Sarah's Pedi handed her a safety lollipop...without being prompted. (The Pedi was very impressed and said I was a great Mommy for teaching Sarah manners. I'm still beaming over that comment) It's moments like those where I'm a proud Mommy!

Unfortunately, Miss Sarah had to have a Hep A vaccination, but she was able to choose a prize from the treasure chest. Today Sarah chose a little bracelet full of jingle bells. We had a lovely repeat performance of "Jingle Bells" on the way home...Sarah was the star of the show.

Check out Sarah's growth progression:

December 2009 (12 month appointment) 30 1/4" tall, and 23.8 lbs

June 2010 (18 month appointment) 34" tall, and 26.8 lbs

December 2010 (24 month appointment) 34.5" tall and 28.9 lbs

Sarah's Pedi is so impressed that Sarah doesn't have to go back until next December for her 3 year appointment! Hooray!

Five Things Friday

Five Things That Have Made Me Smile This Week

1. Good customer service really impresses me. Jeremy designed our family Christmas cards this year. Come to find out, our order was shipped, but FedEx decided that they were too impatient to receive my signature to sign for the package and even leave it in the correct place. Jeremy contacted our printer vendor and come to find out, this has been a common occurance so our order was reprinted yesterday and shipped out overnight yesterday for FREE. And the best thing? The customer service representative decided to click off on the option for "required signature". That is just absolutely awesome right there.
2. Samantha is getting to the age where Jeremy and I can explain things to her, and she can process and learn. We've been teaching her things like the spirit of Christmas and giving verses receiving; Going through our closets to make sure that we donate clothing that Jeremy and I have "outgrown" (ha ha) and donate it to those who are in need of clothing because they cannot afford it. We love the fact that she's asking questions...and as you can see from Tuesday's blog, Samantha's mind is constantly going.
3. I was able to sit down Tuesday night to watch NBC's The Biggest Loser. Not many television shows can make me cry, but watching the transformation of these contestants changing their lives is so inspiring. Since being asked to be in my sister-in-law's wedding next May, plus my Avon Walk for Breast Cancer also in May, it's nice to have that positive reinforcement. I was excited to lose twenty five pounds, I cannot imagine losing over one hundred eighty pounds. I think television needs to have more uplifting, positive shows like that.
4. The Madore-ables and I have embarked on a new project that has been going surprisingly very well: "Project no more nap". Jeremy and I found that when the Madore-ables had their nap, they would stay awake until 10:00pm. (They were in their beds, but still laughing and talking and singing until late). Once we started project no more nap this past Sunday, we found the girls are exhausted by the time dinner time came. They've done very well all week long. Granted, right after dinner and playtime is a little rough with tears, but the girls go to bed very early and still wake up nice and refreshed around 8:00am.
5. If you don't know me well by now, you'll know that it doesn't take much to impress me. Not to make me sound like a television junkie, but another great thing I found this week on my Wii/Netflix is 5 seasons of TLC's "Say Yes To the Dress". You cannot imagine how excited I was to find that. So, needless to say that while I was putting in some work at home hours after The Madore-ables go to bed, it made working a little bit less painful. Getting paid for watching SYTTD? Yes please!!

Sisterly Love

I hope and pray for two things:

(1) To be a good Mom

and

(2) That my Madore-ables grow up to be very good friends

I think they're on their way :)