10 adults, 4 babies, 2 toddlers, and a partridge in a pear tree!

Last weekend we had our friends over for a Christmas Party. 
We enjoyed lots of great food, conversation, hot chocolate, and as always, lots of laughs.
We are very thankful to have such great friends who we really enjoy spending time with.  And it's just a bonus that all of their kids are just as fabulous.  :-)
Enjoy some pictures...

From left to right (oldest to youngest) Estrella, Dominic, Ezra, Josiah, Moses and Calvin.

Lovin' little Moses.  :-)

Estrella, me and the "gato"

Merry Christmas!

It's the most wonderful time of the year!!

Christmas is definitely my favorite time of year (surprising, since I work in retail!!). 

I love everything from decorating the house, to Christmas music, to Christmas scented candles, to baking, you name it!!

(Even the cats join in the fun--okay, they're kind of forced to.)

So I thought I'd post some pictures of Christmas in our home

(I was inspired by Abby G's blog to share some pics!). 



Our Tree!



The baby tree

The stockings hung by the fire with care...
And our nativity set, complete with a new stable built by Matt!

I think Mazy needs to work on having a better attitude about the holidays.



Miel is not much more cooperative.
Oh well!

Merry Christmas to your family from ours!



Adventures in Dublin...

As many of you know, I was just recently in Dublin, Ireland for work.  I was supporting a new store, one of two locations now in Europe.  The other is in Birmingham, England.
I've never been to Europe, so this was my first time "across the pond".
I wish I could have blogged while I was there, but between very long work days and after-work shopping (every day--oops!), crashing into bed was about all I could accomplish at the end of the day!
So I will share a few highlights of my trip now...

Arriving in Dublin:
My company gave me specific directions to follow to find my way to the hotel once I arrived in Dublin.  I was to take the city bus to a bus stop near the hotel, once I exited the bus and turned to my right, I would see my hotel.  Sounds simple, right?? 
Well, first of all, the weather was not very accomodating to travel.  It was snowing and VERY cold (at least to me--I'm a bit of a wimp when it comes to cold weather).  First of all, once I finally located the bus stop at the airport, I had to stand in the cold for about 40 minutes waiting for the right bus.  Once I was on, I realized that this is an actual city bus where the people on the bus clearly know where they're going and just press a button when their stop is approaching.  The directions I was given were, "since there will be no signs or announcements about upcoming stops, you must constantly remind the driver of what stop you'd like to get off at"--What?! 
But I followed the directions and probably was about to get thrown off the bus if I "reminded" the driver one more time.
Finally my stop came, so I lugged all my belongings off the bus into the snowy street, eagerly turned to my right aaaannnndddddd....NO HOTEL!  Okay, let's be optimistic...maybe it's my other right?  Nope.
My thought process is: ok, it's night time, it's snowing, I have more luggage than I can handle, I'm in the middle of Dublin with no clue where I am and my cell phone doesn't work...don't panic.
So I picked a direction and began walking and dragging my luggage.  I say "dragging" because due to the snowy conditions, my luggage wheels would no longer roll--wonderful!
After seeing several pubs, many stumbling drunks (it is Dublin, you know), I found someone who looked nice, sober and possibly directionally inclined.  I was given entirely new directions and continued on.  So there I was, trudging through the snow, hoping I'm headed in the right direction, when a kind Irish woman (or who I believe to be an angel), came up beside me and said in the most endearing Irish accent, "I'm walking along and I see this poor girl dragging her luggage through the snow and here I am just passing you by!  Can I help you?"  I was politely reluctant, then gladly handed her one of my bags. She was nice enought to assist me all the way to the hotel door.

The weather...
The first few days we were there, England and Ireland were experiencing what the new stations called, "the big freeze".  Apparently, it's pretty unusual for it to snow in Ireland and especially unusual for it to snow this early in the winter season.  But boy did it snow!  It was absolutely beautiful watching the snow fall on the streets of Dublin--especially with all the Christmas decorations!
Unfortunately, the whole city shuts down because it doesn't deal well with snow.  So stores, restaurants, etc. closed early for a couple of days because of the adverse weather conditions.  Which, to this midwest girl, that snow was nothin'!
I thoroughly enjoyed the snow, and wish that it had snowed a little more...although we did get a few surprise flurries throughout the rest of our stay.

The shopping...
It's not that Dublin offers the most amazing shopping, but they do offer stores that I don't have here.  There were also several stores that we found to be really interesting and a few really fabulous...so we shopped...EVERY DAY!  Unfortunately, stores were only open until about 6:00pm or "half 6".  Luckily for us, they were offering their December "trading hours" (extended holiday hours), so things were open "late", which meant some were open until 8:00pm or even (gasp) 9:00pm!!

The people...
One of the things I love the most about traveling abroad for work, is that I get to spend all my time with the local people.  I always learn a lot about the culture and in this case, their Irish "lingo"!  Obviously they are known for fabulous accents, which are SO fun to listen to, but I had no idea how much could be lost in translation when everyone is speaking English!
Here's some vocabulary I learned: (remember, I only heard these, so I have no idea how some are spelled)
"What's the crack?" --meaning, "what's up" or "what's the story"
"How are you getting on?"--How's it going?
We were told that nobody says "cute", and we'd sound very American if we did, so we asked what would be proper substitutions in the context of telling someone their outfit was cute.  Here were their suggestions "massive", "deadly" or "savage". 
There were a lot of other sayings or phrases that I found very hilarious, but mostly I just enjoyed their extensive vocabulary.  For instance, how many of you know a young person to use "gaunt" in an every day sentence??  My point exactly.  :-)