Housewarming/Holiday Party

We worked very hard over the past few weeks to get our house in tip-top shape for our housewarming party.  We decided to combine it with our annual holiday party, but the one this year was more of an open house during the day (because of the baby, our late-night party days are over!)  It was a lot of fun and it was great that so many people finally got to see our place.  Stella was in town and actually came up for lunch a few days before the party to meet the baby and so we could get some quality time :)

Fiona also decided to come up to the Bay for the weekend so we picked her up from the airport and she got to hang out with us for a nice long time before the party.  It was so great to chill with my girl and two of my oldest friends!

As you can see, she is wearing a very special party outfit.  Maggie came with a gift for the baby and you'll never guess what it was: the same tutu but with a matching cardigan!  Luckily the tutu is a bigger size so she can wear it for a nice long time.  We had a lot of fun at the party and got to see some peeps we hadn't seen in a while.  Some of our neighbors came too and I think they were a little shocked that the house is in such good shape (judging by some of their comments about how it used to look). Here are some of the best pics of our guests and our new place:



Christmas Tree Shopping

Christmas is easily Tory's favorite holiday, and it has been so cute to see him introducing Skyla to all the holiday traditions.  One of the most important ones of course is getting the Christmas tree!  We all headed over to Flowercraft on Bayshore and searched until we found the perfect tree.

 Here's our girl with the winning tree.  As you can see, she is absolutely thrilled with our choice.

We got it all tied up to the top of our car, and did a much better job than last year.  We thought we were being so clever last year tying it up ourselves but didn't realize we did so in a way that prevented us from opening any of the doors! I walked home and Tory slid into the car, then had to climb his way out to get out in front of our house (which was on a ridiculously steep hill so you can imagine how smoothe he looked doing it).  This year we got it done perfectly and kept joking that something bad had to happen or it wouldn't be Christmas.

As soon as we got in the car and started driving away I looked at the clock and it was a very Christmas-y time!

That night we worked together to decorate the tree.  Skyla did a great job and took much more interest in the decorating part of the process.

The whole experience was so fun and made us thankful once again that we have a little girl to celebrate the holidays with.  I can't wait until the day she's old enough to wake up on Christmas morning, run downstairs, and get excited to see presents under the tree!

Play time in our new house

We finally got to move into our new house and take all of our stuff out of storage!  One of the gems we found is a bouncy chair that Geordie and Jolene gave to us, and surprisingly Skyla can sit up in it pretty well.  Here are the pics of her first experience in her chair on one of her first days in her new house:

Feast for a King

We got a Thanksgiving preview recently when Roma came to visit wearing her special outfit for the Renaissance Faire.  It was fun hanging out with her and taking pictures, especially since we'll be moving  soon and won't get to do this so often!

We moved into our house after months of waiting for it to close, but had way too much to do to host Thanksgiving, which we had hoped to do.  We did get Skyla all dressed up for the occasion, though.  She wore one of her fanciest outfits: a onesie with penguins on the collar and matching socks, courtesy of Erin and Paul (and of course her boyfriend Elliot).  We all walked over to Geordie's for the feast, and it's a good thing we walked because boy did we pig out!  Skyla had a lot of fun hanging out with the fam and looking fondly at the food she's still too young to eat.

It was a fun-filled evening and we can't wait until next year when she can eat some of the yummy food!

Skyla's First Halloween

We were so excited to celebrate Halloween with Skyla this year!  I looked around for some good family Halloween costumes online and decided we would be a bee family: Tory was the beekeeper, I was the Queen Bee, and Skyla was a sweet little baby bumblebee.  I don't know how to sew but I wanted to make at least part of the costume, so I got a whole bunch of tulle from JoAnne fabrics to make some tutus for Skyla and myself.  I told the lady at the store that I was really excited to be making the costumes but since the store was packed I don't think she was very interested.  Here are some pics of us getting our girl ready, including her Daddy putting on her first big girl tights:

We got to celebrate Halloween twice, which was pretty cool.  First, we went to Gill's awesome party up in the Los Gatos hills.  The decorations were out of control, and there were lots of great costumes and of course delicious food.  They literally covered all the walls with wallpaper that made it look like we were in an old castle, and every other surface was pretty much decorated too.  You can't tell from the photos, but the skeletons at the end actually moved!

They had a good selection of beer too, but the beekeeper in our family had a little trouble drinking it and staying in costume.  I had an easier time with the wine, which was delicious.

Several people were really impressed with our costume, especially since Tory was holding a bee he had "caught"!  A few people actually came up to us and said, "Wow what a realistic costume!  It looks just like a real baby!"  One dimwit actually touched her head when she said that and I almost lost it, but instead replied that it was in fact a real baby, she was just asleep!

On Monday (Halloween night) we got to dress up again so we could go trick-or-treating with Roma, Geordie, and Jolene.  Roma was a beautiful fairy princess, Geordie was prohibition-era tough guy business man, and Jolene made an unbelievable jellyfish costume.  Everyone looked great!