Bo-Barcus

Yesterday was my nephew Marcus' 1st birthday. As much as I can't believe it's true, that little boy is growing so fast!

Christmas

Finally the Christmas photos are here.


My sweet new nephew Marcus had his first Christmas. I think he enjoyed it.
Adrian and I had our 2nd annual Mouws and Mistletoe on the 20th. Another success. Thanks for coming out everyone!


This was a common sight throughout the month.

This was Marcus at our family tree decorating. My family has the coolest tradition that even though we've all long since moved out of our parent's house we all still come back to decorate the family tree with all the creepy old ornaments we made as children, including, yes, the construction paper gingerbread man that I ate the incredibly old, petrified raisin buttons off of when I was little. I still get crap for that and I'm thinking, why wasn't I supervised, eh people?


Every year Christmas Eve has me making a couple hundred tamales with the women on Adrian's side. Then we all gather at his grandparent's tiny house for stockings and a gift exchange. The chaos is crazy but wonderful. Following that we come back to our house for yet another exchange between Adrian's mom and siblings. It's always a VERY late night.

Christmas morning has us at my parent's house for more family gifting fun.

The day after Christmas held more gifting, this time with Adrian's father, sister and her kids.


Finally after all was said and done, Adrian and I both felt a bit like Nacho, desiring a much needed Christmas nap.

Closing-on-the-house Eve

When we began the earnest attempt to purchase our house from my father-in-law a month ago we had originally set the closing date for May 2nd. I've written it on all of my calendars. It's been committed as a national holiday. Lately though I've been feeling the crunch of getting all the pieces-parts together to seal the deal. I've become good friends with our mortgage broker's secretary. It seems like every day I've fielded calls from various parties needing information on this insurance, that pay-out, this file, that title etc. I had no idea how much goes in to the buying and selling of property and honestly if we weren't related to our seller (who's going to give us his $15,000 payout so we can fix the roof and oil the logs) I think I'd probably have beat my head against the busted door jam and moved to a cabin in the woods. Yet with all my dealings with my new best friend I somehow missed the memo that our closing date had been moved up a week and oh yah, it's tomorrow. I'm not even sure how it happened but apparently my father-in-law goes in tomorrow morning to sign his portion and we're going in at 4 to do our part. Apparently we're also supposed to bring $900+ dollars to this shindig, though I don't get paid til Friday and we have about 20 bucks. (Don't worry, we'll get through.) I'm just a little floored to think that it's already happening. Don't get me wrong, I'll be damn glad when it's done but it feels a little unceremonious seeing as how we're already living in our "new house." So the day off I scheduled for next Friday, our "closing" holiday, is now just unnecessary fluff. However we've decided that I'll keep the day off and we'll take off to McCall for the weekend. Let's celebrate the purchase of our house by sleeping somewhere else for a couple of nights, right? Makes sense. Or not. But that's what we're doing.

Tonight we had my nephews over. Zach (who's nearly 4) and Marcus (who's just over a month old). We played with the dogs and went ghost hunting with some really old tennis rackets, played video games and the keyboard, tossed the egg parachute off the loft, and changed the dog water. Pretty much a great night.

Marcus (Puzzle) Samuel

The latest beautiful addition to our family and by far the cutest baby since his amazing older brother, Zachary, who wanted to name him Puzzle.

Marcus joined us on Friday morning after a scheduled c-section. He is healthy with beautiful skin and a face to match his big brother. His mama is doing well and they should all be coming home tomorrow! I am a very proud Auntie K.