The holiday whirlwind is (almost) over

The holidays were a whirlwind, as this post will have to be, to catch up.

We had two Christmases, one with Dina's mom, and one with mine. On Christmas Day Dina's mom Cathy and her friend Todd came over and joined us for our traditional non-traditional Christmas lunch: homemade sushi! We bought ingredients from Coastal Seafoods (an AWESOME fresh seafood place), and United Noodles (an AWESOME Asian market).

On the weekend after Christmas, my mom came up on Friday and stayed until Saturday afternoon.

There were, of course, lots of presents for the kids, and a few choice ones for the adults. The gift highlights were a teddy bear that lights up for Rohan (from Grandma Cathy), a robotic puppy that responds to voice commands for Caden (from Grandma Lynn), a mini trampoline with handlebars for Griffin (from us), a kids' piano for Caden and Rohan (from Grandma Lynn), Guitar Hero World Tour for me (from Dina) and a membership to our local WineStyles wine club for Dina (from me). There were many more gifts and they were all appreciated!

We celebrated New Year's quietly at home by staying up way too late playing video games; mostly Guitar Hero: World Tour and Mario Kart Wii. Both of them are incredibly fun! The morning after a 3:30 a.m. bedtime is pretty rough these days, though. Oy.

And now the holiday season is (almost) over. I say "almost" because although we've had two Christmases and a New Year's, we still have one remaining Christmas. We're building a tradition with Dina's brother and sister, and their spouses and kids, in which we get everyone together for a weekend in January. It was at our house two years ago and was a lot of fun; last year was also supposed to be at our house, but the weekend of the party Dina and I got the best possible present: Caden and Rohan were born! That threw a wrench in the party plans for us, but I was told that everyone else had a good time. I'm looking forward to taking part this year!

Life is settling back into routine now; just how I like it.