Happy New Year 2015!

Our holidays didn’t get off to a very good start as Big Sis started to feel not very good within hours of starting her vacation from school on Friday. Luckily, she was able to muscle through another round of Salvation Army bell ringing that night.

By the end of bell-ringing and dinner out with friends from Albuequerque who were staying with us for a few days, she was pretty much down for the count. See her with the ice pack on her head as we pose with our friends the next day? Yeah, not a good sign.

By Tuesday, both had been confirmed with the flu. Influenza A, to be exact. My poor sick babies. Apparently, this year’s flu shot wasn’t a very good match to what’s been going around. Big Sis spent most of the week of Christmas in this exact spot on the left while Little Sis, who fared much better, thanks to her general heartiness, love of food and Tamiflu. She always responded “Great!” to my inquiries of “How are you feeling?” Who wouldn’t feel great when you get to lounge in Mommy and Daddy’s bed watching whatever you wanted all day?

This rat’s nest was the result of Big Sis’ couch-ridden existence without the desire nor energy to comb her hair once in almost a week. Needless to say, what usually takes a lima bean sized dollop of “magical conditioner” to tame this thick, long, beautiful mane took a palm-full to detangle. If it took that much for this conditioner that we truly think is magical, I’m pretty sure it would have taken others at least half a bottle!

With all our plans cancelled (visit from family, hosting friends on Christmas Eve, a trip to Greensboro on Christmas and a trip to MD the day after Christmas), we all just spent a quiet, self-quarantined weekend at home. As sad as it was to cancel all of our fun plans, spending the week at home with no where to be was actually kind of nice (minus the sickliness). Big Sis literally went through 6 full boxes of tissues in less than a week’s time. Sniff, sniff.

We barely managed to put the decorations on the tree and got cookies and letters ready for Santa. Christmas Eve is the latest we’ve ever decorated – can’t get any later! They managed to give their presents one more shake before heading off to bed Christmas Eve. Poor Big Sis still looks spent while Little Sis barely seemed sick.

Christmas morning, we were happy that Big Sis finally woke up feeling half decent. Yay! It’s a Christmas miracle we all declared! Actually, the truly miraculous feat here is that neither the hubby nor I got it despite all the the coughing they did in our faces!

Over the next few days, as Big Sis was feeling better and better, we finally got out to add in some ‘fun’. First up was our long standing tradition of Christmas lights and donuts. For the past many many years, we’ve gone out, usually well before Christmas, to check out some pretty festive houses nearby and then hit Dunkin Donuts for some treats. This year, we invited the cousins along, which the girls loved. After being stuck in the house for a week with no social interaction w/ their fellow kiddies, you can bet they had a wonderful time.

The next day, the hubby took the girls over to the cousins’ house for some Minecraft action, so I got to (finally) spend some quiet time at home ALONE! I used some of the time to make this headband holder that Big Sis had been asking me for. But not before indulging in this little treat while listening to Pharrell’s “Happy”. It makes me happy just thinking about it!

And THEN it was time to get to work on that headband holder. Not too shabby, right? Super easy and pretty cute, if I do say so myself!

And since everything was delayed, why not make our homemade gingerbread house after Christmas, too? Grandma helped me make them (since I still wasn’t up for letting kids recovering from the flu make food – lol) using my new gingerbread house cookie cutters I got from Amazon.

… and Grandpa supervised as the girls excitedly got busy…

We were able to take the girls and those same cousins again bowling (Little Sis hit the jackpot not once but TWICE in the arcade and was super proud of her winnings) and rescheduled our Christmas Eve dinner with best friends who haven’t seen each other in about 6 months…

… snuck in a little New Year’s Eve celebration with a few friends…

… and even got a re-do of Christmas in Greensboro with the hubby’s side of the family. It’s always a good time when these guys get together…

  

One of the most exciting things about the upcoming year is that we have new family in town! The hubby’s mom and her hubby aka Nana and Papa have purchased a second home a mere 7 mins from us. For those of you who are wondering, yes, this is a good thing. This is a great thing. No, this is an AWESOME thing! We are SO excited to have them so close by! They used to have a place in the upper east side of Manhattan, one we used to visit as often as possible. As much as we’ll miss those trips, this is a much better trade-off in my book.

Only sad thing is that we weren’t able to meet up with my side of the family as planned. That just means we’ll have to party it up in January, instead. My parents still insisted on sending the girls’ gifts by mail. So, here we are, Jan 4th, and we still have Christmas presents still under our tree. It’s the day that just keeps on giving. Now it’s off to FaceTime with them while the girls open them up. It’s *almost* like we’re together.

Though we had a rough start we were still able to kick it in high gear towards the end. Yay! I even got around to give the blog a quick make-over. What do you think?

With that, Happy 2015! May your new year be filled with lots of fun, love and joy! And good eats, too, of course!! Hope it’s the best one yet!!