relaxing from the holidays

Ahh Family. Gotta love em eh?


Over the Christmas Holidays, my 3 brothers, 2 SIL and 3 kids came to celebrate here in Charleston - it was a full house! Luckily they didn't stay with me, but rented a place nearby, which gave us a wonderful place to all be together, but also the ability to go home and have a bit of our own quite time as well.



Aiden did remarkably well meeting his new little cousins - although I shouldn't call them little - I hadn't seen Dominic since before Aiden was born, and at the time he was probably about the same size back then as Aiden is now, so I was amazed at how different it felt to hold him vs. Aiden! Then Max showed up and at 15lbs was the biggest of the bunch! Gabriella, being the oldest and the only girl, held her own of course and loved asking about all the different babies.

All the SIL bought matching outfits for the little ones, so we took some great pictures - of course getting them all to sit up together took some doing:


(Gabriella, Dominic, Aiden, Max)

there were a couple of meltdowns:


(Aiden, Max, Dominic)
some head-biting:


(Dominic, Aiden, Max)

But we got some cute shots too:

(Aiden, Max, Dominic)


(Gabriella, Dominic, Aiden, Max)


(Max, Aiden, Dominic)

My CA brother made us Christmas Eve dinner - it was fabulous!!! It's been a tradition to do 7 fishes on Christmas Eve with my family, but that dinner first evolved to a 7 seafood dinner, and now a clam-bake. So we had lobster, mussels, oysters, clams, crabs - it was really delicious!

Here's a shot of one of the main dish - even the presentation was amazing:


If you're in the California area and want a to have a great party with some great food cooked by a great guy - check out this site. (ask for Chef Alex!)

Knitting wise, I finished all the Christmas presents I was working on; a pair of legwarmers for Gabriella (that may have to be arm-warmers because she's grown so fast!), a hat for Dominic and my Grumpasarus for Max. I forgot to talk pictures, but I'm hoping they'll send me some.

The following week, Mike's brother and family came into town for a day, and I was able to give their littlest one her birthday present early - it's called the All Over Cables Hat - (ravelry link here) it turned out pretty well and I really liked the yarn - I used Berroco Geode, I loved the colors:



We went down to visit Mike's school and the kids checked out the jail:



It was great to see them all. I hope everyone else had as wonderful holiday and a Happy New Year!