New Years week

Ricardo dropped the last of the family off early Monday morning (the 28th) and all was quiet and calm. We really missed everyone and it was hard to get back into the reality of being on our own, in a house that needed hours of cleaning. Diego and Alexia were huge helpers and truly lightened the work load for me. Diego sprayed cleaner in all the sinks and toilets, cleaned the glass tops, carried dirty laundry downstairs and put away things in his room. Alexia did a great job at cleaning up random things around the house and was very cooperative, which just in itself, is a big help!
Diego came down with a bad cold and pink eye on Tuesday afternoon, I got sick on Thursday and Alexia got sick on Friday. So, we had a very relaxing week which is just what we needed. Ricardo left work early on Wednesday and was then home the rest of the week. Our day times were spent playing games, building fires, napping and just hanging out. Ricardo and I had plans every evening which helped relieve us of a bit of cabin fever. On Wednesday we hired a babysitter and went to the house of an older couple from church for dinner and had a wonderful time. We thought we would be home by 9:30 since the invitation was for 6:30, but when we got in the car it was 10:50! For New Years Eve, we had a really fun celebration. Since we were having friends over for dinner, Ricardo and I sat down with the kids and we had a coffee and pastry while they had their dinner. Then we headed outside to do some fireworks which they LOVED! Our friends came over for dinner at 8pm so the kids were in bed and it was a grown up evening. We had way too much food and ate and ate and ate! We did tapas so we made lots of goodies including, tortilla espanola (potato, onion and egg dish), prosciutto, bruscetta, cheeses and meats, olives and pickles and on. It was all delicious! We then played a game called Like Minds which was a lot of fun. We were all rolling with laughter. Brooke is also pregnant so we sipped our ice water while the guys enjoyed champagne. We had a fabulous dessert and then headed outside to set off fireworks at midnight. It was a really fun night of celebration and they headed home close to 1:00am!
On Friday and Saturday we stayed inside ALL DAY long. Ricardo and I went out to dinner with some friends on Friday and then we all had one outing on Saturday. We all loaded into the car and drove to Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks for treats for kids and mommy and then we went to a friend's apartment to water their plants. The kids and I didn't even get out of the car because it was SO COLD!

I messed up the order of the pictures when I uploaded them, but will just leave them as they are...



We are having an "arts and crafts" time every afternoon and yesterday was gluing macaroni. Diego preferred painting with the glitter glue.


Alexia loved gluing the macaroni!

The kids sitting on the trunk of the car, waiting for Papi's firework show

Alexia was a little scared by the loud one so she preferred to be in Papi's arms


Christian, Brooke and us wearing the crowns that came out of the holiday crackers on New Years Eve

The kids on the school bus, headed to school!