Life is good !!!

Truly, truly good !!! My daughter is home safe from Iraq & Italy and we are loving our time with her while she is home visiting for the holidays.

We picked her up at the airport in Providence RI last Saturday and then headed down to the beautiful seaport town of Newport for a fun family day together. We had a nice lunch together ...

Poked around in some of the waterfront shops and took lots of pictures. (and no I didn't have drinks with lunch...even though it looks that way from this photo...lol)

Then we headed to Bellevue Ave where the mansions of Newport are located and toured this mansion.

From the back of the property you can see the cliff walk that runs along behind the mansions along the coastline. A beautiful place to take a stroll in the warmer months.....in December its very cold back there near the water....brrrr.

This is the Tea House that sits behind the Marble House.

And then there is the mansion itself....which when it was built in the 1800's was built as a summer "cottage" and was given as a 39th birthday gift to Alva Vanderbilt by her husband.

And what a sight it is to see. Not what most of us think of when we think of summer cottages. You can read more about this mansion & the others in Newport here

I snuck this photo of one of the bedrooms

All in all it was a really fun day spent with my 2 favorite people.

Back home there has been lots of just hanging out enjoying our time with Mand. Tanner adores her.

Then we had our family holiday party on Sunday where all the cousins, siblings etc got a chance to visit with each other. Everyone was there from the youngest...

To the oldest (sorry Mom...you know I love you more than anything)

There was lots of silliness...

And lots of love...

On Monday Amanda & I spent the day in Boston at Fanuel Hall & Quincey Market shopping.

the city is not my favorite place to be but it is fun for a day trip every now & then

The rest of the week was spent shopping, wrapping, going to a Bruins hockey game together. Lots of fun family time spent together waiting for the big day...

And before we knew it was here...

Tanner was very happy to find a candy cane shaped cookie in his stocking (excuse the messy house please)

Mand & Jake opened stockings together...

And hammed it up for the camera in their new video camera sunglasses...

Jake was thrilled with the ticket to the NE Patriots game given to him by his sister (they head to that game together tomorrow)

Christmas with these two was good....very very good. Now life can get back to a normal less hectic routine and in a week we will need to say goodbye to Amanda as she heads back to Seattle : (

But for now...we are all content & happy & life is GOOD !!!