top 10 of 2010

here are some of the highlight of our 2010

10. maisy started preschool Yippeee
9. miles lost his first and second tooth.
8. another birthday for my two amazing kids miles (6) and masiy (2)
7. aaron and lisa got married/ our fun trip to the oregon coast
6. an amazing month long visit with family and friends in cambridge.
5. david and i celebrated 8 years of marriage/ 13 years together
4. maisy is potty trained (almost) still a challenge with #2
3. miles taking ski lessons and loving it! (miles wanted me to add this to the list)
2. miles learning to read AMAZING!
1. making it through this hellish year, happy, healthy and closer than ever!

skiing at hoodoo

so excited...

getting ready to head out

proud momma

the "classroom"

miles is number 61

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miles is on the left... 1st trip on the lift

skiing with uncle aaron

the proud skiers

our trip to oregon, the bend edition

maisy couldn't wait to go soakie in the snow!

sledding with auntie charlotte a wanoga snow park

here are some highlights for our trip to bend so far...

maisy's first time making snow angels 

maisy loved trying to catch snowflakes

maisy went down a little hill all by herself. she loved it!

miles had a great time, he went sledding for about 3 hours

maisy didn't want to come in, she just wanted to eat snow.

"the boys" 

christmas eve and day in oregon...

 christmas eve at the hellemn's is fun. we have a yummy dinner, have some drinks and then eat some yummy desserts. usually we play games, but this year i think we were all a bit tired. but we sat around the christmas tree singing carols while the kids danced. miles and maisy really enjoyed listening to aunt lisa play the guitar.  it was nice because miles' 2nd cousins from england where in town. charlotte is 5 1/2 and jackson is 18 months. as soon as maisy met charlotte she took her by the hand and walked her into the living room to play. it was really cute. after the kids went to bed we put gifts out and filled all the stockings. stockings are a big tradition in the hellem family so everyone brought stuff to fill them with.

on christmas morning we opened our stockings and ate some "scotch eggs", sausage rolls and yummy yummy cinnamon rolls. we waited for everyone else to arrive and then opened our gifts. miles was so excited to get some more lego sets and maisy loved her magnetic princess dress up dolls. that evening we had a yummy dinner, dessert and then people played poker. it was a wonderful two days of family, food and fun.

so happy with his stocking contents

the beautifully set table

lisa serving miles his "wine" (sparkling grape juice) 

he sniffed and swirled like a pro

miles and maisy pulling the traditional "cracker"

charlotte reading the joke from the cracker

"CHEERS"

mom and miles wearing their christmas crowns

on our way to oregon...

unfortunately david was not able to join us for our trip to oregon, so the kids and i headed out on our own. we were suppose to fly from santa barbara to san francisco to portland. we were walking on to the plane when the pilot came out and turned us around... there was a maintenance  problem, and they weren't sure how long it was going to take.  we only had about an hour layover in san fran before we caught our flight to portland. i KNEW we weren't going to make it and this was the start of a long adventure. we made it to san fran, but didn't have a flight until the next morning. they gave us hotel and food vouchers, but there was a flight that same night to portland they told us we could try and fly standby on. it wasn't until ten that night. i told myself i'd play it by ear and see how the kids were. they were such troopers, i decided to give it a try. we didn't get on. so we headed to customer picked up our vouchers and headed to the hotel for the night. we didn't get to bed until 12:30. our flight in the am was 11:30. so we slept in a bit used our food vouchers for breakfast and headed to the airport. we got on our flight and made it into portland on time. picked up our rental car and made our way to salem . all in all the trip took a little over 24 hours. it was suppose to be a 5 hour trip. thank you miles and maisy for being sooo good and going with the flow. you are great little travellers.

in bed at our hotel in san fran...

the kids playing in the kids zone at the san fran airport...

christmas 2010

so we left cookies out on dec. 22 because miles and maisy got a letter from santa saying he might try to come and visit before the kids and i went to oregon... well what do you know, he showed up. miles came running into our room saying "mom, dad there are presents under the tree." i told him those were probably the ones i put out, he said no, they are wrapped in santa paper. he also informed us that the cookies and milk were gone and brought in his letter to santa for evidence. santa had written a note to miles and maisy. thanks santa for coming early to the ebner house. we were all very happily surprised!