The Mazzola's

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Happy New Year and Happy Birthday!


We hope you all had a wonderful holiday season and a very happy new year. Christmas was a blast this year with the kids, it was especially fun because it was Chase's first Christmas. Emilia was out of school for almost three weeks for Christmas break. She had fun playing with Bebia, baking cookies, coloring, wrapping gifts, watching movies and decorating for Christmas. She loves to be a big helper. She has really started to do a good job of helping give Chase his bottles. The other night Joe and I were getting the kids ready for bed and Emilia had gone downstairs and was gone for a few minutes. The next thing we knew she was standing in Chase's room and had made his bottle all by herself. We keep the formula up on the counter far enough out of her reach that she would have had to climb up onto the counter, and that's just what she did. Joe took her downstairs to have her reinact how she made the bottle. 1)she climbed up onto the counter 2)got the bottle and put the liner in it 3) grabbed a nipple and formula 4)put 3 scoops of formula into the bottle 5) climbed off of the counter 6) went into the bathroom to a sink she could reach and filled the bottle up to the #6 (6oz line) with warm water 7)brought the bottle up to little brother. It was hard to get upset with her because she was just trying to help but we reminded her that it's not safe to climb up onto counters, especially when we are not close by. Sometimes I think she is a 14 year old trapped in the body of a 4 year old.

Back to the holidays... Joe and I got to have a fun date night out with old friends a couple days before Christmas. We went to see the Hurricanes play and then hung out afterwards and caught up for a while. There's nothing like laughing and catching up with old friends. We spent Christmas in Chapel Hill/Cary this year. We had a wonderful time spending time with my family. On Christmas Eve we went to the Carolina Inn for a really nice Christmas Eve lunch and saw their beautiful 12 days of Christmas exhibit. Later that afternoon Joe, Emilia, Chase and I went to church and had Chinese for dinner and waited for Santa to come. Christmas day we went to Mom's for a nice lunch and then went to my dad's to be with his family for dinner. Although we had a couple of days off of work it stayed pretty busy for me. Our Wake county office has really taken off over the last month so Zaz, Steph our other Scheduler and I were staffing cases left and right over the Christmas holiday. Not a bad problem to have, especially since it's our slower time of year! My office hit 1000 hours/ week this month for the first time, which is a BIG deal. It was such a big deal that I promised everyone when we finally hit 1000 I would do cartwheels in our office parking lot. Steph made me a fun 1000 hour shirt to wear and she took a video of me doing my cartwheels! No, I will not be posting it on YouTube to share with you all!



We had a really nice New Year's eve day and night. Grandma Grandma came into town and we took the kids to Marbles Kids museum and had a great time. That evening we went to Carolina and Craven's house. The kids played for a while and then we put all the kids to bed and had a late dinner. It was a really nice evening and a great group of people to ring in the New Year with.

The rest of this month was been spent celebrating birthday's. I had my birthday at the beginning of the month and had a really nice day/week. We like to celebrate birthday's as long as we can in our family. Emilia has had a birthday party to attend every weekend this month and they continue up thru February 12th, when Holden turns 2! Happy Birthday, Holden baby!

Between birthday parties and swim lessons our weekends fly by and stay busy.



Joe's work is keeping him super busy as well. He's had a big change in ownership/leadership with his company, so there have been a lot of changes (for the better).



Our screened porch that I wrote about back in Nov. is finally complete and it's BEAUTIFUL. It was well worth the wait, although I feel like the builder is now part of the family. It's going to be weird not having paint cans, shop vacs, drills, etc. all over our garage and laundry room. Joe has also put A LOT of LONG hours into the porch as well. He actually did all of the electrical ruffin and paiting. I'm glad to have my husband back! :) Now if only the weather would warm up so that we could enjoy it! I'm so tired of the cold weather this year it's been a terrible winter and it's still only January.



Emilia is still enjoying school at St. Michael. She was definately ready to go back after the holiday break. She got to say the Hail Mary on the intercom in front of the whole school after Christmas break and did a GREAT job! She is taking swim lessons with Brayden and loving it! She gets so excited each week to get back in the pool. It's so fun to see her getting more comfortable in the water each week and she can now float on her back all by herself. It's amazing the little things that get us so excited as parents!



Chase's personality is really starting to come out and he's pretty funny. He loves to wave bye-bye and he just starting clapping his hands last week. He says ma ma and da da and bubba (fletch). He's still not crawling but wants to crawl and walk SO bad. He's very close to crawling, I have a feeling one of these days I'm going to set him on the floor and find him at my feet. Food is one of his favorite things, especially if big sister is sitting next to him. He's got about 6 teeth and I think he's working on a couple more. He is a pure joy!



I hope you all are doing well and staying warm and healthy.

Happy Birthday to all of the February babies (Matt W., Holden, Matt M., Jed, Naomi and Nana)



Happy 85th Birthday, Nana! We love you.



Lots of Love,

Les, Joe, Emilia and Chase


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