You know you are a loser when ....

Its New Years Eve and you are going to bed at 10 pm. Really its sad. Someone should warn potential Bride and Groom's to be how lame their lives become after they get married and have children. This is our exciting New Year's Eve... Keira and I go to Mass at 4 pm- Mike stays home because Hippert and Mike's Uncle Danny are doing some plumbing stuff that should just take a "little bit" Mike and crew start working around 2 pm. Keira and I come home from Mass- Keira goes to sleep, Mike and crew are still working..... 7 :30 pm- I eat dinner while watching Platinum Weddings on TV- Its a silly show where couples send triple digits to create their fantasy wedding....9:30 pm- Mike and crew finish for the day and we go to bed. What an exciting way to ring in the New Year. Oh well.. My life might not be terribly exciting but someone ( in the below pictures) thinks I am pretty exciting. Hopefully she will think that for at least the next 25 years.

typical NH December Day...

And there you have it- MORE SNOW. We awoke to yet another storm - the 1-3 inches predicted ended up being a little more than that. Its rather warm outside so the snow is wet and heavy. Mike and I headed outside this morning while Keira took a nap. Our not so nice old man neighbor(with the snowblower he won't share) came outside and yelled "PULL PULL!!!" We aren't sure if he meant push push.. since we were shoveling......
We got a good work-out shoveling the heavy stuff. Mike has some new snow pants my brother kindly gave him. They are rather cute... they have suspenders.... I took some pics but the camera was in the wrong mode so they didn't turn out and Mike threatened to hide the camera if I posted pics of him in his cute snow pants... :o( Oh well...

The heavy wet stuff!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!- Mike getting ready to go shovel.

cousins!!!

Alex... Uncle Peter

Touble- I mean Luke Kateri, Trouble, and Gianna

whats left of the wall...

The plaster is all gone... here is what is left of the wall between my kitchen and living room. Next weekend even these boards will be gone.

more construction

Mike measuring where the new recessed lights are going to go. Mike and Hippert standing around- I mean working.....
Keira and I are going to Warner for the day to get out of the way. When we get back the wall where Mike and Hippert are standing will be torn down to the studs so they can move electrical around in preparation to get rid of that wall and open up my living and dining room.



My plastic covered living room......

Its a belly laugh!!!

Keira had a stinky diaper this evening. Mike went to go change her and grabbed a plastic grocery bag to put the dirty diaper in (once we tainted her digestive systme with solids her poops aren;t as odor free as they used to be).. ANYWAYS -Keira started laughing hysterically at the crinkly noise the grocery bag made... and I caught it on video... :o) Enjoy- its only 1 min long.

Good Bye Christmas decorations already!! :O(

Unfortunately some serious construction is about to take place at our house- the construction is a good thing but the timing is not. Because we do not want our nice Christmas tree and decorations to get all covered in plaster dust we have begun to put away the Christmas decorations. I am one of those people that never puts Christmas stuff away till at least after January 6th--therefor I am just a little sad to be putting them away adecorations already. Keira enjoyed chewing on ribbons and various decorations as I was putting them away. The above picture is of our tree all lonely without any decorations.

My first Christmas!!!!

Keira sitting pretty in her Christmas jammies- Keira being held by her only female cousin- Kateri


Keira and dada snuggling- All the Kalpakgians working hard shoveling the ice from the driveway- except for Mike- you can tell he is a Vigneau- He is just standing around watching everyone else work!! :o)

Pathetic Excuse for a Gingerbread House

Ok...so we started a tradition. Make a gingerbread house. We used the store bought gingerbread in the boxes, which is not the problem that occurred. We decided to build a structure out of cardboard which worked great. I designed a nice colonial with an attached garage. Of course, my mind's eye sees things much better than they ever turn out :)

Tanya had some "ingenious" ideas.

One...she was trying to figure out how to make grass/landscaping (don't forget that a gingerbread house is supposed to be surrounded by snow for winter). Well...she took the scissors, opened the front door and cut off some of the branches on our bush. Broke them up and used them for grass and bushes.

Two...she wanted to make snow and we didn't buy coconut or marshmallows, she took the extra powdered sugar and poured it over EVERYTHING...so when it moves around, it falls off as it isn't attached to anything.

Three...Tanya wanted a cobblestone driveway so she used Rice Krispies.

Anyways. We went about putting on the graham crackers and such...but right after I frosted the roof, before I could put on anything else, someone got a little overzealous with the spice drops and caused our roof to fall over...

I eventually reinforced it with pull-n-peels, but our house turned out Ghetto.

Anyways...next year we are going to be making separate houses :)

The good thing is that we can't stop laughing at our pathetic house...we will see what Keira thinks tomorrow.

We were going to bring it to Warner, but it is too low class for Tanya's family...so my family will receive the coveted prize package :)

Mike V.

Christmas Eve

Do you like my Christmas dress??? Keira's Godfather gave her 6 new books for Christmas.. including Mama's favorite book Goodnight Moon!!!


Finally- a family pic!! :o) We went to 4 pm Mass at Ste. Marie's. The church was soooooo beautiful!!! We got to church 20 min early but still got stuck in the balcony... Oh well- we took some pretty cool pics!! Stay tuned for gingerbread house pics!!

Daily dose of Keira

Keira enjoying playing with this white ball...

Keira has mastered standing with only one handed assistance!!

Sugar and Cement...

We made a trip to the grocery store to stock up candy and sugar for tomorrows gingerbread house making (the salad is part of dinner not gingerbread house making... just in case you thought we were putting veggies on our gingerbread house).....

Mike figured out what to do about our uneven floor... LEVELING CEMENT!!! Don't you all wish your kitchen looked like this??? Our house is such a mess right now!!!