HAPPY LAST DAY OF 2007!!

HERE'S TO ANOTHER GREAT YEAR! **CHEERS!!!**

Christmas Morning at the Denault's

presents under our tree


our stockings stuffed


i'll try to remember what everyone got for christmas

tony's presents: winter jacket, leather coat, gun safe, gun carrying case, sudoka books, jeans, blue shirt, white shirts, black/white socks, underwear, laptop bag, micro SD cards, plane drawing, axe kit, gift cert to bestbuy, snow pants, flight simulator 10 expansion pack, halo 3 xbox game, canada sweatshirt. christmas at his parents he got: bling-bling watch, track pants, emergency power pack for car, more black socks for work, gloves.


my christmas presents: car starter, ipod and stereo system, bed of roses dvd, harry potter 4, micro sd card, camera for computer, cranberries cd, scrapbook computer program, print shop computer program, retractable clothesline, maternity jeans, runners, slippers, lotion, card game, minidisc disks, season 7-9 king of queens, lotto tickets (i won $27), magazines, keychain flashlight, scrapbook stuff, family ornament, willow tree figurine, precious moments figurine, sweat pants, canada sweatshirt and comfy socks (those are not in the pic cause i was wearing them!) at his parents: snow pants, winter boots, hot sauce, candle.


mady's presents: table & chairs, kitty pillowcase, sit n spin, so many outfits, slippers, bath toys, water baby, toy vacuum cleaner, potty/kissy baby, sled, dvd's, puzzle book, sippie cups. that's the quick version...you can see what dvd's, bath toys and outfits in the picture if it's enlarged so no need to descibe each one. at grandma's: pj's, tea set, baby, coloring book/crayons, blanket.


as family gifts from his family we got: bath towel sets, computer desk, gift cert to buffalo wings 3.

i can't leave out the dogs: dog bed, watering dish, 7 toys to share, a pack of treats each, dental sticks to share.

now that we all have winter gear (snow pants, boots, warm gloves, hats) we are looking forward to some outdoor family fun which will start tomorrow. tony's last day home before he goes back to work we are going sledding with the cousins. should be lots of fun and we'll find out just how warm our new winter outdoor wear really is!! :)

there was just way too much stuff to remember and i am postive some was left out. so sorry but as you can tell we had a wonderful christmas, are looking forward to the new year and the new baby and just can't wait for next christmas!! no big plans for new years eve. tony will be at work and even if he was home, i am usually in bed between 9-10pm so nothing exciting would be happening anyways. we were just happy to have him home for christmas day.

FROM THE DENAULT'S TO ALL OF YOU, HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL!!!

1 MORE DAY TIL CHRISTMAS!!!

i have actually been counting down for 10 days but didn't bore you with it. i am so excited, as i am ever year!!
so to people i won't be talking to before then, MERRY CHRISTMAS!

our christmas picture. probably taken too late to mail out to some people but once it is edited and cropped and put on a christmas card, i'll post it again or email it so it can be printed.


pictures of how much snow we got yesterday. we had a blizzard. we got about 1.5 feet but with the snow drift they are saying more like 3 feet. and yes, there is a car under all that snow in the first pix!! :) the pile by our cars is about 7 feet high. and see our candy canes in the front yard, they are half covered. compare them to my first picture of how much you can see of them.




as requested by kl, a picture of my belly...and i am only 17.5 weeks. everyone tells me it's gonna be a boy. but we call the baby "pokey."



mady all dressed up for winter fun!


mady on the sled with mama and lily!


just wanted to show you these cute little cones we bought. the perfect size for kids.

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DEAR KRYSTIN
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU,
....AND MANY MORE!!!"

Hope you have a fantastic day and get lots of great presents. i know you'll get at least one great gift...mine!! :)

House Decorations

this is what tony worked on for 2.5 hours yesterday. it's finally done and it looks a lot better than i imagined. the lights coming out of the house are a christmas tree with a snowflake on top. pretty cool. originally we wanted to put a shape of a tree on the house but the upstairs and downstairs windows/door are not equal so the tree would be crooked, so he came up with this idea. after the house was decorated we went next door to the store to sign up for the decoarting contest and found out the judging will be done tonight. good timing, huh?!?! and this year there are prizes for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place and every participant gets a hand decorated ornament for entering. so far there are only 4 houses entered.

it's beginning to look a lot like christmas.....

we bought our christmas tree tonight and decorated it. we went real this year cause we are gonna buy a real nice fake one after christmas once they are sale. we went to two different cut down your own tree lots and were surprised that on dec 10th they were not open. the lots that sell precut ones have been opened since day after thanksgiving. we wanted to go cut one down as a family. mady was all bundled up with her snowpants, hat, boots, gloves and winter coat. she was ready to go walking through trails and trails of trees until we found the perfect one. we still got the perfect tree we just didn't cut it down ourselves but we had to pick it out of a bunch of other beautiful trees. so it's almost the same. our mantle is all decorated with our stockings and garland. and this year was the first that we decorated the wall like we did and we like it so it may stay for the years to come. things will change as years go on and we buy different decorations but this works for this year. we haven't decoratd the outside of the house which is really late for us. we want to change it and tony just started his vacation so will have tons more time to do. i just hope we can get done what he wants before christmas!! he has an extravagant idea and i really hope it works out cause it sounds beautiful but a lot of hard work.

(you can see the decorations best in this pix)

(you can see the lights better in the pix)

A Few Surprises

to start off, here is a picture of my new hairdo. i got a perm and i love it. before i would give myself an hour to get ready with showering, doing my hair and such but now all i need is 25 mins. it's great. i got sick of it being flat and always down but it was too short in the front to go up in a ponytail and i thought about cutting it short again but i worked so hard to grow it out, i just couldn't go through with it. i really like it and don't regret it.


speaking of hair, mady got her first haircut on wed. it was more of a trim/ shaping, to keep it out of her eyes but i saved a lock of it. she was so good for the hairdresser and got a candy cane afterwards.


another surprise is our new dog, cole. we named him that cause we weren't expecting to get "coal" for christmas. nice play on words, huh! we thought it was funny. plus he's black so it fits. he's a miniature schnauzer like rj. he's mostly black but as you can see in the pix he's salt and pepper on the legs and also on his ears and tummy. we're not sure if he is going to stay mainly black or turn all salt and pepper.


here's mady playing in cole's dog kennel. she got in her self and you can tell by the smile on her face that she's not hating it either! what a goof


i saved the best for last. mady has started potty training. she has been sitting on the potty many times a day since saturday after thanksgiving but her first time going pee was on wed, which i missed cause i was at a dr's appt that lasted 2.5 hours. so always in the morning after getting up and after naps and again when i feel like it throughout the day, we sit on the potty for as long as she stays there, which normally lasts 5-10 mins depending on how well you can distract her. but today, after nap her diaper was dry so i put her on and after 5-6 mins, she went. i clapped and yelled telling her what a good girl. after she carried the bucket to the bathroom, dumped her pee in the toilet and flushed it she got a treat.

BIRTHDAY WISHES

A HAPPY 1ST BIRTHDAY TO SCOTTIE!!

A HAPPY BELATED 19TH BIRTHDAY TO LAURENNE!! (i did wish her a happy bday on the phone so it's not like i forgot yesterday)

Black Friday

even though it's almost a week after the fact, i thought i would tell what a great time we had black friday shopping and brag about some of the deals i got! i can't mention items by name in case tony reads this blog since all the best deals i got were on his christmas gifts. one item was regularly $160 and i paid $26, i got something else for $20 when it originally cost $80 and i paid $10 for another thing when it would cost $50 on any other day. those three items were the best deals i got. mady got a sit'n'spin toy for $10 but i don't know the original price, i just know it didn't cost as low as $10. we were up by 3am and jen, lily and grandma were here a little after 4am. if i had known they would have been late, i could have slept in for 20 more mins!! :) they were supposed to be her at 3:45. we got to watertown about 5:30 and started at supercenter walmart. compared to last year on black friday, i spent over $200 at walmart but this year i only spent $35. most of the stuff we wanted for mady wasn't on sale and i knew tony would want to help me shop for her christmas presents so if it wasn't on sale, i didn't buy it so tony and i could go present shopping for her together. after walmart, we went to cracker barrel for breakfast, we were there from 6:30-8:15. the coolest thing happened there. a man with a beard and a bit of a belly looked like santa claus and the kids got excited and just keep staring at him. he noticed and after a bit came to our table and introduced himself to the kids as santa claus and normally he wasn't supposed to do that but was out early before christmas to check up on some kids. their faces lit like up a christmas tree and just totally made their day, considering it started so early they were so happy after that. we went to target next but had we known that they would have sold out of everything they had in their flyer and on sale by 8am, we would have gone there first before breakfast. they had some good deals on board games, a camera sara wanted to get and toys. so needless to say no one spent more than $20. then we found ourselves at kohls where i saved the $134 on that one particular gift. sara wanted to go to kmart cause they had something in their flyer she wanted but mady was half asleep and lily was so i stayed in the car with mady and carol sat with lily and abby. lastly, we were at the mall and i can't even tell you what stores i went to or what i bought. by that time, everything was a blur!! j/k. i know i got mady two outfits and tony stocking stuffers and such. mady was an excellent little shopper that day despite how early i got her up. i woker her up about 4:05 but she actually didn't wake up til i put her in her carseat around 4:15. thinking she would instantly fall back asleep in the car, i thought she would sleep at least for another hour but she was awake all the way til about 10 mins away from walmart. the drive, 5 mins, between walmart and the restaurant she slept again. she was awake all through target, kohls and while we waited for sara and jen in kmart she slept for another 10-15 mins. she woke up when i took her out the car to be put in her stroller to shop in the mall. we waited for about an hr before we ate at the food court and i put her down for a nap which started about 12:30-12:45 til 4pm. was my kid tired or what!!! we left the mall around 4:50 but stopped at walmart again and was home by 6:45. what a day!!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!

tomorrow mady and i will be up early, early, early to go black friday shopping. we will be shopping with auntie jennie, lily, grandma, sarah (a fellow state troppers wife) and her daughter abby. we want to be in watertown by 5am so i will be at 3 to get ready. lucky me...i better get some good deals!
even though we had our family thanksgiving dinner on mon, the only day everyone was home or off from work, tonight i will be cooking for my family a ham and some other thansgiving fixins for the first time. we sure hope it turns out edible! :)
enjoy your turkeys and time with family. i'll let you know how tomorrow goes.

These are my two scrapbook pages to contribute to my grandma's bday present. Everyone in the family was to make a scrapbook page of their family and they would added to an album that she already has. I am proud of myself because I just started the first page last night and all I had to do today was glue the pictures down and write on the second page. I hope you can see them okay.

New Post

Since it is time for me to post again and I don't have anything to post about, I suppose I can do those 6 things calicanadiangirl tagged me to do.
1. Ever since I was pregnant with Madiysn, I can not sleep without a pillow between my knees/legs.
2. I have more pictures of Madisyn from over the past 17 months then Tony and I have of us in the past 5 years we have been together.
3. I have not become a better cook since becoming a mother! (but I am trying harder)
4. I miss my family and wish we could see each other more. (I only add this too tease saying they should move closer to me!!)
5. I want a tattoo and to go sky-diving, scuba diving, parachuting, and other things I don't know what they are called...like flying behind a boat, caving, being lost in the wilderness for days (but please someone save me!!), going somewhere exotic. I think you get the point.
6. I want 12 kids but Tony and I will have 3 or 4. Realistically we wouldn't have 12 kids due to costs of raising them and of course, our sanity!!

halloween costumes

lily was a princess kangaroo. she original wanted to be a kangaroo so jen bought one online. then she got a princess dress/outfit just for play and bedtime. so she decided she wanted to be a princess for halloween. but it was not really a costume so she put it over her kangaroo costume and so as it turned out she was a princess kangaroo. she was so cute and everyone else thought so too.


masen was boba fatt from star wars. i don't even know if that is the right name or spelling. i have never seen any of the star wars movie and don't plan to.


mack was jango fatt, boba fatt's brother in star wars.


and i saved the best for last!! :) mady as a ladybug. i thought for sure i had finally got her smilinmg in her costume but once i took the picture she moved and so it turned out blurry. you can still see her smile though.


we went trick-or-treating just in richville. chris drove the quad and pulled us on the wagon. way better cause the kids didn't get tired so we got to do more houses than last year. mady was having so much fun, hence all the smiling. it wasn't really quicker doing it this way but like i said because the kids didn't have to walk we went done side street and up further on the roads. they got alot of candy. remember how big her trick-or-treat bag was, it was over half full from only an hour and a half. they were getting full size candy bars and bags full of candy.
i tried to get a picture of all the kids in their costumes on the wagon but since we were always stopping and getting out, driving a little and then stopping again there wasn't much time in between to get the four of them ready for a picture.
it's kinda sad that after a whole year, halloween is over in 90 mins but we had so much anyways!!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

hope everyone has fun trick-or-treating tonight and get lots of good candy.

our house decorated for halloween

the decorations may be lame but it's something and it's all we had. at least it is better than nothing and more than some people in richville did.

our pumpkins. tony carved the cat and "trick-or-treat." mine are the "boo" and the jack-o-lantern. you can tell which two are mine cause they are so lame!! he's the artist, can you tell?!?! :)





a skeleton we have hanging from each side of our door from the flag poles.


a bat also hanging from each side of the door from the flag poles.


headstones in our yard with skeletons or ghosts on them and say "RIP"


eyes that light up and flash on our door windows.


our front porch with all the pumpkins and you can see the eyes on the door and skeletons hanging. on the right side of the porch in the grass there is a pumpkin that also lights up and flashes. in the front yard there is a ghost that does the same but i don't think you can see it any of the pictures. plus they are really small so are hard to see unless you enlarge the pix by clicking on it.


we wanted to put cob web covering the porch and kinda enclosing it in but it was too windy. maybe we can get it done tomorrow.

mady in her ladybug halloween costume. i just couldn't wait til halloween to take a picture and show it you guys. you'd think by the size of her trick-or-treat bag that i am expecting her to get a lot of candy!! :)

she kept trying to take her hat off. i doubt she will be wearing it at all while trick-or-treating.


just thought this was a cute picture cause of the way she has her hand resting on the side of her face.


while she was napping on the couch one day, i again thought the way she had her hands placed was so cute.


she loves playing in the leaves. i think we rake them up more for her to play in them than to actually clean up the yard!!


anyways, just a few pictures i thought i would share.

Mady being asked Q's

i figured it was time to post again and what better to post about than mady!! so here's a video showing you just how smart our little girl is. she's being saying these things for awhile but would never do them for a camera until now and as you can tell, even now she wasn't particularly cooperating but it's something. i hope you can make out what she is saying even though her head is sometimes buried and she is constantly moving. Enjoy!!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!!
for my birthday today we went to red lobster for lunch but did not go to a movie cause instead we bought the new 3 hr transformers movie to watch tonight. we went shopping at the mall and i got a new pair of jeans, a long sleeve brown shirt and a sweater from tony and mady and of course two lovely cards that they gave me at lunch. carol had a birthday dinner for me with jen and the kids over. i got to eat an ice cream cake...YUMMY!!! i only have ice cream cake once a year and it's always for my birthday. for presents from masen (actually they were from everyone but every one i opened he said it was from him, it was so cute), i got a pair of new balance shoes, a pair of crocs that are lined with fleece that are so comfy and warm and an apple scented kit that includes body spray, lotion and shower gel. well now we are going to begin our 3 hr movie and hopefully i will be able to stay awake for all of it!! :)

HAPPY CANADIAN THANSGIVING!!!

our big girl

madisyn's room all set up for a big girl. it's been set up since monday but we waited for daddy to be home until she slept in her big girl bed. tonight will be her first night in her bed. her room is all set up with toys, books and a chair so when she wakes up in the morning she can just get out of bed and play. she already knows how to get in and out of bed by herself. we are so excited for her to be out of her crib and in a big bed. not that we are in a rush for her to grow up or anything but it's still exciting.


another reason we waited for daddy to get home until she slept in her big girl bed was so he could make her door into a dutch door, which is a door cut in half. on the bottom half, he made a shelf/ledge. this way she has to stay in her room in the mornings instead of heading for the stairs but she's not totally closed in like a full door being closed. we'll put a gate up after the bathroom door so if she ever wants to in the morning, once she's up she can come into our bed but obviously we would have to leave her door open.


once she is asleep tonight in her big girl bed i will take a picture so tomorrow i can post a pix of her sleeping in her bed for the first time.

Here are a few pictures of our time in Alexandria bay where we went on a lunch cruise, toured Boldt Castle and spent the night. We went with our friends Jeff and Carrie.

Here are some pictures of just a few of the houses on millionarie row that we cruised by while on the boat:




us on the dock outside of boldt castle:


our cruise boat:


outside of castle:


a picture of all four of us while on the boat:


some pictures of the inside of the castle:








here's our hotel that we stayed in. it was taken from the boat: