Christmas Day!

Here are a couple pics from Christmas day! I love KCAL 9 who on Christmas morning has a yule log image on the tv and plays Christmas music. You can see it in the pic of me Christmas morning. We turn it on every Christmas and open our presents to the sound of the fire place and music! It's hilarious! Then after over eating and over sleeping we took a walk on the pier and enjoyed being in California and not in a snow storm somewhere! Oh yeah - and Jeff TOTALLY surprised me with the Cannon Rebel I have been wanting! It's rad!

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVE!!!

Delicious Mexican Christmas Eve Dinner
Luke and Jake
SANTA!!!!
THE PICKLE WINNER!!!
The Family

I can't believe another year has come and gone! What a great amazing Christmas this was! We got to go to Saint George to visit with Jeff's parents and grandparents and then back to spend Christmas Eve with my family! We have a very fun German tradition of finding the pickle ornament on the tree and with my family it gets very intense on who wins. In years past there has been pushing, cheating, and tackling of the person who finds it - all that aside - it is so fun. We have been doing this for who knows how many years and I have never won - UNTIL THIS YEAR!!! I found it and quietly stepped away from the tree before celebrating to avoid the mishaps of previous years! Santa found his way to my parents house and we caught him! :) It was such a fun Christmas and it is always so great to get together with family and friends and remember the true meaning of Christmas.

Dinner Group!

The cooks!
The Lombardi's - Dawn, Jack, Brian, & Ruby is laying somewhere on the floor!
The Koch's - Adam, Charlie, and Nora
The Duncan's - Jamin, Lisa, and Zoe

This last year our Dinner group has been a saving grace for me! It has been so nice only cooking once a week and then having dinners show up at my house the other nights! I have loved everyones recipes and trying dishes that I would never attempt to make! This last week for my dinner night I had the dinner group over at my parents house for a Christmas dinner! It was so fun getting to actually hang out with everyone rather than the quick knock and drop off! :) THANK YOU DINNER GROUP! I don't know what I will do with myself when we stop doing this! I guess Wahoos and Fiesta will start calling us by our first name again! :)

SANTA - I KNOW HIM!

The REAL Santa!
Dawn and Jack
My super fun nephews and mom!
My Dinner Partner!

To keep with the Draeger tradition we went to see Santa at Fashion Island because that is where the real Santa is! It is always a fun tradition and my dad thinks we have been doing it has a family for about 18 years so we have it down to a system. This year however Santa's elf was less than nice. There was a new rule that you can only take one picture with your personal camera and she was making sure that everyone followed the rule. When my whole family got gathered around Santa we had our friends Dawn and Brian take our 1 picture. Well I guess that Dawn took one with her camera and Brian took one with my Camera and the elf was NOT happy. She told Dawn and Brian that they now didn't get a picture for their family because they took 2 and then she pushed Dawn outside of the door! She was CRAZY! Luckily Santa was amazing and we all got great pictures with Santa and Dawn and Brian were still able to take 1 with their camera! After we enjoyed the food court where we draw names to see who we are partners with! Another fun year! Thanks Lombardi's for dealing with the mean elf - she will get coal in her stocking for sure! (PS - Jeff had a work meeting that night. We had one picture of us in front of Santa's village before he had to leave, but I looked 300+ lbs in it so it does not get posted! I just didn't want people thinking there was trouble in paradise! :) )

Newport Boat Parade

Lisa, Zoe, Me, and Julie
One of the very cool boats
Jeff and his new friend playing Wii.
Our fun group! Followed by the all the old roomies! :)
A must around the holidays is the Newport Beach Boat parade. We were lucky enough to watch it this year from our friends AMAZING boat. The night was complete with good friends, good music, and of course hot chocolate! :) Although about half way through the night I realized I hadn't seen Jeff for a really long time. So I went down below to find him and all the kids on the boat playing Wii. I love the picture of Jeff above celebrating his victory over his new friend. Maybe after all the Christmas craze we will have to get us a Wii. But thanks again to the Yakety Yak boat and to all of our good friends!

MY 25th BIRTHDAY! :)

I have lots of traditions for my birthday! Every year we go to Knotts Berry Farm on my birthday. I look forward to it every year and love ending the day on The Ghost Rider! Plus I think I'm the only person who gets funnel cakes as their birthday cake, but how can you not when you are at Knotts! It was freezing this year, but we had so much fun! Dad even went on the Accelerator and mom was a champ walking through the park after knee surgery. It is also a tradition that we get our Christmas tree on my birthday! I LOVE IT! A BIG THANKS to everyone who always makes my birthday special! And in case you were wondering - yes - I really am 25 again!

Introducing - Stella Rae

On November 24th I was made an aunt again! I wanted to show off my adorable new niece courtesy of Jason and Christy!

Stella Rae Draeger is the first girl on the Draeger side! She weighed in at 8 pounds 3 ounces and 20.5 inches long. We are so glad that she is finally here!