Visit with the Hardings

After Christmas, Shawn and Lindsey came to visit us for a while on their holiday tour of the country. :0) We were so excited because we got to see little Riley for the first time... and boy is she a cutie! She's already crawling around like crazy and she seems like she is always happy and smiling.




Another highlight of the visit was that they taught us how to play a card game called Pounce which is kind of like a dueling solitaire game played by multiple people (4 players and up is best). We had a great time playing and I can't wait to get more people up to speed so that we can play it again!

My only regret is that I had to work during their visit, so I didn't get to spend as much time with them as I would have liked. Well, I guess we'll just have to visit them in Florida sometime soon!

Christmas Day

Christmas was quiet and a little more subdued than usual this year. We started our morning at my parents' house with Dad cooking the usual ham and eggs for breakfast (yum!). Then, we exchanged grab bag gifts with one another. But I think the true star of the show was Brody, who was celebrating his very first Christmas. He got a ton of gifts and was only awake (and interested) long enough to play with a few of them. But the rest of us had a grand time watching him and playing with him on this special day. We all realize that we have a lot to be thankful for this Christmas.




Next, we travelled over to Paul's parents' house to have Christmas lunch and to exchange gifts with each other there. We had a lot of fun (and so did Bo, Kason and Zoe who ran around like they knew it was a holiday!).

Finally, we headed back home to get things prepared for Christmas dinner, which we hosted at our house this year. We invited both of our families for dinner, so it was a bit of an ordeal trying to setup two tables in the dining room and living room. But after a few iterations we ended up with a suitable arrangement and the dinner went off without a hitch (thanks to Paul's amazing cooking skills).

Annual Christmas Party

Just one short week after throwing a surprise party and then hosting Cookie Day, we again found ourselves frantically cooking, running errands, cleaning and getting our new house ready for the annual Pinchot Christmas Party. Besides the stress of trying to figure out where to plug in various light-up Christmas decorations, roasters and crock pots in our new basement without overloading any circuits, things went really well. We got to break in our new game room with our first big party at the house and lots of family and friends got to see the place for the first time.

The annual Beer Pong Tournament was one of the main events of the night. Frank and John ended up winning the trophy again, with Paul and Nick as runners up. Joe and Garrett also deserve an honorable mention as the most improved team from last year. Kim and I got knocked out early, but we'll be back next year!


You can see more pictures from the party here.

Cookie Day

Every year in December, the Pinchot family gets together for Cookie Day and everyone works together to bake enough Christmas cookies to feed an army. This year was no different except for the fact that we now held the event at our new house in Ambridge. Oh, and our normal pizza lunch was changed because instead we had tons of leftovers from the surprise party the night before! Paul played his usual role of general, directing and conducting the entire event so that cookies continually rolled off of our little assembly line. The rest of us manned the mixing, rolling, and decorating stations. It's like a well-oiled machine. :0)

Surprise 60th!

Over the weekend we had a surprise birthday party for Paul's Dad to celebrate his 60th birthday. It was quite the operation... we decided to have the party on Saturday (Dec 13) even though his actual birthday was on Friday (Dec 12). We figured that the only way we were going to surprise him was to setup a decoy birthday dinner on Friday and pretend like nothing else was happening. We went out to dinner on Friday night to Outback and actually had a really fun time (not that we expected anything different - it was just a little stressful keeping the secret and not slipping up accidentally!). Dad got a birthday sundae and his gifts and had no reason whatsoever to expect that anything would be happening the next day.

We rented the hall at the Sportsmen's Club for the party and invited all of his friends and family. Kim and I spent a hectic morning cooking and picking up last minute items and then we finally headed over to the club to setup the room and decorate. Paul's Mom, Judy, Joe, and Garrett (our volunteer DJ) also pitched in to help during the party prep (thank you all!). We used a "Casino Night" theme and had a bunch of game tables setup where the guests could bet (using fake money we provided).


We scheduled everyone to arrive early so that they would be there before Dad. Paul ended up bringing the guest of honor to the party... he picked his Dad up that evening with the excuse of going Christmas shopping, and made up a fake reason to need to stop at the club to pick up some calendars. We setup a scheme with the bartender at the club so that she would send them both to the back room when they came in to ask about the calendars. It all worked like a charm! He opened the door to the darkened and silent room only to have the lights come up and hear everyone yell, "Surprise!" followed by "Celebration" playing over the sound system. Although Dad says he was completely shocked and surprised and had no idea that we were having a party for him, he really must have a poker face because when he opened the door, he was relatively calm as he surveyed the room full of family and friends:

Overall it was a great time and we hope that he truly enjoyed his party! View more party photos here.