Lazzara Life

The day after Christmas we headed out to Boone/Blowing Rock North Carolina. An 11 hour drive from our house. This was the first long road trip for our family & I have to say it went very well!! We loaded up in the car at 5 am, and we had already packed up the car the day before, so we were on our way… The girls went back to sleep until about 7:30 and then everyone was hungry. We stopped at McDonald’s & I noticed that Lorin didn’t look so hot. She said she didn’t feel bad, but not too good either. After we got in the car, we drove for about 10 minutes when she was making these horrible sounds & I looked back at her & she was GREEN! We pulled over immediately & she got sick. Great! 9 hours to go & she’s sick. This is not going to be fun. Luckily, she didn’t get sick again and we made it to NC without incident. Well, that was UNTIL we got there. Rich went in to the rental office to get the key to our cabin & the manager came out & said, that there was a really bad ice storm & there was a power line down in our area & our cabin did not have power. We took the keys and went to take a look for ourselves. We thought, we’ve been without power at home when we’ve had a hurricane, so it might not be too bad? Maybe we can rough it & still be in our cute little cabin? WRONG!! This is our cabin with the power line in the front yard.

We went inside & it was so perfect, just like a post card, but it was FREEZING! So after contemplating for a few minutes we decided that it was probably not the best idea to stay there with no heat, no power & a power line a few feet out the front door, no matter how beautiful it was. So here’s Rich taking the girls back to the car (because it wasn’t safe for them to walk outside, yet another reason)… Notice all of the broken trees & ice!!

Next we went back to the rental office to turn in the keys & get our refund. We then drove about 5 minutes down the road to see if there were any rooms available at a hotel we had seen. Right about when we were leaving the rental office, Avery announced that she didn’t feel very well. About 2 minutes later, she got sick! Luckily I had brought her up front with me, with a seatbelt on, not the safest thing, I know, but I’d rather her be close to a window than get sick in the back of the car. She has gotten sick in the car before & it is not pretty! Anyway, she got sick right outside of the car window (gross!) and proceeded to vomit for the next 24 hours straight. So that’s how Avery & I spent our first day in NC!

There was a beautiful park across the street, so Rich took Haley & Lorin out for the afternoon to explore!
The next day, Avery was all better, so we went tubing in Hawksnest. Rich took some video, I will post it once he gets it off his Flip…

On our way back to the hotel, we passed a sign for “Avery County”, so of course we had to get out of the car & take Avery’s picture by it. No shoes & all.

There was a local magazine in our room & I read that Avery County is the biggest suppliers of Christmas trees in the world. Pretty cool!

We went to dinner at a really cute restaurant and then stopped at Kilwin’s, a very yummy ice cream parlor with homemade fudge & chocolates too.

That night, guess what? Haley got sick! yep, another 12 hours of yuck! The next day, she was a real trooper & went out with us. We had breakfast in our room & then headed out to a local playground. I told her I’d stay back with her in the room, but she felt well enough to go out for a little while. We then came back to our room for a nap & then went into town to go see “The Princess & The Frog” at the movie theater.

There was a tennis court with lots of snow that had turned icey, so it was like ice skating…

On our last day, we went over to a friends’ home. We will likely stay with them next time we go, but they had family in town, so it didn’t work out this time. Anyway, Mrs. Dawn prepared a wonderful breakfast for us & Mr. Scott took us around the property & we all had a fun time playing with their 3 dogs, Montana, Aspen & Hunter & sledding in their yard. The girls were in heaven & this was for sure the best day we had the whole trip!

We had a great time & will visit again!! Here’s a final photo, the view from our balcony~

One of the things we did while in Uganda this summer was take part in a ministry called “God is Grace”.

Hopefully this video will inspire you to share it with others in hopes that we can raise more support for the women of “God is Grace.” We had 31 women this year who were sponsored by women in the U. S. and so far, we have seen the women of Uganda make major strides to learn a trade so that they can support their families. Women are the most neglected of Uganda, they rarely have opportunity so this ministry is trying to supply income for these women as they learn to farm, learn to raise goats and pigs, take tailoring classes, learn to make necklaces made of paper (you can find out more about these at www.thebeautifullife.com where they are sold), and can learn how to braid hair. Some women have even started different types of businesses like buying a cordless phone and charging people to use it!

On this video you will actually see our first graduating class of women who have learned to tailor. These women went to class for a whole year once a week in order to learn this trade.

In God is Grace this year, we were able to train 31 women who now have the opportunity to support their families. We are looking currently for women in the US to support women in Uganda for 2010. If you are interested, contact me!

As we remember and celebrate the birth of our Savior, let us rejoice in the blessing of His unending love.

Christmas day is jam packed for us! We get up, sing Happy Birthday to Jesus & open our gifts. Avery still believes in Santa, so we leave one thing our from the guy in the red suit. This year is was her scooter.
Haley & Lorin said their Christmas jammies made them feel a little naked for some reason, so we though tutu’s would make it all better.

The girls always get a dollar amount spent on them & they know if they want a big items, that means the will only get a few things… They also shop for each other, buy Mommy & Daddy gifts at their school Christmas store & receive 1 gift each from Serafina. It is always fun & interesting to see what we all get, because we do not help them pick things out. Avery usually buys something she wants to play with & Haley & Lorin are always aware of exactly the other will want.

Poppe, Tracey & Billy then come over for breakfast & to exchange gifts.

Our next stop is my parents house where we exchange gifts & then the family comes over for brunch.
This year, Granny has been very busy with her new hobby, crocheting! She made LOTS of things!!! Here are a few of her creations. There are a lot that are not photographed, like a huge afghan for our couch, a hat, scarf & purse for me & a few other things she made for the girls.

Harley doesn’t get too involved in the gift opening like he used to.

The family made their way to enjoy all the yummy food my mom & I had prepared the day before.
src=”http://lazzaralife.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/img_2783.jpg?w=300″ alt=”" title=”IMG_2783″ width=”300″ height=”225″ class=”alignnone size-medium wp-image-1116″ /><img

Then the kids, and the boys went outside to test Christian’s new paintball gun.
>

After all that fun, we made our way to Mimi’s house to open our last round of gifts and have Christmas dinner with the family.
One of our family gifts that we all got were marshmallow shooters, what fun these little guns are!

Haley & Lorin now both have a DS, so we may never see them again.

The girls also got new converse, which the absolutely love!!

When it was time to leave, we wanted to get a picture of all the girls with their angel’s in Mimi’s yard…

We hurried home to get to bed, since we were leaving the next morning at 5 AM for North Carolina!!

Our tradition for Christmas Eve is for me (Melissa) to help my mother prepare brunch for Christmas Day at my parents house. We will bake everything the day before & re-heat so there is no cooking on Christmas morning. This is a must for us because we have SO much to do! We have the same menu each year & it goes very smoothly. After all the cooking is finished we get ready to go to a church service. We typically go to Mimi’s church service in St Pete, but her’s wasn’t until 7:30 this year, so we went to our church! This was the first time we had been to our Christmas Eve service in many years & it was very nice to be there, especially since it was our first Christmas with our new pastor. After church we headed over to Aunt Gina & Uncle Joe’s house for dinner, gift exchange & spending quality time with our family!!

I believe Haley took all of the pictures on Christmas Eve, so enjoy! Here is her self portrait with Marie…

Grandma…

Avery & Ava

Joe & Catherine

Poppe being silly…

Tony…

And me & Tracey…

We had a great Christmas Eve, as usual, went home to go to bed & see what Santa would bring in the morning!

Okay, so these are from about 2 weeks to a week ago, but we’ve been super busy with all the Christmas festivities that I have not had time to post at all!

Family tradition is to get in the car with our jammies on, bring blankies & pillows & go look at Christmas lights. Serafina loves to come out with us! There are 2 particular neighborhoods that we see each year near our home, and here are some pictures of our outing.

We also had our annual “Kid’s Party” with the Preseau’s, Phelps’, Cordero’s and McKeehan’s. This year it was only us, the P’s and the C’s. The Phelps’ were sick & the McKeehan’s had just had baby #4, so we were a small party of 10 kids instead of of 18 (this is 5 families!). We had a Girls VS. Boys Gingerbread house decorating contest, gift exchange & yummy lunch. Here are some photos.
Here is Alex heading the “boy’s team”

and Haley heading the “girl’s team”


The little ones, Maya and Jordan ate most of the candy & then Avery and Alex got into an icing fight…

Grandma Cordero judged the contest & thought the girls had the best house.

Then they opened gifts & played until it was time to go home.