Our Last Holiday in the Hood

After spending the last 4 weeks packing up a storm (and coming within 20 minutes of forgetting our front row tickets to Peter Pan as a result!) it was nice to spend a few nights focusing on friends, family and festivities before the final push to move January 4th. One of the only things we love about our house besides our house itself, is the neighborhood we live in and the magical luminaria tour on Christmas Eve. I still remember the night that Tony brought me through the Huning Castle Neighborhood as we were killing time before picking up my mom and little brother Jon at the airport for the Christmas holiday. We had lived in ABQ for over 2 years and called it home, but I knew instantly that this neighborhood was where I needed to be. #homegoals
Several years passed before we were finally able to purchase a home in the exclusive and coveted neighborhood. With it came many, many setbacks. Our truck and trailer were stolen as I was unpacking only 2 weeks into moving in. Another vehicle was stolen the following year. And another the year after that. And another the year after that....we quickly realized that moving into an affluent neighborhood only showed the criminals that we had things to steal. It was a hard lesson learned.
One thing that never changed was our love for the neighborhood at Christmastime. Every year we would invite friends and family over to celebrate with tamales and cocktails before bundling up and walking the hood taking in the breathtaking luminarias. After 9 years, our last Christmas Eve was truly magical. We gathered quite a crowd and began our walk, stopping at our friends house to warm our bones by their fire pit set up in the driveway (and our bodies with a shot of tequila) while watching our kids swing from the tire swing in their front yard tree. Our next stop was at a fellow firefighter's house who was hosting a huge holiday party, offering us an amazing spread of food from their family's local restaurant. And we could not NOT stop at "drunk Santa's" house for a nightcap with their family who became like family to us over the years. It was everything we imagined it would be...which is a double edged sword. It is going to be hard to find again what we found with our Kit Carson house. But we are so incredibly grateful for the memories!

Santa Made It To Town!

Once again Santa blessed the Mazotti family with presents galore...more this year than ever before. Maybe Santa was trying to make up for the devastation of moving during the holidays. Maybe Santa was rewarding good kids. Maybe Santa just lost his damn mind for a week. We will never know his motivation. What we do know is that Cienna received a death trap hoverboard and AJ got an old school version of a death trap called a skateboard. And I? I got new Lululemon winter tights and the biggest Lush box of bath stuff that money can buy! Boom!

The grandparents gave Santa a run for his money this year! Pops bought AJ his very own Hungarian stamp "starter" set that they can work on together and this picture pretty much sums out how he felt about that....

And as for Cienna...well I have never seen a kid so excited about books in my LIFE!

Christmas 2017 was one to be remembered...both because of it being our last in our "starter" home but also because of how lucky we are!

South Fork Break

It is officially Christmas break, which for us means the calm before the storm that is a brewin! We knew that once we returned from Neverland it would be the great push until the great move to our new house so we made sure that fun was on the menu. And Neverland did not disappoint!

We skied....

We skated...

Some of us better than others...

We sported Diesel all over town...

And we had the time of our lives!

Oh...and we saw a robot.

Thankful

After a fantastic (and much needed) pre-Thanksgiving tradition of getting the hell out of dodge for a weekend while my mom watches the kids, we came back to ABQ and spent the holiday week trying to show my mom a good time. It's a hard balance considering we need to find just the right combination of museum visits, brewery stops and day to day activities. We managed to make everyone happy with a trip to the nail salon....

A day at the Coronado Monument.....

And a few Thanksgiving holiday cocktails at the inlaw's house. Oh and some kids who were at least trying to act thankful!

I am thankful that my mom was able to come and visit (and watch my kids for a few days!) I am also thankful for our health and the fact that we are (mostly) happy. I will let you know if I am thankful our house has an offer and we are moving in a month this time next year!

Keeping Portland Weird

Last weekend we went on our second annual couples trip with our amazingly funny and fun friends Ian and Paige. It's interesting...even though we all have established careers...Ian is an attorney, Paige a nurse practitioner, Tony a firefighter and I a Craigslist baller, we sure do know how to turn all the pressures of the job off and have a good (too good?) time!
After arriving late on Saturday night, we wasted no time resting up and preparing to tackle a new day. That would be the smart thing to do. Instead, we dropped our bags at our uber swanky crib for the weekend and helped to keep Portland weird!

At some point that night I took the liberty of teaching everyone the "Happy Baby" yoga pose, which not only helps relieve lower back tension but also helps soothe your central nervous system in times of stress. It is a bit of an awkward pose and it got even more awkward when, for the rest of the weekend, we could not stop saying "make me happy, baby!"

Namaste

The absolute best part of the weekend (besides for when we left the boys at Deschutes Brewery and went on a shopping spree at Free People) was the Sunday Brunch. It was decadent. It was indulgent. It was delicious. It was 3 hours. It was expensive. It was bottomless mimosas. It was EVERYTHING.

Salty's on the Columbia

I would love to fill you all in on the rest of the trip but to be honest, I don't remember much. Lots of craft brew, lots of walking, lots of drizzle and lots of fun with friends that I love!

Mazotti Halloween

After listing our house for sale on October 14th (and subsequently being forced to stage our house for pictures and live like a Better Homes and Gardens pictorial could be taken at any moment), we did not get to host our annual pumpkin carving event / contest. When I say "we did not get to" I really mean "I did not want to" because after all the work that we put into moving things out of our house to make it look bigger along with all the projects to make the house near perfect condition, the last thing I wanted was to clean up pumpkin seeds and guts off the floor for a week. And although I may have taken the easy way out, I definitely wanted to "walk the hood" for what I can only assume will be the last time as residents. One thing I will miss about Kit Carson and our neighborhood is Halloween. I have never been to another neighborhood in my life that had more kids than this one. It has provided our kids with great memories as they have grown up.

This year Cienna wanted to go as a Hollywood Tower of Terror bellhop, which meant that I had to get creative. She convinced her friend Azlynn (a fellow firefighter's daughter) to join her, and since her mom is currently pregnant with her 4th baby girl, I decided to volunteer to make both of their costumes. Thank GOD for Goodwill Stores and hot glue guns! Overall, I think they came out pretty awesome!

As for AJ, he was easy peasy. We went to Target and he picked out a zombie football player costume. After applying some zombiesque makeup, he went straight into character with absolutely no problem!

I am not sure if it was all the pizza, juice or candy consumption, but after about an hour of trick or treating AJ doubled over with a stomach ache and needed to go home. After high tailing it home and snuggling on the couch for a bit, he quickly recovered and we headed back out to try to fill the pillowcase. The weather was amazing, the candy was abundant, and it was a great final Halloween in the hood!

Twinsies for Lindsay!

Last weekend I got to fly home to meet Lindsay's twinsies! Born on October 7th, Lindsay's "Japicans" Mario and Kamryn were absolute doll babies. It seemed like ages since I had held an infant, yet it brought back many memories that I had long since forgotten. On one hand I had so much advice that I wanted to share, tips to make it easier (if that is even possible), funny little stories that came back to me. On the other hand I didn't want to be that annoying girl who couldn't stop talking about HER babies and HER experiences and, let's face it, I really don't have a DAMN CLUE what it is like to have twins!

Twins are on another level. I mean, I know what it's like to have one baby who loved the swing and one baby who loved to be held, but not at the same time! Lindsay and her husband got lucky though...they have one chill baby (boy) and one high maintenance (girl) so God gave them a bit of a break. And although Lindsay appears to be a pretty calm and easygoing mom, I can't help but want to drive home how fast it goes by. How important it is to soak it up and relish in the midnight snuggle time because it won't last forever. Just like generation after generation of moms tried to tell their babies when they had kids...we want so badly for them to understand how true it is. But it is futile. It is the nature of the beast. Moms with babies are bogged down by being moms with babies and moms with toddlers are bogged down with trying not to lie down in traffic somewhere, and moms with school aged kids are bogged down with shuttling them everywhere, and moms of teenagers are bogged down by trying to keep them alive, and moms of adults are bogged down with the thought that it all went by too damn fast.

I wish I lived closer. I wish I could pop over and hold them every day until they didn't want to be held anymore. And then I could play with them until they didn't want to play. But for now I will have to settle for daily pictures via text message and stories from 3 states away....