End of Another Great Year!

It's the end of another great year!

We had so many good times and once again are so lucky and fortunate.

The girls went to grandma and grandpa's tonight while we attended our first OCW New Year's Eve Party.  As much as I missed the girls tonight, it was nice to have an adult night.  One where you could actually pay attention to all of the conversations that were taking place.  It was held at Elizabeth and John's, in their newly finished basement.  John was serving a few specialty cocktails and Elizabeth made an amazing meal.  We all pitched in with sides and snacks.

About half way through the night you couldn't hear yourself think.  So many people, so many conversations, so much fun!

The party at the Wust's ended around 1 am and then picked up at the Parmley Center shortly after.  The last guests checked out around 5 am (a new record!)

I couldn't think of a better group of people to ring in the New Year with.  We have enjoyed our neighborhood so much this year and have made some forever friends.

Christmas Take 2

I love watching these kids play so much.  Today the new neighbors Andrew and Ashley were also out sledding down the Goman's hill.  

Tonight we have another Christmas celebration at Kristin and Bobby's since Kristin had to work on Christmas.  We exchanged gifts, ate lots of great food and the kids got to put together a gingerbread house.  Merry Christmas again!

Paddington, Party of 3

Today we went with Jacob to see the movie Paddington.

Hannah got herself ready which included spending a few minutes in the bathroom curling her own hair.  Yikes!  As much as I loved watching her and seeing her developing another form of independence, it also made me want to cry.  My little girl is growing up so much.

The kids liked the movie but enjoyed hanging out with each other even more.

Christmas 2015

It's sort of funny how the year seems to revolve around Christmas.  It's probably more of the Christmas season in general which ends with New Year's.  

We hosted Christmas this year.  The first (I hope of many) in our new house!

 

This was a green Christmas.
I thought this is what I always wanted and now that we are actually celebrating Christmas with no snow, I am not so sure.  It's just not right.

As always there was no shortage of gifts under the tree.

Hannah got her Hideaway Pet and Hailey got a new super shiny Barbie car.

Hailey got a guitar from Grandma Chris and Hannah got a keyboard.  We were serenaded all afternoon.  Very reminiscent of the Sara Broadway days :-)

Christmas usually consists of a Facetime/Skype with the family in Ecuador.  The days of running into the kitchen to be next in line for the corded phone attached to the wall are long gone.  Now they are literally passed around the family while everyone says their hellos.

At the end of the day the girls were exhausted and enjoyed some snuggle time with Uncle Tommy while watching the classic movie The Christmas Story.  I love that they are getting old enough to appreciate 'real' movies.

Time to Say Goodbye

Tonight Santa will pick Lula up and take her back to the North Pole. 

Each year I get worse and worse at remembering to take pictures.  On one hand I have really appreciated just taking in the moments and not having to worry about capturing everything but at the same time I am sort of sad that I haven't been as good as remembering to take them.  It feels like so much time passes and then before you know it, you have missed things. 

Christmas Eve and the kids were full of energy, excited to open their presents.

Grandma made all of the kids jammie pants, which were a huge hit!

 

A goodbye letter for Lula.

Cookies and milk for Santa, carrots for Rudolph.

 

Sleep Tight

Just a few more nights until Christmas.  Sleep tight everyone.

I always love the night before Christmas Eve.  Now as an adult it's almost better than the night before Christmas.  It's the start of the Christmas break.  The kids are excited and we get to start celebrating the afternoon on Christmas Eve. 

Waiting and waiting and waiting

This morning Lula set a new record for morning giggles.  The girls were amazed by her and her friends.  They even got in on the action and crouched down to hop over the finish line.

 It was hard to pull them away from the action this morning.

 When I got to work Loriann and I exchanged some Christmas/going away gifts.  It's going to be so hard when she leaves.  I am going to miss her so much.  I know we will stay close and we will still text/chat all the time but there will be something eerie about not seeing her everyday.

She made me these magnets and I absolutely LOVE them!  I love emojis.  I love to express emotions and they allow you to do that when texting.

Tonight the girls wanted to go see Santa.  Hailey hasn't told us what she wants for Christmas. She has been waiting to tell Santa.  Brian brought the girls to Northtown Mall so we could get in line right away however as soon as we got in line they put up a sign that Santa was going on break.  Bummer!

We decided to go grab a bite to eat and then come back afterwards instead of waiting in line during Santa's break.

When we came back we came without daddy this time.  The line was pretty long but I estimated it would take about an hour to get through.  BOY was I off.  We waited over 2 hours.  Overall the girls did ok.  I always hope that they can wait more patiently then they actually do but thinking of how hard it must be for them to stand still in that line- they did pretty good.

We finally made it up to see Santa and here was the moment- we were finally going to learn about what Hailey wants for Christmas!  Hannah walked right up to Santa and told him what she wanted, 'A Husky Pillow Pet".  Hailey froze.  She lifted my shirt, put her head under it and hid.

Guess she's not going to talk to Santa today.

Annual Cookie Day

The girls slept over at Grandma Judy's last night while we were on the bus.

After I picked them up we decided it would be a good day for baking Cream Wafers. 

I am so glad we got them done this year. It just doesn't seem like Christmas without them. 

This has been Hailey's daily attire lately (ha ha!).

We don't call her a hotbox for no reason!  This girl can not get naked enough.  

She is always sweating and I guess with the oven on, the house was just too warm for her.

OCW Christmas Bus

 

It won't be long now!  Christmas is right around the corner.

Lula made the cutest Christmas Countdown for the girls.

Tonight the 'hood' was picked up by this big green bus for our first Annual OCW Party Bus Night.

Joe and Mary organized the event and it was not hard to find enough people to fill it.

We started with some predrinking and appys at the Gomans while we waited for the Green Machine to arrive.  It was clean, contained a bathroom and even a few poles (wonder what those are for).

 We debated on where to go and what to do with the bus.  We decided to let Tom navigate.

Our first stop was Toby Keith's, then Tony Jaro's, Gustav's and then The Lookout.

Our final stop (before ending the night at the Parmley Center) was Taco Bell.

The guys walked through the drive through.  They were first told that they could not walk through the drive through but then when they informed the lady taking their order that they were ordering over 100 tacos, they decided that they would let them walk through.

What a fun night and what a FUN group of neighbors we have!

 

A Little Pick Me Up

Lula must have had a rough night last night.  She was all about the coffee this morning :-)

Last night there was a sing a long at Hannah's school. As soon as we got there Hannah saw Emma.  Hand in hand they led us over to our seats with Emma's family.

The big girls had so much fun singing along to the Christmas carols.

On the way home she said "Mom, thank you for bringing me to the sing a long tonight.  It was very special to me."  Then there was a pause for a minute and she said "Whew!  It felt so good to get that out!"

I really appreciate the fact that Hannah loves school so much.  She is full of school spirit and is usually genuinely excited to go everyday.  I hope she never loses that.

Photo Booth Fun

 Looks like Lula wanted to get in on the Photo Booth fun!

Hailey apparently had too much fun at her kid party to sleep so she played, or ummmm redecorated or something.  Ha ha.

OCW Kid Christmas Party

 I thought it would be fun to start a tradition of a kids Christmas party.  Of course I had a ton of ideas in my head of things to do but as always, time sneaks up on me and I never can execute everything that I hope to accomplish.

We had pizza and salad and then the kids made a reindeer ornament from their handprint.

They then moved along to decorating ice cream cone trees.

 

We even had a little photo booth set up for them.

 

Chase really liked that Naughty sign :-) 

 Jax could not get enough of Emerson.  These two are the same age and it's so fun watching them interact.  Both looking at the other one like 'he's the baby'.

Ben.  He is such a sweet and talkative kid.  

 

 

Jacob and Ethan, Mr. TickleToes.

The kids seemed to have fun.  It was a little hard on a weeknight since everyone wanted to make sure the kids got to bed at a decent time, etc.  Too much to try to fit in in such a short timeframe.

Fun enough though that I can see a tradition starting :-)

Oh and Lula......she was pretty easy to spot this am.

Lula's Christmas Wish Came True

 One of Lula's Christmas wishes came true.  She got her Root Beer Float this morning!

Ummm, what is going on here?!  

Turns out this is the locker room and Ms. Hailey has all of her things in here.   

Hannah is hanging out after her shower, waiting for blankie to be done in the dryer.