New Year's Eve Fun

 As I was looking through pictures on my always nearly full phone, I realized that I never posted pictures from our New Year's eve. We had Matt's parents over for dinner (thanks Macintoshes for the leftover food!!) and then played our new games. We got several good ones but Pit is definitely the big hit around here.

At the late time of about 9:30, we decided to call it and finished the evening with New Year's Eve toasts...to new jobs, the beach house, Allie, Chinese New Year (Julia's fav), finishing the garage loft, and other blessings. Good times followed by good sleep had by all. 😍😍. One of these years we will stay up and ring it in!!

Snowed in!

Well, the snow actually wasn't very deep...I guess it's more like we were cold fronted in these past few days.  The snow and school time off was of course exciting, but really the temperatures kept us inside most of the time and our favorite activity, sledding, wasn't great anyway.  We took it a little slower, got extra friend time, I continued to teach my ESL classes and added a few on since we were home, and I even got to go spend some giftcards at the outlets once the roads were clear.  We are gearing up for a "normal" week ahead with our first full week of school in awhile, sports practices and games, work, and early rising.  Tomorrow morning will probably be a bear for some folks...not me, of course, thanks to my new early rising lifestyle.  :)  Here are some pics from the snow, all of the girls b/c boys went their separate ways with neighborhood friends:

"Looka my glubs!"

She insisted on walking almost the whole block to our friends' house, until the cold got the better of her.  She was laughing at the leaves blowing in the wind and just chattering away.  

Sister sledding.  Allie made no comment but when asked if she was ready to get out, vehemently shook her head no.

Julia thought the sledding was fantastic...but she tends to live on the cautious side when it comes to things like sledding... or in the old days, riding bikes with training wheels on a flat sidewalk.  :)  

Matt hooked up sledding Allie to his weight lifting belt and pulled her around a bit.  Thanks to hand-me-downs from a friend, she had actual snow pants and snow boots!  (the first of our kids to get so decked out for winter!)

Week of Celebrations!

We sure have enjoyed this last week or two of celebrating.  Julia was elated to have Matt join her for lunch at school as an early birthday celebration.  She wore two party hats all day in anticipation and had Matt bring one to wear as well.

The weekend before Christmas we went down to celebrate with my family.  We spent the afternoon talking and playing, then the kids did a little Christmas trivia game my mom had made.  Then it was time for dinner and we ended with exchanging gifts--we drew names and each person has their moment to give their gift to the recipient while all watch.  There are mandatory hugs and pictures as well.  :)  We stayed another day and had more relaxing family time and good food.

On Christmas Eve, we brought back our old tradition with Matt's sister Kim's family of doing cookie decorating and ornament making together.  The kids are a lot older than when we used to do this, but it's so nice to spend time together and they all seemed to enjoy it.  We ended the night with our church's Christmas Eve service and driving around to look at lights.

Christmas Day was great.  We slept till 7, had a nice breakfast, caught up on our last week of devotions, and opened gifts, which the kids were thrilled with.  Each got something they had really wanted...Gray got a bike that is not midget sized.  He had been hunched over his tiny one this year and now he looks way too old on his new one. He also got some cool basketball shoes and a game I made for him that is a personalized version of one we played with friends this summer.

Julia got a kid camera.  She was over the moon for this gift and has taken tons of pics. She also got some American Girl doll clothes (of mine when I was a kid) and some clothes to wear.

And Joshua got the precious iPod.  We had deliberated about letting him have his own device and finally decided he could handle this, since he is pretty responsible.  It will also be nice for him to be able to text me when I leave the kids home every now and then.  We gave him a frisbee, a coat, and then his 3rd gift was a big wolf blanket.  He did not have a breakdown or anything, though he later said he was definitely disappointed.  He just smiled at the blanket and then we had him open it to get a good look at the design...and there was the iPod.  He grinned nonstop after that.  He has enjoyed texting with his friends and often gives me updates on what messages he is getting, what time he got them, the battery power remaining on his device, etc.  :)

And Allie liked her stuff too- her plasma car and magnetic blocks and cd were more of a hit with the big kids though!  She loved her baby food and key rings.  After she opened one gift, she got the idea and kept saying, "Mo box?!"

We enjoyed playing some of the new games during Allie's nap and then spent the evening with Matt's family, eating dinner and exchanging gifts.

We had a few days of downtime--playing, cleaning, running errands, etc.  I had a not so terrible trip to Target with all four kids.  I even made a return and tried on clothes!  Couldn't believe it worked.  They did have some shenanigans with the cart, but not fighting and no fits, so I was happy!

Then we began celebrating Julia's birthday.  We had a dinner out with Matt's parents eating her beloved Chinese food.  The morning of her birthday, we had a special breakfast, let Julia open presents, and later headed to Asheville to celebrate my cousin's marriage to his lovely bride.  They live in South Korea so it was very special to get to see him and meet her.  It was so much fun to be with my adult family members (kids got to hang together with a babysitter), particularly my cousin and her husband who live in London.  It's so neat to have an international family, but the downside is that our times together are few and far between.  We tried to live it up last night and make the best of our evening together.  I'm so glad we all got to be there!  We spent the night with Jeannie and fam and headed back home the next day.

Our Christmas break is wrapping up and our thoughts are turning to school, sports, work, etc.  I'm sad to see it go for sure.  It's been a good (albeit busy and not without it's challenging parenting moments) holiday season and we have a lot to look forward to in 2018.  Happy New Year!

Christmas Week 2

Hand holding in the car.  :)

Gray's first basketball game.  He played all out and loved every minute.  He wants the ball in his hands at all times.  

Little Santa off to her last day of preschool.  She's loved this year!!

Pajama day in my class.

Two ultimate frisbee games for Joshua.  He doesn't get to play much, as he has his usual struggle with performance in front of others.  We are trying to build his confidence, as we have known since he was a toddler that he's got the coordination gift.

Last ballet class for Julia. (Check her ensemble.)

Shadow play at church.

Joseph #1 leads Mary.  (Gray and Julia)

Mary #2 gives birth and Joseph #2 (Joshua) greets the baby.  

Decorating the tree.

It was a good week for playing for Miss Hold You Minute.  :)

The older sibling game:  knock down the ornaments.

Sleepy elf after church Sunday.  We went to Goodwill to let the kids shop for gifts for each other.  There was hardly anything there in my opinion, but you'd think the kids found a gold mine.  :)  We spent $10.45.  :)

Getting in the Christmas Spirit

Life has been a little different the past month or so.  Although I my two jobs still only add up to 25-30 hours a week, I don't have the time to do everything I used to and I'm still ready to go to bed around 7!  We got out our Christmas decorations the week after Thanksgiving and it really took a lot to just get motivated to put them up, let alone think about what festive things we'd do this year to celebrate.  Our advent calendar has held our Jesse tree ornaments the past few years, but the kids still have most fond memories of when I put an activity each day for them, so I took a few deep breaths and tried to plan things again this year.  Jury is still out on whether it's worth it, as -truth be told- there have been several complaints over the activities not being surprise enough or special enough.  Spoiled children don't exactly inspire the Christmas spirit in me, unless it's that daily reminder of how much we really do need Jesus!!

Anyway, we've done a couple of favorites already, like our church's meal packing event, our KNO Christmas party (turned KNO quick dinner due to snowy weather), the kids' school concert (Cindy and I both forgot our cameras), getting our tree, and celebrating St. Nicholas Day by putting our shoes out for a treat and watching the VeggieTales St. Nicholas movie.

We also tried the Hillsborough Christmas parade for the first time.  Joshua resisted, but then didn't want to leave once he saw he was getting candy.  Julia loved it too.  And even Allie got into the waving and saying "merry christmas", though she'd jump in our arms really quick if there was something loud.

Meanwhile Gray got to have the second half of his birthday trip with Nanny and Pa at Great Wolf Lodge, which he loved.

And we've done an anticipated mediocre job with the daily devotions...one here, none there, three the next time.  The kids love it though!

It's been fun to have Allie with us, experiencing these things for the first time!  She continues to light up our days with her big smile and constant laugh.  Everything is fun and exciting for her and she sure helps me laugh more!

Speaking of laughing more, my new job often has me laughing.  I wanted to share with you two extremes of kids I've had--both super fun.  The first is a 3 or 4 year old boy whose mom had to pretty much hold him down to keep him in "class", but they both cracked up so much throughout the lesson.  Hilarious.

The next is an older boy trial class I had this week.  We could have lots of conversation and I really enjoyed the change from my usual little ones.  When I brought out the picture of my family to talk about, he kept saying, "That's so cool!".  He also called Julia beautiful and I'll let you see what he said about Allie....

This next week we've got Joshua's first ultimate frisbee game.  And Joshua's 2nd ultimate frisbee game.  And Gray's first basketball game.  And Joshua's first basketball game.  Whew.  I also finish at preschool till after Christmas and we have our annual shadow play at church.  Tomorrow I have one of my favorite things this season-- handing out gifts from the kids' school's Angel Tree.  I love the organizational aspect of it, getting to work with Robyn, and seeing many of our KNO families.  We have so many wonderful traditions this time of year and I'm grateful for them.  Have a good week!