New Year's Eve

Its 10:15pm and all the kids are still awake. We gave them the option of going to bed or watching our BBC miniseries with us.

I am not sure how much longer the youngest two will last though. The snacks are all gone by now as well.

Two hours later - I am convinced that this one stayed up until midnight solely for the sparkling apple cider.

Happy New Year!!

A New Player

First time playing Settlers and Paige is crushing it! She's the red pieces. Dad help her place her initial settlements at the beginning of the game but she's doing the rest. She's a board game force to be reckoned with (as long as there is no reading involved as she can't do that yet).

Snow!!

A snowstorm hit last night. The Potomac is frozen! We went to go see it.

Jason still ran with Stella (he is training for an ultra marathon). They ran over five miles in the snow. She came home and still had the zoomies around the house and up there stairs. How does she have that much energy?!

But we still love her. I'm pretty sure she likes us too.

We played in the snow today and with our Christmas presents. Eventually everyone settled in. The dog slept by the fire for a good portion of the day. Winter Break is awesome!

I've figured it out. Stella has cycles. She is a "morning dog". In the morning NOTHING wears her out. But then, around noon, she naps for hours, only to perk up around 4pm and go nuts again. She settles in for the night around 8pm.

Snowball Fight

Remember those cloth snowballs we got yesterday? Well today we had a snowball fight in the house. Its lasted about twenty minutes and we had a blast.

Haircut

I finally couldn't take it anymore and took Paige to get her hair cut (remember Thanksgiving?) She was fine with getting her hair cut. I think she thought it was "big girl" thing to do. She loved getting her hair washed.

The hairdresser convinced me not to go too short but to do layers instead. It was sad to see all the curls fall to the floor.

It was blow dried and styled too.

She looks so grown up. I miss my baby.

Christmas Day

Confessions first. I am writing this after the fact. I got very behind on all my blog posts and have been trying to catch up. The problem is that our hard drive crashed and so any newer pictures taken on the Nikon and not on my phone are now lost. Christmas is one of those occasions that I like to use the nice camera to get photos. So I only have a few from this Christmas. Sad.

And now, back to the post about our Christmas. The kids woke up early to get into their stockings.We could hear them downstairs but the rule is not to wake parents until 7am.  I think the contents of the stockings were a hit.

When we were all awake we opened presents. It was Paige's turn to be the elf. She loved delivering the presents and since she can read our names,
she was able to do it without much help.

Some highlights were lots of Equestrian Girls and Trolls for Paige, craft/art stuff and a stuffed animal for Darby, books and clothes for Eva and lots of Legos for Brendan. In fact, I won awesome Mom points this year with my Brendan gift. He has been wanting this particular Lego set called the Bug Obliterator for almost a year. I bought it three months ago on eBay for a screaming deal but had to keep it hush-hush all that time. He has been trying to save up the money for it, get a loan from his sister (who never spends her allowance and is pretty flush with cash) and negotiate with his dad and I to buy it. By Christmas he was still short on the ends. Its a good thing too. Its been so hard keeping this a secret but his reaction when he opened it was SO worth it.

Jason bought me a new iPad mini case and some things for the house. I received a set of fluffy cloth "snowballs" as well. We are going to have to have an indoor snowball fight really soon.

I got him a cool pocket knife, some tech gadgets and awesome pajama pants which he put on immediately and wore all day. One of the stocking stuffers for Jason was a case for his AirPods. It was a textured case to prevent them from slipping out of his pocket. He loses them at least once daily. He decided to test this out. Even standing on his head they did not fall out of his pocket. Win!

Mrs. Bailey was sweet and got us a present as well. We are going to play this Star Wars Operation game today!

My sister Amanda had our family for Christmas and sent us some fun but silly games. One is called The Poop Game. You have number cards, toilet cards and action cards. The point is to not clog the toilet. During the game you may be asked to make silly potty noises. I am pretty sure thats why the kids like it so much. We played it after opening presents. It is super silly but we had fun.

After all the presents were open we let Stella in. Her Christmas present was sanctioned destruction.

Later in the day we watched a Christmas movie. Apparently Stella doesn't mind being a pillow.

Paige told me today, "Mom, its really nice of you to buy all the things that I wanted." Awwww.

Jason made a turkey again and I made the side dishes. It was lots of fun to lounge around in our pajamas all day, play games and then eat a yummy meal. Merry Christmas to all!

Temple Lights

This year we decided to go to see the temple on Christmas Eve. Apparently we were not the only ones with this idea. It was packed with visitors. I am glad we got to go see it as a family one last time before the temple closes next year for remodeling.

The DC Temple Lights are always breathtaking. I love going to see them every year. This year there were more colored lights.

I think white lights look the classiest though.

The nativity scene was at the far end of the temple grounds.

The Visitor's Center was decked out as well.

But my favorite views are of the temple surrounded by lights.

Christmas Eve

I liked having Christmas Eve on a Sunday. It was a more meaningful church service. The kids all dressed up extra special.  I took ten pictures and this is the best one. Sigh. But at least they are dressed nicely.

Eva loved her new red dress.

After our ward's Christmas program, we got ready to go to the Washington DC Temple for the lights. I will write a separate post about that. Darby changed into her Christmas socks.

After returning home from the Temple Lights, we read the nativity story and opened one present. I got each member of the family a new book. They then read their new books until bedtime. I tried this last year and loved it so I think it will be a new tradition.

After they were in bed the stockings were stuffed. Can't wait until tomorrow!!

Silly Selfies

Selfies are one way to keep Paige entertained. Here are a series of silly ones she took with Jason.

This picture cracks me up. The look on Stella's face! She looks very nervous about crazy Paige.