First week of January 2017

Happy New Year!  We enjoyed the little bit of time we still had with Kimberly and her kids.

Uno!

Making slime

Playing with bubbles outside

Hanging out at the park - getting more time outside (You've got to get out after being cooped up playing with all that Christmas stuff!)

Kids are enjoying this marble run toy they got

Fun with slime - Kaitlyn

Fun with slime - Tyler

Late night games together

Maxwell has been sleeping on some blankets in our room while Kimberly was here.  He has loved it.

She loves looking at our Christmas cards

Saying goodbye :(

Maxwell asks to do more science experiments everyday.  I love that he's into it.

We started up swim lessons (sort of).  The kids have a bunch of make up lessons so we are using those up and then we will sign up again at least for Emmalyn.  We will see how it goes for Maxwell.  Since his favorite teachers aren't here any more I'm not sure how into it he will be.  It was fun because they were swimming right next to each other.

Emmalyn moved up to the next level!  I no longer have to get in the pool with her.  She's now a level 3.

Katherine and I are still getting out and walking multiple times a week.  We just have to really bundle up right now.  This time it was 26 degrees ("feels like 14") and we still did it!  Committed to keeping up the exercise and weight loss in the new year!

We got a tiny bit of snow.   The kids were so excited.

Trying to get enough snow together to make a snow ball but it just wasn't the right type of snow.

We took the kids to another movie (again, have no idea what we saw).

Emmalyn is so loving.

After the movie we went out to dinner.  Was a fun evening together!

Christmas 2016

Since we were driving home from the Kenyon's on Christmas Eve, we didn't do anything special for dinner.  We picked up pizza.  :)

Just us hanging out (the Mejia's were at church I think)

Making notes for Santa

The finished notes - not too wordy this year 

Reading a Christmas story with Dad in their Christmas Eve PJs before bed

Enjoying these candies that bring back memories of Christmas time at Grandma Carlson's

Kimber and her kids got in pretty late.  I was grateful Kaitlyn helped me with the monkey bread prep.

Peter also did a more savory monkey bread

Working hard on food prep for tomorrow

Ready for Santa

Santa got everything out and ready.  Max's pile is on the left with the karaoke machine and Emmalyn's pile was ridiculous with a tramp, puppet show stage, puppets and more

Christmas morning all ready to get out and see if Santa came!

Here's the pile of presents around the tree.  With 11 people in the house, there were a lot of presents!

Maxwell's pile

It's here!

Emmalyn's pile 

The whole room

Emmalyn immediately went for the baby doll

Excited about his new toothbrush

Tyler (all grown up) getting a shave kit

Kait getting grown up girly stuff

New tools from the Mejias

He was really excited about his karaoke machine (and the 80's cd he got because "it has all my favorite songs")

Joe is a hot sauce lover!

Kaitlyn helped put together Emmalyn's stuff for her dolls.  It was great having her help!

New remote control cars

Enjoying yummy monkey bread

Karaoke time!

Focused on singing (all I see is the MESS!)

The regular monkey bread was more popular than the garlic one

Playing with new toys outside

We delivered the final "12 days of Christmas" we had been doing for our next door neighbors - the Rays.  We did it in our pjs.  :) (Notice I still had sunglasses on. My eyes were awful.  I spent a lot of time in bed or sleeping on the couch because it was just so uncomfortable.)

Christmas naps - they are hard to resist

Puppet show!

All the boys had remote control cars

Christmas exhaustion

Emmalyn is exhausted too

Yup, more napping

Hanging out, enjoying presents and being together

We had our traditional potato soup for Christmas dinner.  Always yummy. (even if my kids won't touch soup)