Our Anniversary and a New Year

December 30th was our 13th wedding anniversary.  I still can't believe we've been married for 13 years!  It's so weird to think back to the early days of one car (or jeep), no kids, dial-up internet, college and simplicity. I have to say, I'm happy where the past 13 years have taken us, and I am completely content with my life right now.
Saturday the 29th we decided to go on a good, long date.  I think I was almost as excited for this as I was for Christmas.  Because our anniversary is so close to Christmas we don't do gifts, but instead splurge on a nice date.  First we went to Olive Garden for an early dinner.  I like Olive Garden, and the fact that it was close to our other activities that night and I got a gift card for Christmas made it an easy choice for dinner.  Afterward we headed up to the Oquirrh Mountain Temple to do sealings.  Because it was during the holidays and a fifth Saturday meant that the temple wasn't crowded AT ALL.  We enjoyed an hour at the temple and it helped us remember the promises we made at our marriage ceremony and the fact that we can be a family forever!  After the temple we drove over to the park to change in the car to casual clothes (don't worry, all we did was change, although there were a few other cars parked there too doing who knows what ;).  Then we headed over to the movie theater to watch "Les Mis".  It was such a fun date night!
On our real anniversary it was a typical Sunday.  That night I had choir practice for an all women's choir I'm a part of.  When I got home around 9pm I noticed right away that the diaper bag was missing.  I asked Tom, where it was and he just kind of looked around like he didn't know.  Then I went to hang my coat up and noticed the kids coats were missing.  I asked Tom where the coats were.  He just gave me this look like "I know something you don't".  So in my ignorance I asked "did you build a coat rack?" (Because that is something Tom would do, just build some surprise in a matter of hours.)  Then it hit me and I asked "are the kids even here?"  He had surprised me and taken the kids to two different cousin's houses to sleep over so we could have the house to ourselves!  I was totally surprised, but funny enough I had thought about doing the same thing to him only Friday night to Saturday, but never followed through.  As far as I knew, Tom had to work on Monday (New Year's Eve), however, that was the other part of the surprise, he had the day off the next day!  I didn't know what to do, I can't remember the last time I have had a house completely kid-free.  The first thing I thought of is we should clean the house while we had no kids to mess it up!  Tom vetoed that idea ;).
It was so nice to have a night with no kids.  I slept so good and we slept in the next day.  Then we went shopping and I got some new clothes with some Christmas money.  We also went to Zupa's for breakfast/lunch.  It was such a fun weekend!
But the fun wasn't over yet.  We picked the kids up from their cousins houses and the two boys fell asleep in the car on the way home.  They took a 2 1/2 hour nap that afternoon, Lily and I worked on dejunking and organizing her room while Tom put together his new tool cabinet.  We were supposed to meet my brother and sister and their families at Golden Corral for dinner, but with our projects and sleeping kids we were running a bit behind.  So instead we went to Chick-fil-a for dinner.  There was hardly anyone there and the kids had fun playing on the play ground.  Then we headed to my brother, Mike's house for a New Year's Eve party.  We played games, ate food and did a pretend countdown with the kids at 10:00.  Then we cleaned up the toy room, got the kids in their pajamas and they watched a movie while the adults finished their game.  Sophie just went to bed in the pack-n-play at 8:30 and it was nice to not have to worry about her. We finally left to head home around 11:30, three of the four kids immediately falling asleep the second they hit their pillows.  But with his long nap, Jeff was having a hard time going to bed.  I looked at his clock while tucking him in and noticed it was two minutes to midnight.  I told him he could quietly say "happy New Year" in his bed when his clocked turned to 12:00.  Then I made it upstairs with Tom and we had just enough time to turn the TV on, and watch the ball drop with 40 seconds to go.  Tom and I had our New Year's kiss, watched a few fireworks from the front door and then with that it was time for bed.  New Year's day we spent the day at home cleaning and catching up from the week before.  I always feel like New Year's is a let-down day after the crazy fun we've had leading up to it.  But it was nice to have a day to catch up on things.  Even if it was just for a day.
Every New Year's we also fill out papers with information about our kids.  How much they weigh, how tall they are, their favorites, stuff about them.  We trace their hand and foot and they draw a picture on the back.  We've done it every year since Lily was a year old (although I can't find last years so I'm not sure if we did it). Then we put it in our "New Year's Jar".  We have so many papers now I might need to convert it to a New Year's book.  It's such a fun tradition to have.
Happy New Year!