December 30th was a special day. First of all, my dad and Suzy took all the grandkids (minus Sophie and Adair) to Golden Corral for lunch and to Laser Quest to play laser tag for their Christmas present!
It was also mine and Tom’s 15 year anniversary!
When I think back to our early married life, it seems like a lifetime ago. But when I think we’ve been married for 15 years already, it seems like it’s gone fast! We can’t be that old?
We celebrated by going to dinner at Shula’s.
Then to the theater to see “Into the Woods”. Some of my family were also going to go see it that night, so we all went together.
It was so cold and windy that night! the temperature was 1*. We’ve had this stray bunny hopping around the neighborhood since July and we’re worried about it getting too cold. So when we got home from our date, we decided to look for the bunny. We found it under Tom’s old VW bug and lured it out with a carrot. We put it in a box in the garage with a blanket and towel over the top. After a few days, it figured out how to get out and when the garage door was up, it escaped. At least we were able to keep it warmer for the few days it was so cold.
New Year’s Eve was the next day. Last year my siblings, Mike and Aimee and their families toilet papered our house on New Year’s Eve, so this year we planned our revenge! I drove over by myself, parked in the neighboring cemetery and watched for Mike and his family to leave for dinner (we were meeting them later at a restaurant). I quickly TPed their house, jumped in the van, picked up the rest of the family and headed to the restaurant (I didn’t want my kids in on it, in fear they would ruin the surprise). The picture doesn’t show the toilet paper very well, because of the snow.
We met up at Mountain Mike’s Pizza and enjoyed a good meal with everyone.
Then we quickly headed out, Tom dropped me off at our house to get ready for the party and he and the kids ran to Aimee and Matt’s house to TP them! It was awesome revenge!
We were really torn on going to the New Year’s Eve party at Mike and Karyn’s house or doing one with our ward friends again. When Tom’s sister, Maren asked what we were doing, we decided to host and do a friends party again so Maren and Charlotte could come.
Us and the CLAW Club
We had a lot of good snacks, including over 6lbs of Rico’s Nacho cheese!
Cedric loves Kenny and his bald head.
We spent most of the night playing the “Guess the Name” game (I don’t know what it’s really called, but everyone writes down a name and you have to guess who wrote down what name. Last person guessed right, wins). It was fun because everyone could play and the kids loved playing with us.
The kids had fun with their friends too. Sophie made it until 11pm, but the rest of the kids all made it past midnight! (although Cedric looked like he was about to pass out on the couch from exhaustion, so he was in bed asleep by 12:15.)
Unfortunately I deleted a bunch of pictures on accident, but we did a count down at midnight and all pulled popper streamers (indoors, because it was so cold outside). I did manage to save a picture of the mess and everyone cleaning up before they went home.
The next day we got some housework done and then went as a family to see “Big Hero 6”. I forgot to take any pictures, but the kids enjoyed having popcorn for dinner.
The following Sunday we had my brother, Nate over for dinner. He wanted to spend time with each of his siblings and our families while he was visiting from Munich, Germany.
The kids loved him!
We enjoyed dinner and playing the game Nate gave me for Christmas “Larghetto” (it’s like Nertz).
Monday I saw Nate one last time at my dad’s birthday lunch. I love being with my family!
Tom couldn’t make it to lunch, but said ‘good bye’ to Nate on the slopes that evening. He and some of my cousins went skiing that night.
Since the kids were back in school and I was back into real life again, I opted not to go skiing. Instead I spent the evening doing laundry, planning preschool, doing dishes and cleaning up after children.
The next day I decided to take Lily on a date to see the new movie “Annie”. The Megaplex theaters are only $5 on Tuesday with $1 popcorn, so we’ve been taking advantage. Tom went later that night with Maren and the CLAW Club to see “Women in Black 2”, but since I absolutely hate scary movies, I chose not to go.
As we were walking out of the theater that’s connected to the mall Lily said “why don’t have have my ears pierced yet?” I told her she could get them done whenever she wanted, but she’d have to pay for it. So we went to see how much it cost, and Lily had exactly enough money at home, so she did it! She was quite nervous, but afterwards was so excited to finally have her ears pierced!
Before
After
Speaking of Lily… before Christmas we decided to take advantage of one of our days off and de-clutter her room. We had three bags full of just garbage and one full of DI items.
Here’s the before…
Here’s the after…
It was a good thing we cleaned her room, because for Christmas Santa gave her stuff to do a room makeover! I had my friend, Chris come over and we spent one snowy day painting Lily’s room.
Then this week we got all the decor hung up. I think it turned out really cute!
Friday I went and hung out with my old roommates Jenny and Alana. Alana’s my cousin and just had a birthday, so we did a little party complete with Netflix, crepes and pasta, cupcakes and Krispy Kreme donuts! We also walked over to her apartment’s hot tub. I about froze my feet off walking through the snow in my flip flops!
So far 2015 has been a great year!
