Christmas and New Years

Happy New Year!  We successfully made it to 2023.  Christmas was great.  We were able to fit in all of our usual Christmas traditions and have lots of fun on Christmas Day.  We made sugar cookies on the 23rd so they would be all ready to decorate on the 24th (something I used to try to do all in one day and quickly realized it made the 24th so much more stressful, so we spread it out now).  I even made a whole bunch to pass out to family, but then forgot them all at home.  On Christmas Eve we had a lunch with all the Mitchell family!  My kids had a great time and the food was great and it just all turned out great.  The roads weren't even that bad, which is one thing I was worried about.  After we got home from the lunch, we had a little bit of downtime before we decorated cookies!  My kids' philosophy on decorating cookies is to have a normal amount of frosting and then drown it in sprinkles. 😜 But they had fun with it, and that's the most important!  I also get my kids an ornament every year that they get to open on Christmas Eve.  I got the girls ornament no problem (pink unicorns for the win!), but had a really hard time with Asher's.  I was a little worried I would have to order it online and it wouldn't get there in time, but I managed to find a Mario one at the very last minute!  One of David's family traditions is to read "Twas the Night Before Christmas" so he read them that right before bed.  I was worried they would all have a hard time falling asleep, but they were out so fast!  And then 2 hours later Asher woke up to go to the bathroom and couldn't fall asleep for an hour because he was so excited...but otherwise they slept pretty well!

Decorating Santa cookies

I told the kids they couldn't wake us up until 6:00, so at exactly 6:00 I had three very excited little people standing by my bed telling me it was time to wake up!  Getting David out of bed took them another 30 minutes.  By the time we got out to the living room they had already gone through all their stockings and divided all the presents up into the various piles.  Then the present opening frenzy began!  I usually try to keep some semblance of order to varying degrees of success.  I honestly feel like almost every single thing the kids got will be used and appreciated.  That's such a good feeling!  And not just the things I got them, but the things they got from others as well.  They spent the next few hours playing with toys and each other and giggling and having a great time.  We went to church at 10:30 for a short program (we ended up getting out 15 minutes early) during which the kids got to sing a couple songs with the Primary.  It made me a little sad seeing Asher up there because I know he doesn't have too much time left in there!  But they did great and I always love seeing them up there singing.

Christmas morning!

 

Ready for church!

They fight like regular siblings, but they also love each other a lot.

The week between Christmas and New Years was mostly spent cleaning.  Not super fun, but it needed to be done.  I had to rearrange the girls rooms so their new dollhouse would fit in there and both kids rooms just needed a deep clean.  I'll get around to doing our room at some point...

On New Years Eve, Asher started the day by going to a friends house for a "Countdown to Noon" party!  It sounded like a lot of fun!  They started at 10am with a brunch of waffles and bacon and hash browns.  Then they watched a short Snoopy show.  Then they decorated cookies.  Then they had a countdown to 12:00 (noon) complete with balloon drop!  Asher said he had a lot of fun.

I had decided that this was the first year I would give my kids a chance to stay up until midnight (if they wanted).  My parents were having a party at their house that night so I packed up all the kids and told David we would be back whenever the kids got done.  That might mean 9:00 and it might mean midnight!  David wasn't keen to go.  Apparently his family never really celebrated New Years so he has never been real big into it.  And he likes being at home where it's quiet instead of at a party where there are 15 kids screaming all night long...imagine that??  Anyways, we got to the party and played games, watched movies, and partied until midnight!  There was only one child that fell asleep before then.  My kids all fell asleep on the way home, but they were all in pretty good spirits the whole night!  It was fun and I'm glad we went.  The next day our church didn't start until Noon so that was nice that we had plenty of recovery time beforehand.

I try to get a family picture every New Years Eve.  Most of our pictures look like this.

But I make everyone keep going until we get a good one!

At the party!  Ava wanted a picture with me.

Cadence was interested in what we were doing so I took one of her too!

On Tuesday the kids and David went back to school.  The girls were excited and the boys were not.  It's been nice to get back into our routine.  I have spent basically this whole week cleaning and trying to put the house back in order, but I did make it to the temple yesterday!  After I got home from the temple I found out we were put under a Boil Water Advisory because of a drop in water pressure, so that was annoying.  It was lifted today and they didn't find any bacteria in the water, but I guess it takes at least 12 hours to test that so we had to figure out how to make dinner and fill water bottles and brush teeth with those restrictions.  It really wasn't too bad, just a bit of a pain.  But it's resolved now!  

It's been an exciting few weeks but I'm ready for a little break and to just live normal life for a little while.  Let's hope we get a quiet week to recover!