The New Year!

Happy New Year!!!

New Year's Eve has become one of my favorite holidays because our best-ies have started to come and stay with us and celebrate with us every year. :) So it's awesome :) 

We enjoyed a few sparklers and fireworks and other such New Years noise-makers.

Standing in line for the various noisy things

Watch 'em fly!

That was it for pictures for the night since the rest of the evening involved only the kids going to sleep and the adults watching a movie before watching big fireworks from the hot tub :)

But New Years morning was fun breakfast and lots of playing.

With the two littlest littles it's more playing next to each other than with each other. And they aren't as much for posing as the other kids. But it's always fun to try for those perfect shots :)

Notice the pjs and thus the morning hair. It's kind of cute all snarly, right? Elise pretty much has the biggest rat's nest right on the back of her head every morning. I kind of love it :)

All dressed with calmer hair.

I just kind of love her face. So forgive all the pictures :)

And now begins the process of trying to get a picture of both girls looking at the camera and smiling....

Hey, not so bad! They're both looking in the same direction and at least smirking.

Now onto the biggest of the littles. Posing is NOT a problem for them. As you can see.

(No seriously, these two need to get married because we would have THE best wedding video-picture-montage thing EVER!)

And last, but not least, the middles of the littles. Just boys being boys. :)

Mama time!

Yeah, we're back to these two.... ;)

Only one month apart. Their parents are bffs. Their siblings are bffs. It only makes sense.... ;)

Oh look, so nicely sharing...

Or so it seemed...

Sad little faces because they're leaving...? (Yeah, we'll say that. It's not just still over the book ;)
(Confession: I think this is my favorite picture of them all. Seriously, look at those sad faces. Kind of adorable!)

Awww, see? We can share. :)

Time to say good-bye!

 Sad, sad daddies :(

(After they all left I realized that we never got a shot of the moms!! Oh well. Next time for sure!)

Christmas time!

Well, as it turns out, I'm not doing that great at getting "caught up" here. Oh well. Finally Christmas. Maybe I'll get New Years posted by summer ;)

 

Getting the tree put up. Elise is just helping out where she can. That cute face carries a lot of weight when it comes to moral support. ;)

What'd I tell ya?

 A week later we finally decorated it. 

You should have seen the bottom front section of the tree. It was so beautifully decorated! ;)

So super excited about new matching Christmas PJ's

I leave this picture in for the pant-less Joey in the background, with coat and boots no less. Who knows what was going on there. But that kid kills me. Love him so much!

And there's our Santa. :) Mikey's school had a little musical/play for the 2nd to 5th graders. Mikey tried out for Santa. And what do you know? He got the part!

 

I found some women's sweats at the salvation army and turned them into the Santa Suit.

There he is. Front and center!

Mikey's best friend, Boston, was Old Man Winter. The director told me later that all the kids gave her a hard time that two little second graders got those parts, but she said they were just too perfect for it! :)

Going out after Mikey's play with the whole fam. Elise stole Santa's hat.

Christmas Morning!

 

Mikey and Luke love slippers. And I realized that they were still wearing the first pairs we gave them a few years ago! So Christmas was a perfect time to shop for some new ones. I happened to also see some perfect ones for Elise and Joey so I grabbed those for fun. But now Elise loves them as much as the older kids! Well, she LOVES all shoes so I should have known they'd be right up her ally. :)

 

 

I kind of love the way my little Ellie-Bell is looking at her brothers in this one :)

I was actually trying to take a picture of Elise in the background with her new baby high chair and crib there, but Joey saw the camera and jumped in. That's okay :) He takes a cute picture. But Elise was so darling with the baby stuff. She hasn't had any kind of doll item until now. We didn't even point out the furniture when we walked into the room, but she saw it and ran there and stayed there for a good long time. So darling :) It was long overdue ;)

Nothing like sitting with dad and a new book :)

Helping Elise and Joey with their new Little People Zoo

And the present of the year..........a hamster!!!!! :) So much fun!

Her name is Sugar Cookie Sparkle (that's what you get when you give all naming rights to a bunch of kids under 8). We all mostly call her Cookie. Except for Joey. He calls her "The Pet." And Elise. She calls her "Monster." Because she can't say "hamster." It's the cutest thing ever :)

Merry Christmas!!!