Back to Reality

One of the best things about Mike's job is that every year at Christmas time, he gets ten days off. He took a couple of extra vacation days at the beginning to make it an even two weeks and it was so wonderful to have him home. Vacation/holiday mode has ruled our family for the past two weeks and a lot of our every day routine (blogging included) has been tossed out the window. No longer. The alarm went off this morning and it was back to normal. We've had a good day, but we missed having Mike around. Anyways, I've got some catch up to do, but instead of starting at the beginning, I'm going to start at some of the most recent happenings.

New Year's 2009

New Year's Eve. We have spent the last four New Year's with our good friends, the C. family, and this year they came to our house. Here is a picture of all the kiddos ready for the big night. Things about this picture that make me laugh: Baby B holding a plastic goblet and Kiwi looking like the queen in her little rocking chair.

Toasting with my Little Man

Fourth year of having Alicia be his New Year's kiss

From kissing to blowing noisemakers in each other's faces. Very typical of them.

My new year's date

Note: All the pictures that have the two youngest in them were taken at about 7:30. The rest of them were taken at 9:00. We put Kiwi and Baby B to bed about 8:00 and then let the older kids stay up. We watched the countdown on the east coast to make it a more reasonable time for the kids and did all the shouting/kissing/toasting sparkling cider then. After that, we played an exciting game of Disney's Scene It and then settled the four year olds down with blankets and pillows and a movie. We were hoping they would fall asleep. They didn't. The four of us adults played games, talked, and ate too much junk food until midnight when we did the actual countdown.

I wish I would have got pictures of the two kids at midnight. When we said we got to do another countdown they looked up at us from the couch with eyes glazed over, tired little faces, and the most confused looks. They watched the countdown on TV, mostly because it was in front of them and then continued to look confused. Little Man looked at me like I lost my mind when I suggested going outside to see if anyone was banging on pots and pans (Did anybody else used to or currently do this?) Nobody was, but we heard some fireworks which seemed to snap him out of his daze a little. After our friends went home, we went to bed immediately. I must be getting old, because I was tired the whole next day as a result of staying up until 12:30. 12:30! Really, what has happened to me? At least my tiredness just manifested itself in me sneaking a nap in the afternoon and a kind of sluggishness; Little Man's presented itself in a series of meltdowns and tantrums.

It was a lot of fun though and I hope the tradition continues (ringing in the new year with the C.'s, not the meltdowns and tantrums...)

Happy 2010!