The rest of the holidays rolled into one

We are going to POWER THROUGH the rest of the holidays.  We'll start on December 26th and end on January 3rd. Take a deep breath.  Here we go.

 

On the 26th we had some long time friends (Sheila and her son Dan and daughter Helen) over for brunch.  Dan brought his son Lucas and Helen brought her daughters Lizzie and Maggie.  It was kid crazy!

Lizzie is about 3 months older than Elliott.  They were big time huggers when it was time to leave.

That evening we met Megan and her family in a Tucson neighborhood that goes all out with lights and displays for Christmas.  We all walked through the neighborhood together.

 

This was a garage door.

On Friday the 27th I went to the hospital to meet Jeannette's new baby boy Clark.  He was born on the 20th and was, gestationally, just one day earlier than Elliott (Clark was born at 35 weeks 1 day and Elliott was 35 weeks 2 days), but Clark was just a wee little thing.....3 pounds 7 ounces.  He was 1 week old when I met him and just as cute as can be.  He is doing great and should be going home soon!

That afternoon we went over to Laura and Josh's house and had play time and dinner with them.

 

Sara and Spencer had a blast playing.

 

Samantha and Elliott were also big huggers.

On Saturday the 28th my mom and dad had a huge holiday party with their friends.  Nick played the part of bartender during the party.  Somehow I got talked into going to a bar with him when I drove him home around 11:00 pm.  Michael was driving someone else home so we invited him to come meet us too.  It has been YEARS since I was in a bar. 

 

I was drinking vodka here.

Sunday, the 29th was our 12th anniversary.  We decided that we wanted to spend the whole day together celebrating. 

 

We started with a big hearty breakfast. 

 Then, we stopped at Dunkin Donuts so we could smuggle donuts into the movie theatre for when we needed a snack later. 

 

We saw a 10:30 showing of The Hobbit- The Desolation of Smaug. 

The theatre is right by a Walmart so after The Hobbit we walked over there to get some more junky snacks.  We snuck those into the theatre to be enjoyed during our viewing of Anchorman 2- The Legend Continues.

Anchorman ended around 4:30 so we headed home to get ready for dinner.  Our children joined us briefly for a quick picture and then we were off for a delicious steak dinner.

 

My brother had called the restaurant ahead of time and arranged to pay for our cocktails.  We both had cosmos and they were delicious.

Since the waiter knew it was our anniversary the restaurant treated us to a deluxe dessert platter.  That is $24 worth of free dessert you are seeing here. 

After dinner we went back home and changed clothes so that we would be comfortable for our THIRD movie of the day- The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.  It was fantastic!  I rarely lose myself enough in a movie that I am not aware of all the other people in the theatre, but that actually happened during this movie. 

 We were planning on driving home on the 30th, but we just couldn't do it.  Too much packing, not enough people preparing meals for us.  So we decided to stay one more day.  Instead of packing we went to see my friend Elisa.  They just moved into a new house.  It would be nice for me to show you some pictures of the new house, but all I have are two pictures of Elliott hoarding balls so that their owner, Max, could not have them.

 

He was very concerned about it.

We drove home the morning of the 31st and spent the rest of the day unpacking and organizing all of our Christmas loot.

 

The kids had an early dinner (pizza) and went to bed.  Spencer got to pop some crackers before bed time.

Michael and I got BBQ and ate a late dinner while watching Man of Steel.  We barely made it to midnight and then went to bed soon after.  We are real party animals!

 

I didn't even take any pictures that night.  Lame-o.

 

On the 1st I wanted to take a cute picture of my boys on the very first day of 2014.

 

Spencer was all for it. 

 

Elliott....not so much. 

 

The Mickey couch didn't help.

 

But the promise of puffs and holding a boat Christmas tree ornament did.

That afternoon we started taking down and putting away the decorations.

 

Every year Spencer adds characters to the Little People nativity.  This year it was all of the Star Wars figurines that Santa brought him. 

This was the status of the living room when Michael looked at me, and in all seriousness, said that he was feeling a little tired and was going to go lay down for a nap.  I, in about 86% seriousness, told him that if he did my first stop in the morning would be at the courthouse to file for divorce. (Don't freak out. I can say that to him because he knows I am kidding).

On Thursday the 2nd Spencer's best friend, Paul, came over to play.  Of course, Elliott, who will never pose for any pictures, insisted on being in all of the pictures.

 

After Paul left we played outside with our new bubble maker.

On the 3rd, with all of the Christmas decorations cleared out, I decorated for New Year's for the first time. We have all of this gold stuff left over from Spencer's golden birthday party and I just used that.  I also printed a few free printables and put them in frames that we already had. 

 

Spencer and I made this mantle banner.  I wanted to buy yellow flags and do black numbers, but Hobby Lobby had every color flag except yellow.  Spencer picked the blue.

Oh my gosh.  I did it.  I got us through the holidays in just 3 posts.  Now we can hold our heads high and proudly journey into 2014.