Mid-week New Year festivities

We left Tucson last Tuesday (the 30th) after an 8 day stay that included Christmas.  You can only imagine what we brought home with us.  We had taken both cars down to Tucson.  Michael's car had a lot of extra room on the way there.  Not so much on the way back.

We brought every single thing in from the cars and put it in the living room.  And then we started unpacking and organizing.  

This is everything unloaded.

This is after an hour.

And this is after 3 hours.  Everything was gone from the living room, but there were piles in all of our bedrooms. It took another 5ish days to get everything completely put away.

I knew we only had a limited amount of time left with the lovely holiday decor so I took a couple more pictures.  Michael never did notice the new Santa picture we bought right before heading to Tucson.

Our first fire of the winter.  I like the dark edges the filter made.

The original picture.

Michael had to go to work on the 31st so after a leisurely morning at home the kids and I loaded up with our Christmas money and hit the stores. 

Don't panic.  We are parked in the driveway here.

First we went to Walmart to return a shirt, then we went to Home Depot and bought a small wreath, then we went to McDonald's and got smoothies for them and an iced tea for me, then we went to Hobby Lobby and bought a HUGE wreath for 80% off.

Then we went to the mall and got a shirt for Elliott's 3-year-old pictures and some new comfy pants for him and each kid got a figurine play set from the Disney store.

Doc McStuffins for Elliott,

and Star Wars for Spencer.  Spencer also got a millennium falcon.

We headed home tired and satisfied.

I wanted to immediately check to make sure that the HUGE wreath will work for next year.

The gremlins in the camera took the first picture.

This is where I intend on taking our Christmas picture for 2015.  I am already planning and scheming.

Michael was already home from work when we got home, so we quickly got ready and went to Carraba's to meet a huge group of people to celebrate Travis' birthday and New Year's Eve.  It is the first time since about 2005 that we didn't eat BBQ on New Year's Eve.  We'll see how this year goes with such a huge change to tradition.

Back at home Elliott went to bed immediately, and we did a photo session with Big Daddy Jabba and new Tiny Baby Jabba.

Spencer went to bed and Michael and I watched a movie while Ginger had a panic attack, an anxiety attack and a heart attack every 4 minutes because of people setting off fireworks.  

We got up on New Year's Day and hit up Dunkin' Donuts before driving out to Queen Creek to once again celebrate Travis' birthday.  His birthday is actually on the 1st.

Gremlins again

Travis turned 37 so I had Spencer wear his 37 shirt.  I like to accommodate people like that.

We usually don't spend New Year's Day with other people so it was nice to be able to get a family picture.

Elliott is wearing one pair of his new comfy pants.  The other pair is identical, just grey and light blue.  $5 from the Gap!

We left Queen Creek around 1:00 and immediately went to our neighbor's house where they were hosting the entire West Virginia University wrestling team.  Their son is one of the coaches and the team was here for a tournament.

All of the wrestlers had already eaten and this is the food that was left.  Jo Ann told me that she literally stayed up all night cooking.

They were also celebrating one of the other coaches birthdays, but we left before they had cake.

Wrestlers sleeping on the floor.

MORE food

I borrowed this from Jo Ann's facebook page.  This was after we left.

We were home by about 3:00 and decided we didn't want to leave the house again that day so we started opening Christmas presents.  Elliott had a great time with this light-up drawing board.

After the kids went to bed Michael and I had a celebratory glass of champagne.  It was the bottles that we got as favors at the 12/13/14 wedding we went to. 

And then I somehow came up with the motivation to print a picture to add to this frame ornament that my aunt gave me in 2005.  I just didn't want to take it off the tree and put it into storage for another year without a "real" picture.

This is the little girl that came in the frame.  I've been looking at her hanging on the tree for a decade and I couldn't bear to throw her away, so I put her back in the frame behind us.

And while I was doing that Michael was enjoying a beer in his new icy Raiders cup.

And that was our mid-week celebration.  It already feels like it happened about 6 weeks ago.