We spent the night with Connie and Edwin like we do every year. We spend it building bonfires in the backyard and roasting marshmellows and doing something silly for the kids. This year it was blow horns and bubbles. One year it was sparklers, another year it was silly string ... you get the drift. I really wish I could have taken a picture that was sweet as pie so as to share with you all, but it will be forever locked in my head. The kids had their own little campfire beside ours and it was just the sweetest thing to see five little kids (my youngest three plus Madison and Landon) sitting around it in little beach lounge chairs roasting marshmellows. Those are memories that will follow them forever (not to mention their misty eyed mommas!).
I called Christian right after midnight and he was like, "Um, Mom, it's only 9:00 here." Gee, thanks son. :\ You should have seen us trying to take a New Year's picture! Eventually we finally got three pictures with three different cameras taken! We tried to figure out why we were all semi-squatting and leaning down for this picture ... then we realized it was because children were taking the pictures and well, we were a little slow to figure out that we can still stand up ... :o
Anyway, that is Daniel, Lesa, Connie, Me, and Edwin in the picture above!
I zonked out on the couch not long after Robbie Maddison made his world-record motocycle jump. Madison and Madison were trying to figure out why he spelled his name with two D's - lol.
I woke up here and there throughout the night since I was on the couch and the TV was still going, playing Law & Order: Criminal Intent marathon and eventually MONK marathon. After 8:30am or so I couldn't sleep anymore so I got up and started getting our stuff together and started getting stuff ready to make for breakfast. Little Haley was up and moving early with me. She was up before I was in fact! When I woke up she was laying in the floor by the heater playing with Cleo the dog :)
The kids all slowly rolled out of bed and then the adults! Around 11:30 we got a phone call telling us that the high school football coach at Central died unexpectedly within the last half hour. He had cancer but he wasn't expected to die or anything. Still finding out details. The kids and I headed back to our house around noon.
Once home we scrubbed and scrubbed inside the house, then we went outside and started doing some yard work. The kids were so good that I packed them up and headed to the park at their request! The wind was really blowing and we each had on three coats, gloves, and boggins ... I think the kids played all of 20 minutes before deciding it was time to go back home!
Then we came home, made dinner, and had a comical time at dinner going over the night's devotion about thinking before you speak and if you don't have anything nice to say don't say anything at all. Now we've had dinner time chores for each person for a really long time now. No one is exempt from them providing they are home for dinner. Little miss Haley decided that tonight she just didn't feel like cleaning off the table after dinner. It was absolutely so funny to watch this little four year old come up with every excuse as to why she couldn't do something! Things like, "Mom, I just don't know where this (the oven mitt) goes, so I can't put it up." As if that oven mitt hasn't been around not only since she was born but definitely since she has been in the dinner time chore rotation! It's also been in the same place since we moved into the house! Of course, I pointed out the fact she could ask me where anything goes if she doens't know - lol. You had to have seen it for it to be truly appreciated :-D
While dinner was cooking the three youngest took baths so I didn't have to worry about that after dinner - we could go straight to bed and read stories!! We have finally gotten around to reading "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever." We got halfway through it tonight and will finish it tomorrow.
Anyway, that was our last twenty-four plus hours! Hope you have enjoyed yours as much as we have enjoyed ours!
