New Year's resolutions

The best thing about a new year is your resolutions. I'm not going to tell you all of them, but one of them is to regularly update my blog. Well, at least to NEVER get so far behind again. I LOVE having my blog and I LOVE to look back and read all about my family. I'm sad that I let life get a hold of me last year. It's easy to say this now because my kids are on "winter" vacation for another week. When we go back to school it's 3 kids to all day school, 1 to kindergarten, and 1 to preschool. For me it's work 3 days a week, at preschool, and in class rooms all the days in between. Somewhere in all that I try to get laundry done and house cleaned. The homework thing has just been KILLING me. What am I to do with all 5 in school next year??? Homework for 5 kids...YUCK! Anyway, I love teaching preschool. It's a fun thing for me to do and I get to spend it with my little guy. In all of life we still are trying to balance activity days, cub scouts, golf (it's year round), dance, and baseball that will be starting here soon. I'm telling you all this because I failed to document it all last year. Maybe I will have to randomly post pictures of things last year too.

Ok on to Christmas and New Years. This year Christmas Eve was the same as always. We spend it with grandma Nana. We go to the movies, we saw Tangled, go back to her house eat dinner, sing carols, act out the Christmas story, have a visit with santa and open presents. The kids LOVE getting their new jammies every year! (Well, so does mommy) After all that we load up and go home to prepare for the BIG man to come down the chimney and bring us lots of goodies. Christmas morning for the first time in years was just us. It was VERY quiet. You see my kids don't shout with excitement when they open that present that they had been dying for. They just smile and say thanks. Me on the other hand, I sit there on the edge of my seat so excited for them to open it and to see their reaction. I can hardly stand it! It is tradition that we block off the hallway so they can not see the presents under the tree until everyone is ready to come out.




Here they all are waiting, waiting, waiting for dad to get out of the shower. Really come on dad, we don't care how you look just come out so we can OPEN presents! (He does this every year. He has to shower and be dressed before we open presents...lame, I know, but how can you be upset when he has good hygene?)


Here they are when they finally got to come around the corner! Seriously that is the most excitement I think we've ever had! I love how I got Zach in mid air!


Here is yet another tradition. I think last year I actually posted video of this. So, after they have seen all the presents they have to sit and listen to the story of Christ and His birth. Never mind that we acted it out the night before. I think Craig just likes to torcher them as much as possible ;)

Among some of our favorite gifts we got DS's, clothes, books, lego sets, shoes, baseball stuff, clocks, a kindle and a bosch :)

After our yummy breakfast we got cleaned up, played and rested. We then had a yummy dinner of stuffed beef tenderloin, parmesan mashed potatoes, asparagus and salad. For dessert we had a super yummy caramel cheesecake and brownies. We enjoyed that dinner with one of my brothers, his wife and daughter and her mom, my dad and sister.

Now for our New years celebration. Every year we spend this holiday with our friends. We trade off houses. This year we were off to their house. We get a sitter for all 10 kids and we go have a nice quiet dinner with just the 4 of us. We come home to attempt put them all down and we play games. Then it was off to bed just after midnight because we had an early morning planned. We got up and took all the kids to the rose parade. How fun was that! We were soooo cold, but it was worth it.


Here are some of our monkeys in a tree by our friends, uncle's mom's house. Here are some pics form the parade.


Me and my little guy bundled up.

Me and my big guy :)



Enjoying all the hot chocolate! We sure needed it to warm the insides of our bodies!




Look at the freckles across M's face. So cute!

I guess every year they have a war with the people that sit across the street. When I say every year I mean that this has been going on for at least 10 years they said. Whenever there is a break in the parade, one side will get up a spray silly string on the other side and visa versa. The kids thought they had died and gone to heaven. Why is that you ask? Because it was adults that have this war NOT the kids!

I guess you could say they got him good!

After the parade we go back to the house and have lunch. After that has settled we took the kids to the park down the street and let them go. They ran and enjoyed a fun game of soccer that everyone played. It was such a wonderful day and I feel so lucky to have been able to have this experience with my kids. Who knows, this may become a tradition for us. We know that the seats are there. They have been sitting in the same spot for over 50 years! Can you believe it??? Not only that, but they mark off their section just before halloween! Yes you read that right, halloween! Thank you to them for letting us share such a fun day and here's to a new year and a few resolutions!