We spent New Year's Eve at our friend's the Grover's. We had a fun night of dinner, crafts for the kids, party poppers, games, treats, and a lot of laughs.
The little girls sat and played with toys while the big kids got ready for the crafts.
Our first craft were these 2010 glasses that I found off this new blog I've been following. Love the ideas there. They were super easy and cute. The kids had fun wearing them to help bring in the new year.
The next craft was something that Tina came up with. They were disco balls that we made using a styrofoam ball, sequins, and straight pins. They were to resemble the ball that drops in Times Square. We didn't get any pics of the finished product, but they were cute.
The boys didn't get to stay up until midnight, so before they went to bed we did some party poppers to let them celebrate.
I have finally finished 8, count them E-I-G-H-T, new posts. Try not to be too shocked. I have been SO far behind on my blogging. December is always busy, and blogging took a back burner. I have also been without my memory cards for the last little while. My external hard drive crashed at the beginning of December, so our friend Lance has been working trying to retrieve my lost files. I had almost 5 years worth of pictures on it. Quite depressing. He has been able to recover quite a few, but not all unfortunately. I have learned my lesson, and will back up my pictures better from now on. I am grateful that I have my blog to go back to look at for the last 2 years. Maybe this is what happened to my hard drive. Hum...
Grant has an enormous toy box that is FULL of toys that he had acquired over the last almost 5 years of his life. I really didn't want Hallie to get new toys for Christmas since so many of Grant's toys are still practically brand new, but just need new batteries. So we all decided that Hallie was going to ask Santa for new batteries to replenish the old toys. What an awesome idea that was. We finally got around to pulling some of those old toys out the other morning and replacing the batteries. She had so much fun! Grant was even excited to listen to some of the familiar toys that he hasn't heard in a while. As for me, I got a little noise overload listening to all the toys go at once. Good thing there's off buttons! Thanks Santa for helping us replenish our old toys. Her smile is worth way more than the cheap batteries.
My brother Aaron had our name for Christmas this year. When he called to see what we wanted/needed, I told him that we were thinking about just asking everyone for money this year to help us put a ramp on the front of the house so we can get Grant in and out of the house easier. He took that comment and in turn orchestrated a massive project at our house the day after Christmas. The work crew-consisting of Dad, Aaron, Adam, Brandon, Grandpa Jones, and Jeremy-showed up at our house about 9:30 that morning and by 3:30 that afternoon it was finished. Well all except the paint. They did such an amazing job. It turned out great! I was amazed at how quickly it all came together. It was fun to watch the boys work. My mom and I helped by keeping the boys full and hydrated. And of course, Grant was there watching and supervising and was used as a consultant when needed.
We are so appreciative to all of those that came to help out! We really couldn't have pulled it off without you. You will never know how much this means to us!!!
Aaron channeling his inner rock star with a tape measure.
Grant doing his first inspection now that the deck part is done.
Getting the ramp ready to attach to the deck. I think Brandon is the only one really working in this picture. Everyone else grabbed a tool to look busy when they saw I was gonna take a picture.
Grant supervising in the warmth of the house.
ALL FINISHED! Grant's trying it out. He thinks it's pretty funny to go up and down.
The work crew sharing a round of root beers to celebrate the completion of the ramp.
Monday morning Adam, Brandon, and Taylor showed up and got the ramp ready for the painter to come. They put up a big tarp tent on the front of the house and put some propane heaters inside to get it warm to help the paint dry. (I forgot to get a picture of this which I am so bummed out about. I felt like we were E.T. with the big tent on the front of the house.) And then the painter went to work. The tent came down the next day and we had our finished product. It has been so nice to be able to just walk outside and down the ramp to get Grant on the bus or just out to the car. Now if all the snow would just melt away and spring would come so I can start working on adding new flower beds to replace the ones that had to go so we could build the ramp.
Christmas....What do I say....It was crazy, fun-filled, stressful, family centered, lots of travels, and I'm kinda glad it's all over. I think I stressed myself out a little too much by making a lot of homemade gifts this year trying to be a little more frugal than we usually are. This is the first Christmas ever that I haven't been working, so I felt like I could take on a lot of projects since money is tighter and I had extra time. Extra time...HA! I am really pleased however with all that I accomplished, but there are a few things that ended up being left undone (and still are). It reached a point that I just had to pull the plug on some of the last minute things and call it good enough. My family was all in town for Christmas this year. It was the first time that we have spent Christmas with my parents in 3 years, and 5 years (I thin???) since we have spent it with my brother Aaron and his family. So it was fun to have the family all together again. For Christmas Eve, we spent the first half of the night at my Aunt Jackie's house with the Jones family. We had dinner and then had a White Elephant gift exchange. Good times there, lots of laughs. Then we went to Jeremy's parents house for the rest of the night for more food and more presents. We ended the night at our house, where the kids opened their Christmas jammies. The theme of the year for the jammies were skulls. Mikkele is really into that right now and so I decided to make her some bottoms, which ended up sparking me making all 3 kids a set. (It's been a while since I've followed a pattern while sewing, so it was quite the experience. I think my mom is probably glad to have my sewing projects done for a while too. Lot's of time spent on the phone asking questions.) I think they turned out pretty stinking cute!
We stayed up so late Christmas Eve, that I actually had to wake Mikkele up at 8:30 to tell her Santa had come and she needed to get up.
The unveiling of Santa
The loot left to right: Grant's stuff, Mikkele's stuff, and Hallie's stuff.
Mikkele's all ready to go outside and try out her new motorized scooter.
Grant is so hard to shop for. So we asked ourselves, "What does Grant like?" The answer to that was FOOD! So he asked Santa to bring him some yummy food. He got his wish. If you ask him what he got for Christmas, he'll tell you "Ummm" which means food, and most specifically ice cream.
Grant had to go on a scavenger hunt to find his present from Mom and "Dam". A once per month ice cream delivery certificate was taped to a carton of ice cream in the freezer.
Since our Hallie May is such a chunky monkey, and is growing out of her infant car seat so fast, she asked Santa for a new big girl car seat. While she looks happy and pleased with her car seat, she was much more interested in all the paper and ribbons that were everywhere.
I know you're thinking, "When did April go to San Diego? I don't remember you saying you were going there. And right before Christmas?" Well then you're right. Because I didn't go. Jeremy went with his Dad, brother, and brother-in-law along with my car and the laptop. Leaving me bored without the computer and stranded with a duct tape mobile 5 days before Christmas with half of my shopping still needing to be done. Lucky for him, Alisha ended up coming into town that weekend to finish up some Christmas shopping of her own. So I was able to use her truck and her awesome babysitting skills and got everything just about finished up. But enough whining from me, and onto the game.
It was the San Diego Chargers vs. the Cincinnati Bengals. Jeremy's brother Ryan is a HUGE Bengals fan. Has been since he was a kid. Even through a decade or more of losing seasons. So when the Bengals were coming kinda close to home, they decided to make a boys trip out of it. Glenn and Dave routed for the Bengals with Ryan, and Jeremy routed for the Chargers. He's started to follow them a little more this year because of fantasy football and really likes the team. Much to Ryan's dismay, the Chargers ended up winning with a field goal with like 30 seconds remaining in the game. Better luck next time Ryan. Jeremy, Glenn, and Dave getting ready to go into the stadium.
A picture from where their seats were in the stadium.
Ryan, Glenn, and Jeremy after the game. Notice how Jeremy is really the only one smiling. Ryan's trying to fake it, but lets face it...his team just lost. So in this picture he's actually looking at how far away the top of the stadium is and thinking about running up and jumping off. Why do these boys have to get to involved with a dumb game that they have no control of the outcome? I just don't get it.
Mikkele had another round of performances with her Little Entertainers group. This is the last time she will be performing since her teacher is having a baby soon and then moving to Las Vegas at the beginning of the summer. She has been thinking for a while that she wanted to take a break from the singing and focus more on piano anyways, so it worked out good. She didn't have as many performances this year, which was nice since Christmas is always a hectic time anyway. Mikkele had the longest solo this year. She did a pretty good job. I helped out quite a bit with the props this year as well. Good job kids.
The months continue to fly by. Hallie turned 7 months a few days before Christmas. There haven't been too many changes during this last month with her, more just fine tuning the things she started at 6 months. Her personality is probably the biggest thing that has started to really come out. She's so much fun. However, she is perfectly content to just sit and watch what is going on. No desire to crawl or move around at all, despite the efforts of Mikkele to teach her how. Mikkele was funny and thought she could teach her in a day how it was done. She found out otherwise. I kind of think she might go straight to walking and skip crawling all together. We'll see, only time will tell. Typically you don't go to the doctor in the 7th month for a well child check, but she has had ear infection after ear infection so we were able to check her weight. She is weighing in at a whopping 21.11 lbs this month. She has slowed down a bit. I kind of think this has to do with eating solids more frequently and less bottles. She has also started to take a binky, which I think is fabulous. Now at night I just have to put the binky back in her mouth if she wakes up, rather than a bottle. So yes, I'm starting a bad habit 6 months before we'll be trying to take it back away. But I'm TOTALLY okay with that. She is able to play with her little friends a little bit now. There is a little bit of toy stealing that has already started, but the tantrum that usually follows a toy being stolen hasn't started yet...thank goodness. I can wait for that. One of her friends Teegan. He comes over to play once a week while his mommy goes to the temple.
She continues to be more and more vocal. She does the best with her "d" sounds. She babbles "dad" and will even say "that" but with more of a "d" sound at the beginning. She loves to put anything in her mouth that she can get her hands on. She is such a busy body, and always trying to find the next thing she can reach. She loves paper. The feel of it, the sound it makes when you crinkle it, and even the taste.
She's always trying to steal my phone and suck on it, but every time she does, my earpiece gets wet and then it's hard to hear out of it. So I found one of my old phones and gave it to her. It doesn't light up though, so she doesn't like it as much.
Aunt Lisha was trying to convert her to a Diet Pepsi girl. But we all know she had Mt. Dew running in her umbilical cord (don't judge me), so I don't think she's gonna go for the Diet Pepsi. Sorry Lish.
Her hair is starting to grow finally. It's still really fine, but we can get it into a mohawk.
She is sleeping better at night with the help of that awesome binky. As long as her ears are feeling good she only gets up once, if at all. Lately it's been a whole other story with her dang ears though. (She is scheduled on January 20th to get some tubes put in. I can't wait.) Typically she's not all sprawled out like she is in the picture above. She usually has her blanket up by her face, and quite frequently we'll go in to check on her and her face is totally covered. That's how she likes it, but I sleep better once I check to make sure it's not. Silly girl.
We just love this girl to pieces. Jeremy thinks we need 10 more since she's such a good baby. We know they don't all come like that though, so no rushing off to fit in those next 10 in the next 10 years.
The first Sunday in December, the Gallier family all got together and decorated gingerbread houses. I forgot to get my camera out until after we were already done decorating and most everyone had already left, but here are a few finished products.
The little girls sat and played with toys while the big kids got ready for the crafts.
Our first craft were these 2010 glasses that I found off this new blog I've been following. Love the ideas there. They were super easy and cute. The kids had fun wearing them to help bring in the new year.
The next craft was something that Tina came up with. They were disco balls that we made using a styrofoam ball, sequins, and straight pins. They were to resemble the ball that drops in Times Square. We didn't get any pics of the finished product, but they were cute.
The boys didn't get to stay up until midnight, so before they went to bed we did some party poppers to let them celebrate.
Thanks for the fun night guys!
