New Year's Eve

New Year's Eve! Not a very exciting holiday for the kids, but seeing as January is when we do our sugar fast, New Year's Eve means a total sweets binge. And just like that, it becomes exciting for the kids. Anything involving sugar, and they are excited. We baked all afternoon, and got to taste test everything before the big celebration. 

Moms marble brownies, coconut chocolate chip cookies, Oreos, and an assortment of candy. Mix that will a bottle of martinellis, and you have a mad sugar rush. Kids loved every second of it. We lit a few fire cracker and sparklers, and watched a special Netflix countdown. It's completely genius, they created a countdown for kids so parents can play it anytime during the night instead of keeping the kids awake until midnight. 

So kids were in bed by nine, and Braden and I had eaten our way into a sugar coma, so we didn't last much longer than they did. Super exciting New Years. 

But it's been a fantastic year with my favorites, I feel immensely blessed to have them as my little family unit. A lot of exciting things have happened, but I love our simple little life together, and look forward to many more years with them. I thank my Heavenly Father daily for the plan of salvation and the opportunity I have to be with them for eternity. 

That's one tiring waffle

Fell asleep at snack/early lunch. She even crosses her ankles like a lady. Sweet baby girl, transferred to her crib without even stirring. 

Snow Angels in the Carolinas

So, it doesn't snow here. And that is awesome. I'm certainly dont miss the snow one bit. And I'm not sure the kids do either, Eve was so excited she could make a snow angel in the packing peanuts from a christmas box. She said "I can make a snow angel with no shoes!" 

Greta, just kept walking through them getting giggly and happy at the sound of the crunch under her chubby little feet. 

Graham drove trucks through it. 

So yeah, packing peanuts seem to do the trick. We are not complaining about the lack of snow. 

Downtown Disney

We didn't do any Disney parks, but we did go to downtown Disney. It was a hoot. The kids, mostly Eve, had a great time just looking around at all the shops, toys, treats, and figures from Disney cartoons. She kept asking "mom will you take my picture by this?" And this girl, just loves the camera. She posed all by herself every time, half the fun was seeing what pose and perfect smile she chose. She's such a ham, and I love it. I love seeing her so confident. We got to ride the carousel, and Graham, my little dare devil, was surprisingly timid. He had quite the Kung fu grip on the reins of his pony. He wouldn't even let go or look up for a picture, he was so focused. It was a great time, very low maintenance, and we were able to just go with the kids cues, when they were done we could leave. No monstrous addition fee holding us there to get our money's worth or anything. And this way we gave them a taste of Disney while in Orlando. We took a boat ride from downtown disney to the New Orleans resort, part of the Disney resort chain. But the kids thought the boat ride was awesome, and we found a cool food court and playground all themed Mardi Gras. So we got to have fun at the playground and eat some yummy Bengiets and cookies. Boat ride back and the kids were spent, so we grabbed some take out and headed back to the resort. Awesome day. Just what we needed. Just family time. We didn't do florida to do fancy pros or anything, we just wanted time together. 

By far her favorite part. 

When in Rome, do as the Romans. Or when in Florida, wear a Hawaiian shirt. 

Dec 28- final day of vacation

Well, all good things come to and end. After a few days just the two of us, we wished for more time together, but we were ready to see the kids at the same time. So we did just that. Packed up the kids and made the trek home. Braden, once again our hero did all the driving. It was so great if him. It allowed me to diffuse many arguments between the little people in the backseat, change movies in the did player, and other things to make the ride go smoothly. 

Around 8 pm kids were getting tired, and they were not willing to stop fighting and whining to go to sleep. So Braden says "put on an episode of downton abbey. If they're like me, it will be so boring it will knock them out instantly." Cheeky little thing he is. So I thought I'd try it, and sure enough, not 15-20 mins in, all 3 were asleep. Graham was first, about 2 minutes of downton did him in. Boys just don't understand the awesomeness of Downton Abbey. 

Dec 27

Part of our trip was doing those timeshare sales pitches. It gave us discounts on our hotels, so the attendance are mandatory. When picked up our information packet the woman told us that it was walking distance from the hotel. So that morning, we woke up, went to the gym, Braden ran in the beach, so we quickly got ready and decided to head on over. Well, it wasn't walking distance. After waking for about a half hour, we decided to put it in our phones gps to find out just how far it was, and we were still about 1.2 miles from the place! We had 7 minutes to make it, or we would have to return for another presentation later. And we did not want to do that. So we started dashing down the street to hopefully make just a few mins late. We BARELY made it. The people directly behind us we denied entry because they were too late. So, exhausted, we sat through it, said "no" to the investment, and started our way back. So walked 2.5 miles to get there, so on the way back we decided to make it a stroll along the beach. Made it all seem ok. Having done so much physical activity, we decided it was ok to stuff our faces at Joe's Crab Shack for dinner. Awesome day. Nothing fancy, but that's our style. I love having time with him, he's sort of my favorite. 

Mini honeymoon Dec26-28

April is a saint. We are so incredibly blessed that she likes our kids enough to offer to keep them for a few days so we could run away to Daytona Beach for a few days just the two of us. We started it off right, we went to the Orlando temple and got to do a session there. It's an absolutely gorgeous temple, we really enjoyed it. We made our trek to Daytona and checked in to our hotel room right on the ocean. Bliss. Turns out, most all of Daytona beach is pretty run down, but that's ok the beach was incredible. Sunshine, not too busy, and sand that feels like butter. 

After we checked in, we get settled, and decided to grab an early movie at the theatre down the street. We saw "Exodus: Gods and Kings" it was the story of Moses and his delivering of the Hebrew slaves. It wasn't entirely biblically correct in my opinion, but still a great film. After we saw the movie, there was an outdoor concert of a country cover band. We walked around there and the carnival rides. We grabbed dinner and then just went to hang out at the room. I've been trying to finish the book "unbroken" so we can go see it in theaters soon. 

Christmas Day

We got to spend Christmas morning at the resort, opened a few gifts and enjoyed a family breakfast. Our tradition is pumpkin pancakes, but being out of town we improvised and made plain pancakes. We kept it simple, one gift from mom and dad and one from Santa. 

We spent the afternoon with April and her family. It was so fun to get to know them. And it was incredibly nice of them to invite us, a couple of strangers, to their family Christmas dinner. They were so hospitable, we felt right at home. And the food was amazing, I had smoked turkey for the first time in my life, it is definitely as good as they say it is. There was probably close to 40 people there, and enough for everyone to get extremely full. It was so fun to get to know them. 

I however, did not make the best first impression. I was outside chatting away on skype with our friend Candace who is in Belgium for the holidays, and I said "this is the best non white Christmas ever." (Referring to the lack of snow and weather in Florida.) harmless right? Not. I was at a home that was 90% black/Philippino. So, to the small crowd that was outside, that came across as slightly racist, until I clarified that I was indeed talking about the weather. 

While this was happening, the rest of the family were gathered around the Christmas tree doing their gift exchange. I could see it all happening because there was a huge triple glass pane and door there, the tree right in front of the right hand side of the glass, next to the door. While they were all enjoying eachother and sitting around the tree, I was embarassed and slightly flustered From the previous weather comment. I went scurrying inside to find refuge with Braden. So I went quickly to slip through the open door. Not open! I face planted right into the glass door! Not a graceful tap or a slight bump. I drilled it. You could hear the glass banging from how hard I whacked it. And everyone was there to see it first hand as I walked into the glass door 2 feet from the Christmas tree. I was crazy embarassed, and everyone knew it. So once all the laughter subsided, a few came to me to tell me if a time they saw someone once bump into the door. But, in the bright side, the door incident was much more amusing to them than my comment about the weather. So, I guess t wasn't so bad. They were very gracious, and we still had a good time.