Happy New Year!

We had a little New Year's Eve party at home this year.  We were going to go to a party at a friend's house this year, but they came down with the flu at their house so we had our own little party at home.  We had our traditional fondue dinner.

We played some games and ate some snacks and dinner, but the kids kept asking me when our party was going to start.  So I don't know if they were really having fun.  :)  One of the games we played was pin the tail on the New Year.  Yes, we made that up on the fly.

 Anna decorated the 2011 picture and Matthew decorated the 12 that we were going to pin on.

 Matthew got a direct hit!

 Hooray 2012!!

 Anna did a good job too!

 We also decorated gingerbread houses - a Christmas activity we never got too.

 Scott helped them assemble their houses while holding Grant.  He's such a good Daddy!

 They had a great time decorating!

 Nice job!
Anna collected a bunch of candy on her plate that, I think, she had no intention of putting on her house.  I think she just wanted to claim that candy.  :)

After all our games and activities and snacks we got comfortable and watched Tangled.  The kids were very worried throughout the whole movie about whether or not Rapunzel would be ok.  And they've even seen it before.  :)  At 9pm we did an early countdown to the new year.  Matthew had fun popping the poppers, but Anna, who was very tired by then, had a little meltdown.  So it was time for bed after that.  We had a fun little family party...at least some of us think it was a party.  :)  Happy New Year everyone!!

Anna's Haircut

Anna's hair is a bit of a sore subject with me.  She doesn't like me to do her hair and if I ever do, she immediately messes it up on purpose.  As a result, her hair looks very disheveled most of the time.  And I feel like I need to explain to people that I do bathe her and care for her despite the way her hair looks.  Anyway, I cut her hair today for the first time (other than trimming her bangs).  In the past I've taken her to places to get her hair cut, hoping that if she got a really nice haircut it would magically look cute all the time whether she tried to mess it up or not.  So today she agreed to let me cut it and I was so excited!  Here she is right after, trying to put a bow in her hair.  I was happy that she wanted to put a bow in it instead of purposely messing it up.  Putting the bow in did mess it up, but at least it was unintentional.  Baby steps.  You can't really see the cut here, but I thought she was cute.  :)

She didn't want me to take a picture of her hair cut so I pretended I was taking pictures of other things.  :)  You can sort of see it here.

And here.  I trimmed the front a little and the back a lot.  She messed up the front, but it still looked ok.

 

Another sneaky picture from the back.  Maybe someday she'll get over being mad about me doing her hair, but at least she's letting me cut it now.  :)  What are we going to do with you, Anna?

Christmas Day

I was a little stressed about Christmas morning 'cause it was a Sunday and we had to get to church at a certain time.  Our church starts at 11 and I had to be there at 10:30 for choir practice.  Luckily we were able to open presents, have Christmas breakfast and still get ready for church on time.  It was a Christmas miracle!   Here are a few pictures from our Christmas morning.  A blurry Grant discovers the tree.  When Matthew saw the tree he said we had 100 miles of presents.  :)

 Finding presents to open.

 Anna got Tangled (the Rapunzel movie).

Matthew got a scooter and was very excited about it.  He kept telling us Santa forgot to also bring him a skateboard.  We kept telling him Santa knows he's not quite ready for that yet.  :)

Matthew picked out a pillow for Scott this year - a very exciting present.  And Anna had to get in on the thank you hugging.

Grant checks out one of his presents.

 And another one.

 Scott got some tools.

And some of our Christmas breakfast.  We combined some of our family traditions this year.  We made German pancakes (a Keeler tradition) and had a special fruit salad and cinnamon rolls (Guptill traditions).  I was very happy that all the breakfast items made it to the table - it was a little uncertain there for a while.  It was a very nice breakfast.

Sadly, church was not the highlight of our day as it probably should be.  I sang three songs with the choir and had to run up and down from the stand since Scott had taken a fussy Grant out to the foyer.  No one else in the choir came down from the stand between songs, so it was just me running back and forth.  Anna and Matthew were sitting alone in the pew while I sang and not quite behaving themselves.  Matthew did get to go up and sing a few songs with the primary, which he liked.  I also had to run around and collect paperwork from people and get signatures for the Cub Scout Pack rechartering after the meeting.  :(  By the end of the meeting some of us were feeling pretty grouchy.  We had to go home and decompress a little bit.  We made a biggish Christmas dinner with ham, potatoes, rolls, Scott's baked beans, glazed carrots and the rest of our breakfast fruit salad.  It was very nice.  Merry Christmas everyone!

Christmas Eve

 We had a nice Christmas Eve at home.

The kids were very excited for Christmas.

 

I made some goodies in the morning and we had a dinner of cheese, veggies, fruits, crackers, meats and dips.  I made some spinach artichoke dip, which I liked.

Some of our snacks.

We had a little Christmas Eve program.  Anna was a shepherd and Matthew a wiseman in our Christmas story.  They also doubled as Mary and Joseph since we had a small cast.  :)

Here is Matthew the wise man bringing gifts to baby Jesus.

They liked being in a "show."

We sang some Christmas songs and then opened a special Christmas Eve gift from Grandma and Grandpa Guptill - special Christmas jammies! 

The kids loved them!!  Thanks Ma2 and Pa2!

Before bed Matthew and Anna left out a plate of goodies for Santa.  They were very thorough in their preparations.

I think Matthew wrote the blue note - "To Santa" and Anna drew a picture on the white note.  They offered him both water and milk for a drink 'cause they couldn't decide which he would like more.  I thought they would be up late, but they both fell asleep within fifteen minutes of going to bed.  They were beat from all the excitement!

Daddy's Little Helper

Grant LOVES his Daddy.  And, just like Matthew, he wants to "help" him do everything.  Scott was vacuuming the other day and Grant just had to be a part of it.  He followed him all over the house checking out the vacuum job in action.   Here he is following Scott around!

In the end he finally got what he wanted - some snuggle time with Dad.

Good helping, Grant!

Some Christmas Fun

 Here are some pictures of some of our Christmas adventures.

Advent calendars

 Cinnamon Roll Christmas Tree

 Enjoying Christmas lights and Christmas light shows!

 Making a free form gumdrop Christmas tree

 Santa handprints

 Gingerbread houses.  Happy gingerbread houses.


The kids opened a Christmas book every day in December (one of our advent calendar traditions).
Anna always wanted to read them hiding out next to the tree.
 

Scott got to take a few days off work.
It made me smile when I got up and he had the kids down stairs making snowflakes.
They had a great time.

 Decorating gingerbread cookies

 So much frosting!

 

And all dressed up for church.  Grant had a matching outfit, but he was sleeping or something.  :)  We had a lot of Christmas fun this December.  And I'm tired now.