New Years Eve

This year we hosted friends for New Years which is always chaotic but fun!  We had six families over for dinner, sparkles and a midnight toast with some dancing, a drink making contest and a giant mess of toys thrown in.  The kids loved it and already are making plans for next year.

Avery set up a prime seat to wait for everyone

Annual New Year's Tree

December

We had a little fun outside the usual Holiday hustle and bustle in December.  Mom and dad saw the Nutcracker at the Fox with friends and also snuck out for a date night.  Mom had several holiday parties with old and new friends.  And dad added his weekly racquetball games and trivia nights back to the schedule when he could.

Avery (5 years, 4 months)  - Avery started the month with an end of the season performance for her Jitterbug enrichment class.  She really enjoyed the class especially having everyone cone watch her perform!

Avery went to a birthday party at Sparkles where she discovered a new found love of skating.

And in not as fun news, Avery had her tonsils and adenoids taken out.  Her tonsil was very enlarged and was believed to be causing issues with her speech and she recently began snoring at night.  Her recovery took about 2 weeks and the middle part was rough for a few days. But she was feeling better by the end of the month and back at playing with friends!

Parker (8 years, 1 month) - Parker was all about hanging out with friends this month (in reality on playing online) and opposed anything that took his time away from them.  He did get to go to a Hawks game with a friend and they were so excited to make it onto the scoreboard! 

Carter (9 years, 7 months) - Carter has basically given up on ordering from kid's menus which makes going out to eat with him fun (and a bit expensive!). 

Siblings - The boys were great with Avery this month and didn't mind having a few calm weeks.  They were able to sneak out with dad for a Falcons game.  And they started Lacrosse as their winter sport.  First time doing it for both of them but their class is basically all friends so they are really enjoying that.  Early in the month the whole family joined mom for a family workout at her gym.  And the kids enjoyed hanging out with each other.

Holiday Fun

We fit in a few fun holiday activities over the month... Avery made tons of gingerbread houses and the whole family went to Lights of Life.

Dad took the kids to a Christmas Market set up downtown.

Pickles and A-A (or Abe depending on which child you ask) came to visit much to the daily delight of the kids.

And the whole family visited the Chinese Lantern Festival with friends.