December 31, 2013

I have been feeling a lot of pressure to finish the rest of the basement soon so that Kate and Sam can have their own rooms.  And since we haven't started on the rooms, it didn't look like it was going to happen soon, so I proposed one day that we move Kate into with Mari, and move Bethy from that room to Sam's.  Happily everyone thought it was a great idea.  Kate loves being in a girl room, Mari loves playing with the stuff that Kate moving in brought, Sam loves that he is "in charge" of Bethany now, and I love that Sam is getting a bit more sleep- so he is not as cranky, and Mari is getting a bit less sleep at night- so she will still take a nap in the afternoon.  We will see how long it works but I feel like we bought ourselves at least a year with the change up.  For now I keep finding the girls cuddled up together on Kate's bed reading together.

This is Marianne's play kitchen and food she got for Christmas.  Bethy scoots and scoots to get into what looks like lots of tasty food she is not allowed to eat, only to discover it is not real food every time.

Happy New Year!
The day before New Years I planned a little party just for our little family.  We have found it too difficult to try and do New Years Eve up late at somebody's home for too long now.  It is just not worth it with all those kids of ours.  So instead we just planned to have a little party of our own.  I had some sparklers, games, fondue, martinelli's, time calpsules with resolutions to make, and balloons to pop to help us decide what order to do it all in.  I talked to my sister Amy as I was blowing up the balloons that afternoon for the party, and she mentioned that they were thinking about coming up to an attraction in Midway that night for their New Year's Eve.  So we invited to them over to our party too.  They brought dinner and silly string and then we really had a party!  We had a balloon drop every 20 minutes or so to see what the next activity would be.  I think the sparklers were a favorite, or the silly string fight in the basement (which I still need to sweep up), when we made and decorated family time capsules with our goals for the year, I think Kate picked learning to swim better, Sam picked being nice to others, and Mari we helped pick being potty trained.  We rung in the New Year at what the Carpenter's call. "Baby Standard Time"  8:00pm.  Which was perfect.   Fun night!