Celebrating the New Year

We had a huge New Years party at our house this year. It actually started as kind of a small get together, but we kept inviting. We ended up having 10 adults and 15 kids!!! We made lots of good food and everyone brought some to share. The kids were so well behaved. They stayed downstairs watching movies and playing the Wii while the grown-ups played cards. The plan was to light fireworks at midnight. We don't ever watch or light fireworks in July because we sell fireworks instead, so we always do it during New Years. All the kids were so excited - especially our own. The problem was, when midnight got here, both our kiddos were sound asleep. We had spent nearly the entire week going to bed very late and it finally started to catch up to them. When I went to wake the kids up, Max got right up, but was very grumpy and not at all interested in watching fireworks. Instead, he crawled back to sleep on the living room chair and missed the entire thing. Bria was a completely different story. I tried and tried to wake her up. I shook her, talked loudly, tried to sit her up. Nothing worked. Some of the boys at the party tried to help me, but it was no use. If I couldn't tell she was breathing, I would have sworn she was DEAD! I've NEVER seen someone SO FAR ASLEEP!!!! So, two kids down and it was midnight, so we lit the fireworks.

Fastforward to the next morning. No surprise...Bria slept in. But, when she woke up, she was completely and uncontrollably sobbing that she missed the fireworks! I'm so glad that we at least tried to wake her up. She was crying so hard, she obviously needed more sleep. So, I told her she needed to lay on our bedroom floor and watch TV for a while. Since everyone else was still asleep, I told her that we had to turn the volume all the way down. I can't believe she even went for it, but she went right along with the plan. She almost instantly went back to sleep and when Max got up he layed down and joined her sleeping. Neither kid even stirred until 11:30 in the morning! I think we have a new sleeping-in record! They both woke up happy and refreshed!

Thankfully, Dave saved sparklers for our kids to do later. So, we had our own little New Years celebration a little late.

 

A Little bit of Logan

It the midst of all of our partying, Logan's lack of sleep has been catching up with me! I was reading the little booklet I got from the hospital and it said at 4 months, your baby should be sleeping 11-12 hours straight through the night. Plus two to three naps during the day. Our little Logan is nowhere near that! On average, he sleeps no longer than three hours straight and only takes one really good nap during the day. He is just so curious about the world and really hates to miss out on anything! Lots of nights, he is literally up every two hours to eat! Needless to say, we have a very tired mama in this house.

To maybe try to help remedy the sleepless nights, we decided to start Logan on solid foods. I thought that maybe, just maybe, if he had a full-er tummy, he could go for longer stretches. So far, it is kinda helping. He is still up quite a lot during the night, but he will sometimes have one four hour long stretch. I think things will improve as he gets better at eating his cereal.

 

A Very Webster Christmas

We always have the Webster Christmas party the day after Christmas. So, after our very full and fun Christmas day, we packed our kids up and went to Grandma and Grandpa Webster's house for more partying. No pictures of Dave. He had the camera the whole time. As always, it was a fun party. Lots of food, games and playing.

 

 

 

 

    

 

 

Christmas!

I'm a little a lot behind on blogging, so get ready for a deluge of posts. I'll try to combine to make things a little shorter. Maybe. I was going to try to do it all in one HUGE post, but apparently blogger has a limit on post size. Who knew?!?

Christmas Eve:

Every Christmas Eve, Dave's parents have a huge fondue party. I love it. There is always tons of yummy food and lots of family. There are cousins for the kids to play with to help relieve some of the anticipation of Santa's big visit. I'm really sad because we took our camera, but forgot to take the card, so no pictures. But, it was so fun!

We always get home really late, so our kids are more than ready for bed. In fact, Max fell asleep in the car. When we got home, he went downstairs immediately to put his PJ's on. BUT, I wanted him to open his Christmas Eve present. It took a lot of convincing that he should wait to change into pajamas!

When he opened his present, he immediately said "AWESOME!!!". Dave said, "What is it?" To which Max replied "I don't know!" I guess any present is awesome, really.

Max got Car pajamas and Bria got Little Mermaid ones. I love new pajamas for Christmas!

We also let the kids open one other present from under the tree. They both chose presents from Grandma Sharon. Thank you!! The kids LOVED everything you sent! On Christmas Eve, Max opened his new toothbrush (they both got one and they light up for 60 seconds so they kids know how long to brush) and Bria opened new markers. She was so excited about the markers, she took them to bed with her.

 

 

We got one more cute picture of Logan. He is such a cutie! Dave kept putting his hat on Logan's tiny head and Logan caught on to the game very quickly.

CHRISTMAS DAY:

First of all...Can I just say that Christmas always comes and goes way too fast. I wish we could spend three days straight just having Christmas day. But, unfortunately, only we only have one!

Mom - here is the video you were asking about. It's really long, so for everyone who doesn't want to take that much time, here are the pictures.



Santa always get really carried away at our house. Our kids pretty much get presents twice a year. Christmas and Birthdays. It's pretty rare that they get any toys or gifts other than that. So, here is what each kid got from Santa.

We completely expected the kids Bria to be awake no later than 6:00 am. But, she didn't emerge from her bedroom until 7:40!!!! And then, instead of begging to open presents, she said "Mom, can I color or play in my room this morning?" Ummm. HELLO!! It's Christmas!!!! I thought maybe she forgot what day it was.

I was pretty excited, but we wanted to make sure everyone was awake. Normally, we tell Bria to leave Max alone in the morning, so I didn't want to undo all that training. So, I said, "Bria, we can't open any presents until Max wakes up." I was trying to give her permission without actually telling her to wake Max up. She got the hint and went straight to wake Max up. I think she was a little bit worried about getting in trouble, though. She sent Max in by himself to show that he was awake.

The kids acted totally different than I would have imagined. Last year, Bria came out screaming with excitement. But, this year, her emotions were a little more controlled. I guess she is just getting older!  However, she did immediately rip into all of her presents. She was ready to move on to the presents under the tree in only a few minutes. Max on the other hand took a little longer to figure things out. I guess he wasn't totally sure that the huge pile was all actually his. After a couple of hours he finally started to look at each individual gift.

  

 

 

Probably the biggest surprise of all for me was the Elliptical that Dave bought me. We had an agreement that this year we would skip gifts for each other. The kids come first. I thought I was being really sneaky by getting him a couple of new sweaters. I have no idea how he snuck the elliptical past me. It was out with the Santa gifts in the morning. I'm super excited!! Now I have no excuse not to work out!

Later in the day, we had Grandma and Grandpa Webster, Brad and Taryn over for Christmas dinner. Afterward, we built our gingerbread houses. With the trouble we had last year, I decided we would make our own gingerbread houses. So a couple of weeks before Christmas, I got online, hunted down a recipe and some patterns and made the dough. I think maybe it was the recipe I used, but the dough was SO STINKING HARD to roll out. It was truly a lot of work! So, we had one authentic gingerbread house and all the rest were made out of graham crackers.

The kids all had a ton of fun. I put Bria and Max's house together and they got to decorate it themselves. I think they did a great job! Max pretty much constantly picked pieces off of it until I threw it away.

 

 

 

 

Bria, Max and Taryn finished off the day by playing a fishing game that Taryn brought over. All in all, it was an awesome Christmas!!