The New Year Celebration

I have been waiting for 2 months to hold this beautiful baby, "NBC". The drive was totally worth it!

Over New Year's Weekend, we drove to St. Louis to visit my sister and her family. Mandi gave birth to a BEAUTIFUL baby girl. She is so cute! I couldn't get enough of her. Another bonus was that my parents and my brother +family also got to be there! What a great way to start 2012!

Of course, we had to break in the hotel pool.

Uncle Ryan was such a good sport. He came up with a game where he would call out a name and throw the ball and that designated person had their turn to catch it as they were falling into the pool. They played this for over an HOUR!

"NBC"


Lizzie isn't quite up to the other kids' skill level when it comes to swimming, so she took a few breaks and had fun around the ledge and on the stairs. :)

My brother, Matt, had to show everyone up with his "moves like Jagger"

Maximillion! My sweet, all-boy nephew

Here's my dad bonding with NBC.

My dad always likes to give kids their first experiences. Despite me telling him any dairy products were bad for babies, he was the first one to put a drop of chocolate ice cream on their lips and laugh as they discover the bliss chocolate brings. :) Here he is dipping NBC in her first bout of chlorinated water.

The game continues...

That evening, Mandi's friends in her ward had a New Year's Eve party at the church with dancing, food, games, and a clock that said it was midnight at 8:00! We had our countdown, partied as much as Mormons do, cleaned up and were home/in our hotels at a decent hour! I may be bringing this to Naperville. Hmmmm. Brilliant.

In 1993, I learned how to do the pretzel, so I taught as many people as I knew. Mandi and Matt were two of my "students" who are so fun to help me remember that I can dance. ;)

Emma was amazing at musical chairs. She took 2nd, but made the champ work for it!

Limbo!

Celebrate!

Matt and his lovely wife, Becca. Aren't they a beautiful couple! ?

Emma couldn't get enough of her little cousins!

Carter was the cool big boy who all the little boys wanted to chase and hang out with.

My favorite picture of Mandi!

NBC was blessed in my mother's blessing dress. What a precious momento!

I cannot wait to hold this baby again!

Christmas Break Activities

Other than playing with toys, watching some movies, swim practice, and science fair, we did get to do a few fun things over the break. I admit that knowing we'd be leaving on the 10th for a big family vacation, I was not worried about packing tons of fun into our days. Some great friends of ours, the Liddells, moved to Colorado at the end of our break, so we had them over to provide a dinner to a family whose kitchen was packed in boxes and to sneak as much fun in with them as possible. They received a Wii with the Just Dance games for Christmas, so we HAD to try them out. I discovered that Emma is a dancing machine. She would do it all day if she could. Braxton, although shy, did better than everyone expected. We thought he could only do the robot! :) Lizzie and Emma got Just Dance for Kids, but I'm seeing a possible purchase in the future. I need to add more opportunities to impress my children. ;)

We went to see Brookfield Zoo's Holiday Lights. Steve got to see the new Bear exhibit, which is great! All of the big cats were active, roaring, pacing, and fascinating to watch. The wolves were amazing. One got reprimended by the alpha and was hanging his head and slunk off away from the pack.

So having been to both zoos in a week, I asked the kids which they liked better. The concensus was that both were good for the animals, but that Lincoln Park Zoo's lights were better. FYI

The Chicago Art Institute is FREE in January. I am so grateful that I have a great friend who invited us. We try to visit it at least every other year, but it had left my radar. I really wanted my in-laws to see it, so we piled in and just did it! I LOVE this museum. It's gone through some changes and they've moved things around, so we passed through the Asian Art Hallway probably 5 times trying to find our way from one building to the next, but we saw some phenomenal art. I printed up a paper with pictures that highlight some of the pieces I wanted to make sure we saw as a make-shift treasure map for the kids. Also, knowing some of the things the kids study in our PTA Art awareness program, I tried to make sure we saw things that would be familiar.

Monet- this and the Degas statue were Lizzie's favorites

Georgia O'Keefe

The Thorne Miniature Rooms

Kelle has read a book about a child living amongst these rooms. It's on my list!

Chagall Windows entitled "Peace"

Armor

Our whole group with the iconic lions dressed up for the holidays.
On our walk back to the cars, I asked Kelle where the "bean" was (having never seen it) and learned that I was within a 2 minutes walk of it. So...

The kids loved playing with their reflections!

Our weather over break was warmer than ever expected. We were even able to go to the park and pick up a friend for Lizzie one day!

Christmas Day!

Santa rocks!

Santa actually fulfilled some dreams by bringing I-touches to all three boys.

Lizzie has been wanting a pink harmonica for months! In Sunbeams one Sunday, her primary teacher taught a lesson on music and brought in different instruments. One happened to be a harmonica and Lizzie has been hooked ever since.

Emma got her Go-Go-Puppy!

Christmas Sunday. Aren't they lookin' sharp?

After church we got the Stoianowskis and Grandpa and Grandma to gather come back over for food and presents.

Below is a shot of the looks of shock and excitement as each child read in order the words "We" "R" "Going" "2" "Disneyworld"! Steve and I got the reaction we wanted, screaming, bouncing, and giggling. It was too good to be true!

LJ loved her blanket from Grandma!

Below is another one of my favorite traditions and that is to let the kids sleep under the tree Christmas night. Even my biggest kid (41 yr old) fell asleep under the tree!

December Part 1

School got out Thursday December 22nd. The kids were ready to party and celebrate! I packed some food to eat in the car and we headed out to see the lights at the zoo. We first headed to Brookfield Zoo, where I had 8 free tickets, but for some weird reason, they were closed. We were not the only ones to be surprised by this discovery for as we started heading for Lincoln Park Zoo, we followed the same line of cars for an HOUR! Lincoln Park Zoo was so crowded, the parkling lot was full, and the traffic was backed up for miles before the exit off of the freeway!!!! Luckily, I'd rented the new Disney Christmas Carol (with Jim Carrey) so we ate our sandwiches and watched our movie in the van while Steve dealt with the traffic. (What a man!) But...

It was worth the wait.

Steve dropped us off near the front entrance so that we could be enjoying the lights while he found a parking spot and as he started to drive by, someone was pulling out of the center parking spot! What a Tender mercy for our family! We had a wonderful time Oooohing and Aaaaahing at the lights all over the zoo--together.

I read a book called A Christ-Centered Christmas that offers suggestions for traditions to help one's family feel the true meaning of Christmas. One suggestion was to start a new tradition or do something different each year to represent the wise men and how they, after meeting the Christ child, "went a different way." This was our new tradition.

Carter thought it was so cool to have the lights choreographed to the music.

"The BIRD House"

This Aardvark was awesome. A mouse had sneaked into his home and he was like a dog trying to figure out where it was. He was digging, burrowing, pouncing, pointing, etc. The giraffe in the neighboring "cubicle" even came over and stretched his neck over the wall to see what was going on.

Penguins are always cool, but especially in the winter.

So romantic!

Friday, we built our gingerbread houses. I had found Dark Chocolate-Peppermint houses and thought if anyone was going to make this, it had to be me. We made it a contest: girls vs. boys. Girls won.

Braxton could tell that although their house held for the picture, it would never last.

Here are the houses 5 minutes later.

Girls still rule!

Christmas Eve was great! Uncle Ryan and Aunt Julene came over. Also, a Relief Society President from when Steve served his mission in Texas got to come with her hubby. They are currently serving a mission here in Chicago. After a surprise run-in at the temple, we reconnected and were thrilled when they accepted the invitation to share our night with us! We had tons of good food and all got to take part in the nativity.

Uncle Ryan got into his part as Angel Gabriel and was making his message known to Zacharias and Elizabeth.

We were honored to have such wise and noble men with us.

Samuel the Lamanite held his ground as we tried to pummel him with our stones (marshmallows).

The angry mob

A few of our kids did not need any new pj's, so I got creative and gave something different this year. The boys got BYU sweatshirts...

And the girls got something new to wear to church the next day.

Everyone went to bed excited and exhausted. It was a perfect end to Christmas Eve!