Happy New Year everyone! We’re excited for this new year and all the adventures and challenges that it will bring. We had a great year last year and are excited to see what the future holds for us.
This week started out with a fun reunion of sorts with my college roommates. A few weeks ago one of my old roommates, Scott Rose, emailed the group of us and proposed that we do a Google hangout together sometime over the break. We had that hangout on Monday evening. We are all spread across the country and so we did it while some of us, including us here in Texas, were still having dinner. We went family by family from east to west. It was fun to see everyone and get a quick update from people. You could tell that most of us had young kids because it was pretty chaotic and noisy at times! I’m so grateful for that group of friends that I made in college (Savilles, Simmonses, Ashtons, Roses, Glancys, and Barrow(s)).
Christa was here visiting this week to meet her boyfriend’s family. She stayed with us on Tuesday and Wednesday nights and Sarah had a good time talking with her and spending some good sister time together. The kids also had a great time with Christa and her boyfriend when they came over. They had tea parties and played with duplos. Both of the days that they came over to play with the kids, Eliza prayed for them at night. It was super cute.
On New Year’s Eve we were invited to go to a party at the Tietjen’s house (a family in our ward). Their invitation said that they were going to have sparklers for the kids and then fireworks and a dance party. Eliza was super excited for the sparklers! She loved playing with them and probably lit 10 of them. It is funny to me that she likes them so much because I hated sparklers when I was younger. James thought the sparklers were pretty cool too. They had a pretty good firework show too. We brought our blanket and cuddled on the lawn while they shot them off. James and Eliza were both super good about it and enjoyed the show.
After the sparklers and fireworks were over, the Tietjens turned on some music and their disco ball and started dancing in the house. Their girls wanted to have a dance competition so we did. They had several rounds. They had all the little girls dance, the mommies, and then the daddies and daughters. Eliza and I won the daddy daughter competition and our prize was a gift card for a date at Chick-fil-a. Eliza is pretty excited to do that!
We had a good time at the party and then came home early and relaxed the rest of the evening. Sarah and I had martinellis at midnight and then went to bed.
This year we’re starting to have church at 9:00 am. This is a good shift for us from 1:00. We all were up and made it to church by 8:30 this morning so that I could help setup chairs. The kids did really well too. Eliza is in the “big kid” nursery this year and we were told that she did really well. We were a bit worried after her meltdown last week but she was awesome! We’re excited to have more time together now that we have earlier church.