Happy New Year!

This year, we brought in the New Year with friends at our house!  It was a fun celebration!

Here we all are - having a nice, calm dinner with just the kids!

These pictures do a good job of showing a big difference between Owen and I...  He might have made it to 11pm.  Meanwhile, I was ready to celebrate with the grown ups at midnight!

But then, we are exactly the same the day after the party!

I'm Actually Six!

We were in Iowa for my actual birthday so of course we had a celebration there!  We celebrated Aunt Christy too since her birthday is 2 days after mine.

Happy birthday to us!

Aunt Christy was nice enough to let me pick out the cake design again this year!  So Pokemon it was!

Clara and Wylie were great helpers for present unwrapping! 

Wylie helped us blow out the candles, too!

There wasn't any cake left!

Christmas!

We were telling Bobby the Elf for a month how good we have been behaving.  I think we were right because Santa brought us all kind of things that we asked for!

Grandma Pam had picked out a beautiful Christmas tree!

When we woke up, we found out Santa had stopped by the house and left presents for all of the kids!  He took a picture on Mom's phone as proof!

We all left our stockings out that Grandma Pam made us and Santa filled them up for us!

It was exciting seeing all of the fun things that Santa left us! 

It was a pretty crazy morning!  We looked at our Santa gifts and then it was time to open up all the other presents before the rest of our family came over for lunch!

But later we did have time to enjoy some of our presents!  We both painted a nice picture for Mom with our new paint sets!

I got some cozy Pikachu pajamas and Clara got a new dress!  She borrowed one of Brooke's presents to complete the outfit!

I got some new games, including Chutes and Ladders!

All of the little kids got fancy straws from Santa that spell our name!  Not the most practical, but they are fun to use every now and then!

A lot of my time was spend working on my new Lego kits.

I got Don't Step in It from Santa, which was something I had asked him for.  Mom had told me that Santa doesn't bring presents with "poop" in the name so it seemed like that game wasn't in the cards. But then I found out the name of the game said "it" instead of "poop" and pointed that out to Mom.  Santa must have known all along because he brought it for me!

I got to be the first one to try the game - it's going to take some practice (or luck)!

Of course Clara loved her new dress because it twirls so much!

Family Time!

Of course we were able to get in lots of family time on our trip!  It was an even more fun Christmas trip this year because we had some cousin playmates - Wylie, Brooke and Brodie!

Wylie, Clara and I put our Christmas PJs on to get ready for Santa! 

It was a Christmas full of Legos!  Hunter and Dad didn't mind helping me with some of the more tricky Lego sets!

Clara showed Wylie how to make some play doh creations! 

We got some snuggles in with Grandma and Grandpa!

TV time in Christmas clothes!

It takes a jail to contain all of us!

Here I am with cousin Jake and Uncle Jim!

And Clara with Aunt Christy (and her new Moana necklace)!

Clara was Grandma's helper in the kitchen!

Clara even made some gingerbread cookies herself (with a little help from Grandma) with her new cooking set! 

Clara and I helped this year with the lottery scratch off tradition! No big winners...

There were lots of tables set up for Christmas dinner - this was just one of the kids ones!

Here's our family of four Christmas tree picture!

The five little cousins!

All of Grandma's little grand babies!

And no trip to Emmetsburg is complete without eating at Pizza Ranch!