Christmas Break & Welcoming 2016

Happy New Year!!! Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas filled with family, love and laughter! Wishing everyone a beautiful 2016 --- full of many blessings!

We had a great Christmas break. No travel, which was the kids number one request. Lots of family time, which was wonderful and even a date night (we managed to squeeze in TWO this year!)!!

After the kids uncooperativeness with pictures in front of the tree, I set out for a family picture with our new Christmas jumpers. We decided that we'd make it a silly one this year......to go along with the kids silliness. I think it's actually pretty perfect.

We did a lot of last minute shopping before Christmas and this moment was too cute not to capture.

 

The kids cookies for Santa......

Christmas morning........The kids were so good. I'm not sure what time they actually woke up but they just sat at the top of the stairs talking quietly until Derek and I finally heard them and got up at 7.

It was a great day! Lots of Skyping with family too!!!!

The next day we took their new scooters out for a ride!

We also went to the circus over the break. I had entered a few contests for a couple pantos and the circus.....and somehow got lucky and one the tickets to the circus!! They were ringside tickets and little did we know, we'd also be a part of the show!! It was so fun, hilarious, and also kept us on the edge of our seats!!

Luckily no pictures of my part. I had to put my camera away because water was being sprayed and thrown at everyone. I was part of the 'Christmas Day' story and had a fan blowing in my face....then snow blowing in my face.....then the wind picked up so I had a leaf blower blown in my face! Quite funny!

The kids got a couple new lego sets for Christmas so Derek had the grand idea of putting together every single one of their lego sets (in hopes of keeping them organized for future building). So our living room looked like this for several days! This isn't even all of them. Some had already been put away.

New Year's Eve.......we had our wonderful friends over for the evening. Dinner, games, fun and memories being made! Great way to ring in the new year. We like to refer to this family as our 'meant to be's'. Our family's match up so perfectly it's so crazy! The two oldest girls are only 2 weeks apart in age. They have been in the same  class the past two years and are best friends. The two younger girls are both named Avery/Averi. And the boys are both the only blondes in the family. We're just so grateful for their friendship. We hope to be able to find a family we can click with every move and we've been lucky to be able to do that!