Last Year's Loose Ends

I've been missing in action on the blog-front the last while, so by way of a quick catch-up, here's how we finished off the year 2011...

We celebrated.

With Keziah's Rainbow Party behind me and the Christmas season in full force, I was all about simplicity when it came to celebrating Micah's birthday this year. In the end, we were able to do a joint party with one of his friends from school who was also turning 7 in December. And renting the ARC gym for 2 hours was the perfect way to entertain 20 kids (most of which were boys!)

The birthday boys:

There was face painting:


(Can't remember what Micah was supposed to be - all I know is that even after washing his face, it was slightly tinged-green and jaundiced-looking for church the next morning...)

The bouncy house (cousin Caleb can barely contain his excitement!):


And double-presents :)

The other mom and I agreed that we might have to make this December double-birthday party an annual thing!

We danced.

Well, one of us danced. Keziah did awesome at her ballet recital. The beach-ball-themed dance wasn't quite as heart-melting as last year's performance but still very, very cute. It was her maturity level and ability to cope with the chaos that was significantly improved from last year (imagine a hundred girls backstage all coming and going - me leaving her in the midst of the chaos {in the care of a stranger} so I can sit with Erik and watch the recital...) She did have a break-down right at the end when she couldn't find me right away, but all in all, a positive experience!

Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of the actual performance. I'm still trying to figure out the capabilities of my new (to me) camera and whether taking pictures of moving targets in dark spaces is even possible...??

We worked.

Erik "took 2 weeks off" over the holidays, but the quotations imply that he still mostly worked during those 2 weeks. But at least he was working on things at our house instead of someone else's :) Him and his dad spent several days replacing all the old windows in our house.

Micah helped a little bit too.

It's nice to know they're more energy-efficient, plus we now have opening windows in places where we didn't before - like these 2 smaller windows on either side of our big picture window in the living room.

Erik also replaced all our old electric baseboard heaters. The advantages? They're white instead of dingy beige, more energy efficient, and also a lot smaller than the old ones (which means one baseboard doesn't have to take up an entire wall and limit furniture placement options).

We hiked.

We took a day trip to the Othello tunnels...

Sporting her new scarf and Hello Kitty earmuffs that she got for Christmas...



This kid can't get enough of his "di-wego" boots even though they're about 3 sizes too big...


2 thumbs up!

Silas could've thrown rocks into this river for h-o-u-r-s. His fingers were almost frozen solid and we still had to tear him away from those rocks.

We skated.

Skating with 3 wobbly kids is no easy task. Even with the help of those push-bars, Erik and I got a pretty good work-out helping our kids around the rink for an hour.

We upgraded.

Another project Erik did over the holidays was build a bottom bunk for Silas. We took Silas out of his crib a few weeks ago and it was time to give him a big boy bed of his very own.

Loft bed/crib combo before:

Bunk bed after:

When we eventually have more bedrooms for these kids, the boys will probably be together in one room with the bunk beds and Keziah will get her own room with a loft bed. For now, Keziah and Silas are sharing the bunks, as the bedtime routine seems to work best if those 2 don't have any direct visual sight-lines to each other...

Phew, now that I've tied up those loose ends, it's time to fully embrace 2012.

Happy New Year everybody!