December 27th was Jensen's 4th Birthday I did a separate birthday post for him. After his birthday party we ended up going back to my parents house to spend a few more days with them.
Originally our plans were to just go home after Jensen's birthday party on the 27th, but a few weeks before Christmas we got a call from Larissa and Rusty (they live in Connecticut) that they were planning a surprise Christmas trip out to Utah. They would spend the first 1/2 of their trip with Rusty's family and then they were going to surprise my parents on December 30th and then spend New years with our family. Of course we were excited that they were coming and we definitely wanted to see them. So we decided to change our plans and stay in Utah until Jan 1st. Because of this change we had a few days between Christmas and New Years with basically no plans. Originally we were going to spend those days hiding out at Corinne and Stu's house until the surprise party for my parents on the 30th. But by the time the 27th rolled around I was pretty tired of packing and repacking our stuff and moving from house to house. So we decided to just tell my parents that we changed our plans and wanted to stay in Utah for a baby blessing that we were going to go to on Jan 1st. We asked if we could stay at their house until Sunday. Of course they said yes because they are awesome. The baby blessing part was true (we really did have one to go to!) but it was only half the story. Honestly I really hate lying to my parents so keeping the secret was a pretty big challenge for me. But in the end we were successful and it was a great surprise for my parents!
December 28th, 29th, and 30th we tried to just keep life simple. Let the kids calm down after all of the Christmas fun. They slept in and went to bed on time. We did laundry, went to the library, mommy did some work outs and the kids played with their new Christmas toys. It was a great break from the busy fun and helped the kids not be too burned out with travelling. So grateful to my parents for always letting us stay at their house. We are a big group to host for that long! They even let McKay and I sneak away for a shopping date on the 30th. We decided to go try out the Traverse Mountain Outlet stores and then lunch at Café Rio. McKay's mom met us at the outlet stores and we had a good time shopping and visiting with her.
The afternoon of the 30th was the big surprise. We all met at Corinne and Stu's house. We had to race my parents to their house since we wanted to be there before them for the big surprise. Larissa and Rusty hid in the bedroom when my parents walked in the house. August was just running around the living room with my kids. My mom looked at August and said "who's that?" with a confused look on her face because he looked "just like August". Then Larissa and Rusty stepped out of the bedroom and said SURPRISE!". It was classic and a complete surprise. The rest of the party was so fun chatting, playing games, and of course we had to take some pictures since we finally had all the grandkids together. My dad made not one but two yummy dutch oven desserts and we had soup and bread sticks for dinner. August has gotten so big since the last time we saw him. He is now running around, playing with my kids, and fighting over toys with Declin. :)
The group photos did not go that well since only the girls were cooperative for the picture. The boys wanted nothing to do with posing and sitting still. It was hilarious to watch!
A small note on games. It feels like my family gets more intense on games every passing year and this year was no different. We play games ALL THE TIME when we are together. We seem to go through phases with different games and play the same one over and over again until something new catches our eye. This year we played Settlers of Catan, Sushi Go, and 7 Wonders over and over again. We also played lots of rounds of golf. I used to not be a huge game player and avoided them most of the time we are together. But I even find myself loving them these days. It was fun to learn some new ones over the Christmas vacation and it will be fun to play them with our kids when they get older.
New Years eve we had a big Fry Family party at Heather and Brent's house. It is get togethers like these that make all the crazy Christmas traveling worth it. There is just no other way that gives you such a wonderful opportunity to spend time with cousins. We also had another little party with my dad's sister and her family earlier in the week. Where we got to see and visit with cousins and their families that we don't normally see. These kinds of things are so special to both McKay and I.
Anyways back to new years eve... We had our traditional pizza buffet and played some more games (pretty typical). Heather also has the tradition of doing "time" bags. The bags have different activites in them to help pass the time until midnight. You open a new bag each hour. We weren't there for all of the bags since we left before midnight, but the ones we were there for were fun for the kids. First they decorated the house with streamers and balloons (Adalyn loved the decorating part), next they had glow sticks and glow stick games, then they had a piñata. It was too fun to watch the toddlers hit it! After the piñata we headed back to my parents house before our kids melted too much. The kids fell asleep in the car and McKay and I were in bed before midnight lol!
4 Generations. We are all the 2nd daughters in our family
Glow stick party
And that wraps up 2016 for our family. This is my 6th full year of blogging. SO SO SO happy that I have all of these posts and life experiences to look back on. I printed out the books for 2014 and 2015 this year for Christmas. McKay and I have had fun going through them in the evenings after the kids go to bed and remembering all of the fun times we have had as a family. We are very grateful for our health, faith and our amazing children. They are all so unique and each bring their own special talents and abilities to our little family. We are trying our best to honor each of them and help them feel loved and accepted. We often fail and make mistakes in parenting, but I hope in the end they can see that we are trying our best. Hope each of you had a good 2016 or at least survived it (sometimes that is all we can do)! lol Hoping for good things to come in 2017!
No comments:
Post a Comment