New Years Eve

The New Year's Eve's of my youth were (in my mind) legendary!
  We would stay up late eating our weight in Oreos and ice-cream while watching movie after movie after movie until our bodies ached and we wanted to puke.  Or maybe that was just me.  I remember Dad would take us to the video store (not just on New Years Eve) and let us pick out movies.  I always wanted The Three Stooges or Apple Dumpling Gang and Stephen would always choose a National Geographic film which would make me so mad because they were sooooo boring!  One New Years Eve 100 years ago we watched an animated version of The Hobbit, perhaps next year we can go see the newest version!
     As I grew older the night progressed to a Fancy Sea Food, Fondue, Appetizer meal with all our favorite things.  We would play games, watch movies and actually make it to midnight.  I think it was the year of Y2K that a friend Amber Ahrens was over and we sat at the table playing with candles and ribbon until a molten piece of curling ribbon stuck to my finger, giving me a scar I still have today on my ring finger knuckle.
     Then I got married.  Since our marriage Tyler and I have celebrated officially 0 New Years Eves.  We have either been traveling from Montana to Utah, Sick, both, or just been boring with kids.

Right now we are stuck in a limbo for the next few years where there is no way we are letting our kids stay up past their bedtime, nor are we willing to pay anyone to babysit so we can go out like the rest of the world.  Besides, I think we are holding strong to our tradition of being sick on New Years Eve.  I had the wonderful 'clean you out' bug yesterday and I think Tyler might have caught it just in time for the festivities!

 When I'm sick, anything goes.  As long as the kids are in the house I find I'm not super worried.

 This is how we spent a good chunk of the afternoon.

 For two girls who love dress up, and a mommy who just wanted to lay down.  It was heaven.

 This is how Heidi spent most of the day.

That evening we did venture out to a friends wedding reception.  We have found that toys are not needed to entertain kids, instead invest your money in an exercise bike.  Not only will the kids want to play with and climb on it constantly, but you can also use it every now and then for yourself.

       In other news, Alex loves to draw.  Whenever she finds a pen and some paper she leave her signature drawing of a little girl.  Whether it be on papers, in books or on the wall, she is always so proud.

Christmas

We had an exceptional Christmas this year, despite the fact there was no snow and Alex was throwing up.  

The Annual Brady Family Christmas Eve Brunch was kicked off at 10am with lots of great food and wonderful company.  Although Sam and Natalie, Nicholas and Christian were in Tennessee we were able to Skype with them and watch them open their presents!  The siblings and spouses have a rotation each year so we don't have to buy everyone a gift.  We had Sam and Natalie and they had us, and boy they did a great job!  

Alex and Heidi got princess dress up costumes!  Alex wore her Rapunzel costume all day, and Heidi was a twirling tinker-bell until nap time. 

 
Tyler got a gift card for his Nook, which he was ecstatic about and spent the rest of the day downloading things and playing on it.  Kate's Mom Renee was able to come visit for Christmas and we were excited to get to see her again!

I think Sam and Natalie officially have the title of best gift givers.  I was super happy to receive a cupcake tower!!!!  I've been wanting one of these forever and secretly hoping I would get one for Christmas (although I never told anyone that).  So when I opened my gift up, it was a dream come true.  Everything we ate for the next 3 days was first presented on the tower.

Alex also got a my little pony hair styling set and spent the rest of the day doing the ponies, and everyone else's hair.

The kids played, we ate and talked, did puzzles and laid around all afternoon.  It was a wonderful Christmas Eve! 

 That evening we had a nice turkey dinner and the kids put on a performance of the Nativity.

 We were short a few people but fortunately had some willing volunteers to fill in the gaps..

 Uncle Michael spent the rest of Christmas Eve playing hair salon with Alex and it was simply adorable.  He is going to make a great Dad here in a few weeks.

 Finally it was bed time and so we set out the milk and cookies and hustled the kids off to bed so we could finish the rocking horse at the 11th hour!!!!  Tyler and I were hurrying and gluing horse hair in as Alex walked into the kitchen complaining about something.  Then mid-sentence she goes "Huh?!" as she noticed what we were doing.  We told her not to tell Heidi and sent her back to bed. 30 seconds later we heard Alex trying to explain to Heidi what she saw.

Alex was so excited about buying everyone a gift and spent her own money getting everyone plastic popcorn movie cups and Heidi a toy elephant.  She wrapped and labeled each gift by herself (with a little help).

After a solid week of late nights working, gluing, nailing and staining, the horse was done!    

Alex woke up at 3 AM complaining of a tummy ache and took me back to her bed with her.  After 2.5 hours of me not sleeping, Alex woke up and threw up.  Heidi started to cry for food and at that point we decided we might as well open presents while Alex felt well enough.

Here is our early morning picture before the kids ripped into it all!

 Heidi was only interested in the banana that Santa had left in her stocking.  After that she wouldn't open any gifts (which was fine with Alex who opened them ALL), and was content playing with everything Alex had just opened.

 Alex loved the act of ripping all the pretty wrapping paper off.

 The kids loved their set of kitties

 And Alex still lugs her giant dog around everywhere she goes.

 Heidi is adorable at pretend eating and drinking from the "coco" set.

 We went to church (which Alex slept through), the girls in their matching Christmas dresses from Grandma Brady.

 Heidi finally started to enjoy her rocking horse and has since become quite a daredevil on it.

We drove up to Highland and played with Michael and Danielle for a few hours.  They got the girls one of those cool play-dough icecream shop sets, and we all  played with it for the next hour.  It was really cool, I think I'm just as excited about it as the kids, although I'm going to have to get past trying to insist that the kids NOT mix the colors.
     We had a great holiday, plenty of family, good food and remembering the Savior.  We got to play plenty of dressup, hairdresser, playdough, connect 4, read books, and pretend kitty.
One of the best gifts I received was hearing Tyler admit "Man, compared to this, school is easy!" after spending a morning dealing with diapers, tantrums, begging for snacks and mini meltdowns.
Now we just have to ward off the post holiday blues as we look forward to birthday season!

Tradition

I spent a lot of time thinking. Obsessing. over what Christmas gifts to get people this year.  There were a lot that I knew were spot on, a few I wasn't sure how they would be received and a few that were darts thrown in the dark.  But of all the gifts this year, my very favorite one to give away was also the most fun to create.
   Over Thanksgiving break my little brother Stephen found some old pictures of me and my brothers around BYU campus.  He mentioned that we should re-create them sometime and so we decided that is what we would get Mom for Christmas.
Here's the before..........

Stephen, Michael and Kristen, circa 1994 at the bridge to the BYU Law Library.

                                   Kristen, Stephen and Michael in the BYU Bean Museum.

 If we would have thought it out a bit more I'm sure we could have coordinated BYU shirts and found a celtics cap and some glasses.  But we did our best and had a blast in the process.  It's been awhile since I've laughed that hard with my brothers, and laugh we did as we posed ridiculously in public places and had strangers take our pictures.

The trees have grown a bit since then, but not much else has changed on East campus.

Unfortunately the museum has changed a bit and the exhibits have been moved around so we were only able to find the one lion.

It was a pretty fun day and I only wish we were able to give that few hours of jolly rememberingness along with the pictures.

Almost Christmas

I've been ready for Christmas for a good month now.  Gift purchased and hidden away, Christmas cards ordered written and mailed.  So here we are a few days away from Christmas itself and I'm bored out of my mind.  Apparently the hustle and bustle is all a part of the fun.  The one downside to shopping and making things for christmas 2 months early is that you have to hide it for 2 months.  Apparently I am really good at the hiding part.  Not so much at seeking.  I've misplace just about every gift I bought but have been able to find most things.  Most.  Felt cake I spent 2 weeks hand sewing to go with matching felt cake stand for Alex's tea set from santa. Missing, still very missing.
The good end of all this is that I've been completely free to help out and babysit just about anyone.
Since Alex has been out of Joy School for 2 weeks I've discovered how clingy and "what can we do Mom" she can get without an outlet everyday.  Unfortunately Kate and I can no longer play since Alex and Archie have decided to be Russia and the USA playing Coldwar.  As soon as they get within 5 feet of each other, one or both spontaneously combust into little balls of screaming yelling tantrum throwing machines and the house is thrown into instant chaos.  I am so glad I don't have twins.  I've heard that this happens, and that one day they will be friends again.  Dispite all this Tuesday Kate was a doll and took Alex swimming while I babysat the rest of the kids.  I had a splendid time with Archie, he is so fun to play with.  Archie loved on Heidi and Heidi loved on Annie and all was right with the world until Alex came back and we had to evacuate the premises ASAP.
Yesterday I babysat for a couple friends and ended up having 6 little girls at my house for a few hours and it was surprisingly wonderful!  They played an odd game with their dolls (the babies kept getting hit by cars and dying.  Don't worry, the doctor was able to bring them back to life), read books, made a game of mothering Heidi and the other 'baby', and the whole time I was able to sit and stitch!
We haven't seen much of Tyler the last month.  He had finals for school and was studying day and night.  Now that finals are over he has been working full time and then going to his Grandpa's shop until late to finish Heidi's Christmas rocking horse.  I have a feeling this is going to be one of those "staying up until 3am to finish" gifts.  I am very excited though, she is going to love it!

Yes. Every minute of everyday with Heidi is this entertaining.