Australia Day 2014

I love celebrating Australia Day. Its a married-into tradition, which I have picked up on really quickly! My in-laws always go all out, and its awesome!

I do have to stop and brag a little bit. I am NOT a seamstress. My family can tell you that I screwed up making a pillow case once. I'm not ashamed to say that, but I have been "messing around" with my sewing machine. I can now claim, that I am a little better with my skills, but still a novice!

 

Anyway, If you look closely I first made all the grandsons on the McSweeney side ties out of material Emma picked from Australia for me. Then trying to figure out what I wanted to do for R, I made a skirt from a pair of shorts! YAY me!!!! Then to top it off I added a ruffle with the same material! Ok, enough about me! :)

Hallie and P

This is what P's plate consisted of. Rolls of vegemite, and fairy bread. I think he cleaned the whole tray of the Vegemite ones. Didn't touch his meat pie! Silly boy! By the way I think his face is super funny in this pic!

THE FOOD!!!!!

Check out all those meat pies and sausage rolls!

Mia and R

The loot!

Then the little kids played a game of pass the parcel

Everyone got a prize!

My cute family again!

Darwin, Kiara, Aurora, and Savannah Deming and

Jimmy, Becca, and Whitney Hjorth came to celebrate with us.

I proudly put the tattoo onWhitney's head! :)

Emma made these awesome Aussie Songbooks.

They have the McSweeneys favorites! They turned out great!

We even got to Skype with Grandpa Paul who is in Australia!!

Time for games!

Pass the boomerang!

Lila and P

These are some of my favorite shots.

My little kids drinking from the Ginger Beer bottle!

Tired baby Whit!

Then we split up into 3 teams. 2 adult teams and 1 for the kids to play captain ball...

...and tunnel ball.  Good job Rori!

All the grandkids with Grandma!

Last but not least, cricket time!

It was a GREAT celebration.

Can't wait until next year, Happy Australia Day!

Snow Day

 This year I had put off playing in the snow. It wasn't good snow to sled on, and I couldn't be bothered bundling both of them up to come back in the house 10 minutes later. So we finally got a good snow fall and I figured it was a great time to go.

 

In the morning P "helped" Jared clear the sidewalks.

 

Then with my niece and nephew, Kayla and Kyler, I bundled the kids up and went sledding.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We started on a steep hill, which P needed help getting up.

 

P was a lot more brave than I thought he would be.

 R was a little reserved at first, but tried every hill we went on.

 My cheese ball LOVES to sled!

 Later we were joined by the Demings.

 P got brave and started going down the hills like this.

 And would crash every once and awhile, but it wasn't any big deal to him!

 

 R was SO happy to FINALLY be sledding! She had asked every day if we could go!

 P even talked Kyler into pushing him on the swings at the park!

 

 Trying out the comfy tube down the hill!

 Aurora and P with the snowman that P and Kayla made!

I'm not such a fan of sledding,

but I LOVE to see how much happiness it brings to my crazy kids!

New Years 2014

I was planning on celebrating, but doing nothing over-the -top for the holiday. Then my sister called asking if her kids could hang out with us because she had to work graveyards, and Dan had to work early the next morning so he wasn't doing anything. I got into party planning mode, and I think pulled a pretty good party off!

 

 First was making party hats.

 

 

 Then "photo booth" time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 I think these boys are so dang cute!

 

 

 

 

 

 Then we made homemade doughnuts!

 The girls were REALLY into this!

 

 

 The boys were taught a new game with Grandma.

 This last activity was by far the biggest hit with the kids, and the biggest surprise to me. 

Glow stick dancing!

They could have done this for hours, and I'm not exagerating!! 

 I bought a few packs of glow sticks from the dollar store,

then found some colored flashlight rings to add!

 

 Turned some music on, and they were having a blast!

 

 

 

 Then it was almost midnight, so we grabbed our party hats...

 ...and headed outside to do sparklers!

 

 

 Then had to come back in for a late night Just Dance 2014!!!!

 I actually didn't get to all the "projects" I had planned. The kids had such a blast. I also have to say that I am brilliant. We started at 7pm, but had changed all the clocks forward 2 hours. So then when the kids noticed the time they were AMAZED that they were still awake at 10pm! :) The older boys knew what we had done, but the younger 4 totally believed that they were up until after midnight! We even got to watch the ball drop. Thanks NYC for being 2 hours ahead!  I had the other kids home, and my kids in bed and asleep by 10:45pm.  It was BRILLIANT!!!