Happy New Year...

If my last post seemed a little disjointed and incomplete that is because it was. I tried to embed some videos of the girls on Christmas morning and my computer wasn't cooperating (it kept timing out before the upload was complete). So, I decided that I would just post what I had already written and come back later. So the short version of what I was going to say in the last post is:
The girls had a great Christmas. If you enlarge the picture of Becca you will see that she is holding a toy dog collar. That was a last minute creation by the elves because on Christmas Eve Becca was walking up the stairs and asked me "Mom, do you think I have been a good girl this year?"
I told her that she had been great--especially recently because she had been so nice to her sisters and had helped me around the house without being asked.
She asked "Do you think I've been good enough that I might get something extra in my stocking?"
Again I said that she probably would..
"Oh, Good! I really hope that I get something for my stuffed dog because I LOVE my puppy!"

So, one of Santa's elves decided to create a dog collar from ribbon, twist ties, paper and hot glue. All in all it turned out pretty well & a well-behaved little girl was pleasantly surprised Christmas morning.

The other "last minute elf project" was REALLY last minute. Ellie requested a makeup cell phone and a pretend cell phone that works. She also requested the phone be "Hello Kitty" in nature.
Well, I found Hello Kitty walkie-talkies and a cheapo lip gloss phone and thought I was taken care of, but Christmas morning Ellie seemed a little bummed and when I asked why she told me that she wanted her MAKEUP phone to be Hello Kitty. . . oops, Santa!
So, I took the makeup phone to the local elf who printed a Hello Kitty sticker from the Internet, cut it out & glued it on the back of the phone (fortunately the front of the phone was transparent other than the silver buttons), and amazingly, when Ellie picked up the makeup phone she turned it over and lo and behold, it WAS a Hello Kitty phone!

It's nice to be able to have such easy fixes!

Well, on to the new year. For New Year's Eve we went to Greg's parent's house to welcome the new year in with COUSINS! However, the girls got burned out by about 9:30 so we decided to take them home. We got home just before 10:00 and thought the girls would like to watch the ball drop live in New York, so we piled them on our bed to watch the East Coast welcome in 2009. After the ball dropped I told the girls it was time for bed, and they looked at me like I was nuts--"Dad said we could watch the ball show!"
I told them that all those people out on the street hugging was the ball show and it was over. This was a bad idea--I have never seen my kids look so dejected. That was it?!
Sarah went to bed bawling that it was the shortest/worst movie ever and my other girls just looked at me like I was nuts to get so excited about something so simple as that.
Once the girls were down, Greg put on a movie to keep us awake until midnight, but it didn't work too well. I fell asleep, and woke up at 12:15 to go to the bathroom. When I looked at the clock my response was, "Oh..Happy New Year" before climbing back into bed.
Yep, we really are PARTY ANIMALS!