Top 13 in 2013

I know we're already a few days into the new year, but I thought, like last year, I'd recap some of the best moments from this past year.  And since it was 2013, 13 top moments sounds good.  :)

Oh, and these are not ranked.  Instead, they are in somewhat chronological order.  Here we go!

1.  2013 was the year I turned 30, and Matt wanted to make sure it was a birthday to remember.  I don't think I'll be able to forget our trip to Puerto Rico and ringing in a new decade on this beautiful beach!

2.  I also celebrated my 30th birthday with 30 Random Acts of Kindness.  It took some time to get all 30 done, but it was definitely well worth the effort!

3.  For Mother's Day and Father's Day, Matt and I treated ourselves to some nice new bikes.  We enjoyed riding them all throughout our neighborhood over the summer, especially since we were able to pull Katie Wynn along with us.

4.  At the end of May, we had a nice long weekend vacation at our beach house with my parents.  It was this weekend that Katie Wynn had her first real dip in a pool and was quite the little fish in the water!  However, she still hated the sandy beach and loud ocean.

5.  I wasn't the only one with a big birthday this year; 2013 was also the year Matt turned 40!  In an effort to catch him off guard, we surprised him with a big party on his half birthday instead of the real deal.  We had so much fun "halfway" celebrating with our friends that night!

6.  We were back at the beach house in June, but this time for a week-long vacation with friends!  We enjoyed having a house full of fun people to do things with, and I think one of the highlights from this trip was definitely the splash pad!  

7.  One of the highlights of this past year was definitely getting to watch Katie Wynn hit so many milestones!  From starting real food, to sitting up, crawling, and eventually walking, the little baby we started the year with morphed into a busy bee toddler before 2013 came to a close.

8.  While it wasn't necessarily something good that happened, I can't wrap up 2013 without mentioning the disaster that was our rental house.  From the call that we received one Saturday notifying us the first floor ceiling had caved in due to a busted pipe, to the long awaited for day when the last bit of remodeling was installed and done, it was a LONG three months.  It definitely wasn't something we ever wished to have happen, but we ended up with a nearly brand new house when it was all said and done.  We are just grateful we weren't living there and that we had a wonderful contractor who did great work and excellent insurance that paid for it all! 

9.  In August, after several months of brainstorming new ideas and working with my friend Matt, we finally launched a new look and new name for this blog.  It involved switching platforms which meant lots of learning for me, but I have definitely started getting the hang of it and really love the new space!

10.  In September, Katie Wynn turned one.  While I suppose that counts as one of her milestones and could be included in number 7, it was her actual birthday party that was a top moment of the year for me.  I stressed about the weather since we'd had rain all week, but the sun came out and it was perfect.  All of our friends were there, the animals were a huge hit, and since I hired a photographer, it was really nice and fun to actually get to enjoy the party with everyone else.  Definitely one of the best days of the year; I didn't want it to end!

11.  On October 1st, shortly after Katie Wynn turned one, we learned that she's going to be a BIG sister!  (And no, it's no joke this time.)  We were thrilled to find out and know that it means 2014 is bound to be an exciting year as well.

12.  Later in October, I had some of my college friends in town for the weekend.  I always look forward to our get-togethers and getting to spend a lazy weekend in pjs hanging out with them.  This year, we added something new to our agenda: a Color Run.  Only four of us participated, but it was lots of fun!

13.  And last, but certainly not least, I have to mention the home improvement projects we managed to crank out this year.  We're definitely learning that it's harder and takes much longer to get things done when you have a toddler underfoot, but we still completed three fairly big upgrades that we get to enjoy every single day!  The shoe cubbies have totally transformed the functionality of our closet, the pallet wall in the half bath added some great texture and design to an otherwise blah space, and our mudroom upgrade (which I still owe you final pictures of) has been a huge help of corralling coats this winter.

There are SO many more things that I could have added.  Looking back through blog posts, it looks like we had a really, really good year.  I can only imagine that this coming one will be just as great, if not better!  

Now tell me, what were your top moments from 2013?

Christmas Finale

Our very last Christmas celebration for this holiday season actually fell on New Year's Day.  So I guess this counts as that recap too.  Our New Year's Eve?  It went something like this: work all day, family dinner, KW bathed and in bed, a little bit of TV, and then in bed before 10.  Party animals we were not.

Anyway, this last celebration was with my mom's side of the family.  She has one sister and since both of their parents have passed away, it's really just the two families (Mom's and my aunt's) that have to coordinate schedules and find a day to get together.  Shouldn't be too hard, right?  It's ridiculously hard!  Our families are expanding and we're all super busy, but getting to see each other is definitely something we make time for.

This year was my mom's turn to host, so our Country Cousins, as we call them (I'm sure we're their City Cousins), drove our way early on New Year's Day.  I didn't do a great job of remembering to take pictures throughout the day.  I have just a few pictures of the kids outside playing and then I put my camera down until food and presents time.  Oh well.

Have you ever tried to get a decent pictures of 8 wiggly kids?  While they were on a slide?  Yea, it's no easy task.

Here are my Mom and Dad and my Aunt Kim and Uncle Ron.  They are the oldest generation at these gatherings.

Then is my generation.  My mom's three kids with our spouses, and my aunt's two kids with their spouses (except it looks like I didn't get a picture of Joel and Ashley together...Oops).

And the ten of us in our generation have added LOTS of cute little people to the family!  I think there are 14 grandchildren total but Anna and Wyatt weren't with us this day.  And we'll be adding one more to the mix in June so next year we'll be at 15 and the adults will be officially outnumbered by the kids.  Yikes!

And I thought 8 kids on a slide was a hard picture to get.  Ha!  Twelve kids on a couch was even more difficult.

Right now the grandkids are equally divided - 6 girls and 6 boys (7 of each with Anna and Wyatt).  In one week we'll find out which side's gonna inch ahead by one!

After eating a delicious lunch (that definitely included black eyed peas and cabbage so that we'll all have a good year), all 26 of us crammed into my Mom's living room so that we could exchange gifts.  We keep it simple these days by all the kids receiving just one gift each.  The adults bring generic gifts so that we can play a fun game of Dirty Santa.

Since my uncle is a New Year's baby, we also got to have a birthday party.  At his request, my aunt brought a homemade cheesecake so we quickly sang to him so we could dig in.

Here are a few other snapshots from throughout the day.

It was a really good wrap-up to all the holiday festivities and I can't wait to see all of these guys again this spring!  We'll head to see them then and hopefully get to visit Paige and Roger's horse arena.  You can still ride a horse at 7 or 8 months pregnant, right???

Christmas Day

We woke up Christmas morning at my parents' house but quickly got dressed to head over to my brother Nick's house.  I think since Matt and I have been married, we have always gone over there for breakfast.  Who knows if that tradition will continue on.

Nick and Beth just moved into a brand new house the weekend before Christmas, but that didn't keep Beth from having a delicious spread for us all.  We stuffed our faces!  There was this delicious creme brulee french toast casserole thingy that I'm still dreaming about.  

We weren't there for long and the only pic I snapped was this one of Jett napping with his sweet pup, Lizzie.

We got home and made several trips in and out unloading ALL of our new stuff.  I love getting gifts, but does anyone else dread finding places to put it all?  It usually takes me days to get it all put away.  Our house still looks like a toy store threw up in it with all of Katie Wynn's new gifts.

Around, oh I dunno, ten-ish?, I told Matt that maybe we should go ahead and get Katie Wynn's Santa gift out from the attic.  Ha!  I know, I know.  We're terrible parents.  But really, she has no idea what's going on.  We'll put it all out under the tree and get into it next year.  

So he went up to the attic and grabbed the little table and chairs that Santa had brought her.  Can you believe that when he dropped it off in our attic, he didn't take the time to scrape off all the sticky price tags?!  Bummer.  The first 20 minutes of it being down from the attic was spent with me scraping off stickiness and him adding felt pads to all the legs of the table and chairs.

If you think that makes us bad parents, it gets even worse.  I remembered that I had gotten her stocking stuffers too so I went and pulled them out of the shopping bags they were in so she could play with them.  Yep, didn't even put them in a stocking.  (Mostly because I "ordered" new stockings that never arrived...later found out that I apparently never finished checking out.  Now I have 11 more months to decide if those are really the stockings I want.)

All of that rambling is to say that her stocking gift was a bath tub tea party set, but it seemed fitting to put it on her table so we could sit at it and enjoy its newness.  She loved it!  

You know what's crazy?  To my knowledge, she has never seen a tea set before and yet, she knew how to help me fill up my tea cup.  So smart, I tell ya.

And now, for my favorite picture from all of Christmas events: my two favorite people having a tea party together.  Y'all, it just doesn't get better than that.

Another fun gift that Katie Wynn got from her cousins was a bag of 100 plastic balls.  We managed to find a box big enough to dump them all in for a make-shift ball pit.  She had a ball!  (See what I did there?)

Once she got used to the box-o-balls, that's when things started getting a little crazy.  Balls everywhere!  I have a feeling this may be reserved for a rainy day activity.

After all the tea drinking and ball pit fun, sweet girl had to take a little book reading break.  It's a miracle that there aren't other toys on the ground in these pictures, because they are quickly becoming our new flooring.

After naps for all of us, we got cleaned up and went to my aunt's for the afternoon.  We always spend Christmas Day with my dad's side of the family.

Why am I so white and glowy? Do I look like that in real life?  Am I part vampire?

If I had to guess, I'd say that Katie Wynn's favorite part of the day was getting pulled around in a box by Bren.  

Either that, or sneaking up the stairs that she was supposed to stay off of.

If you noticed the outfit change, that's because near the end of the party, Katie Wynn picked up an unsupervised glass of bourbon + sprite and took a big drink.  Like her mama, she thought it tasted awful and poured the drink down her dress as she threw the cup down onto the carpet.  That's my girl.  She smelled like a little drunk walking around the rest of the day.  If this post doesn't get us Parents Of The Year, then I don't know what will.

Obviously a bath was necessary that night to wash away the bourbon stench, and so we had another tea party!

As with all the other parenting fails I've mentioned in this post, I realized I hadn't actually taken her picture in front of the tree yet.  Hey, it was still up so I hadn't totally missed the opportunity yet. (Making ornaments is still on our list of things to do.  Don't judge.  They will get made.)  I love the way these turned out!  Such a little girl in front of a big, big tree.

I wish I'd had my camera settings correct for the picture below on the left.  I think it could've been cute.  The pic on the right is of one of her sock monkey ornaments.  She gets one every year from her Mimi, but we actually already have so many that we may be able to do a sock monkey tree just for her soon.

Technically that wraps up our Christmas Day, but here are some bonus pictures from the next day.  Still havin' a ball in the ball pit!

Now I'm done typing for a while, so it's your turn.  How was YOUR Christmas?  Any other kids drinking bourbon out there?

Christmas Eve

Growing up in our family, Christmas Eve was always the day to look forward to (as opposed to Christmas Day) because that's when we opened up ALL of our presents.  Christmas Day was reserved for just the big gift from Santa and one or two other gifts from extended family.  We would beg and plead to open gifts all day and if we heard "not til after dinner" once, we heard it a billion times.  To occupy ourselves and make the time pass, we worked on our version of the Christmas story.  As the youngest grandchild, I usually played the very important role of baby Jesus, until I got too big to be carried and then I was promoted (or demoted?) to Lo, the angel of the Lord. :)

As an adult, Christmas Eve is very different.  Every year since graduating from college - with the exception of last year when I was on maternity leave - I have taken one for my team and gone in to work.  It's really not that bad - hardly anyone is there and we always get an early dismissal.  Plus, it makes the time go by faster until present, er family, time!

We no longer travel to my Grandmother's house for the holiday.  Instead, we start the evening at church for a candlelight service - one of my favorites of the year and one that Katie Wynn has yet to appreciate as she's two for two on crying through the whole thing.  Afterwards, we all cram into my parents' kitchen and attempt to sit down for a meal together.  And it's not just any meal, either.  The last two years Matt has made the infamous beef tenderloin in a salt crust, and it is to die for.  My mom always makes my favorite sides to go with it and we have enough food to feed at least two extra families.  And that's even before getting to the counter full of desserts to choose from.

It's no longer me and my brothers begging to open gifts.  That has been transitioned down to my niece and nephews.  I'm sure it's a matter of time before Katie Wynn joins in.  They haven't attempted acting out the Christmas story yet, so we torture them a little bit longer by quizzing them on why exactly we celebrate Christmas and who's birthday it is.  And finally, before the first gift can be opened, we sing a Christmas carol.  Jingle Bells has been the chosen one the last two years, probably because the kids enjoy screaming "HEY!" at the appropriate time.  Either way, it's a lot of fun! 

Now I've gotten carried away and almost forgot about the pictures that go with this post.  Shame on me.  Isn't that what you're all here for anyway? :)

Wild and crazy boys!

Sweet and sassy girls!

We tried for a little Christmas photoshoot with Ramer and Katie Wynn, the two youngest grandchildren.  They started out in the chair sitting as far away from each other as they could get, but eventually warmed up to each other!

Hugs and kisses!  Katie Wynn is obviously not sure about receiving affection from boys.

You know how I told you one of Katie Wynn's tricks is being able to not only find her belly, but also to show it to you?  Well, she has recently discovered that other people have bellies too! That's cute and all until we're sitting in the middle of McAlister's and she starts pulling up my shirt to show everyone my ever-expanding belly.  That?  Not so cute.  Anyway, on Christmas Eve, she discovered Jett's belly, and she was pretty dang obsessed with it!

We have a picture from years and years ago of all my grandmother's grandchildren (there were five of us) piled on her couch from oldest to youngest (I'll have to find it and post it sometime).  We tried to recreate the picture but it didn't go so well for the little ones.  I think this may have to be a picture we take every year, though, just to see how it progresses.  At least the three on the bottom cooperated.

Finally, after hours and minutes and days and years of waiting, the dishes were clean and everyone made their way to the living room so we could talk about Jesus and his birthday.

Matt and Jett played Santa and passed out gifts (after I read out the names on the tags and passed them over).  There is no taking turns in our present opening extravaganza; it's a free for all and it gets wild and crazy! 

Before we were even done passing out gifts, I looked over and noticed that Katie Wynn had torn into one.  I was shocked because she had zero interest in actually opening presents when we were in Indiana, she just wanted to watch everyone else.  Luckily, the gift she tore into was one that actually belonged to her.  

She also enjoyed carrying packages around the room.  I think this particular one was stolen off of Poppy's pile and carried across the room before being thrown down.

Katie Wynn's big present from Mimi and Poppy was too difficult to open by herself, so she watched as Jett gave her a hand.

A shopping cart full of groceries!  She was hilarious and kept saying "Whoa!" over and over again - and I don't think she's ever even said that word before, especially not in the right context!  (Oh, and props to Mimi for including all of my favorite groceries.  Well done.)

When most of the chaos had died down, Bren enjoyed stacking all of KW's groceries as high as she could and then knocking them over.  Fun for all ages, I guess.

Currently, Matt and I (and KW, of course) and the only ones that stay the night with Mimi and Poppy.  Not sure how that will pan out as the new baby is added in and Santa becomes more real, but for now it works and we enjoy it.  Everyone else had to quickly load up their cars and hit the road to get in bed before Santa Claus arrived.

Big hugs for these cousins!

Two last pictures of Katie Wynn with a couple of her favorite people before we hit the sack.  I'll be back soon to tell you all about Christmas Day! (Assuming anyone is even reading these??)

Holiday Celebration

Since Anna and Wyatt both have birthdays in December, and since they don't spend Christmas Eve with all of us, we always try to plan a night where my family comes over for dinner so that we can have a celebration just for the two of them.  They get both birthday and Christmas presents from everyone so I know they enjoy it.

This year's party was held last Monday night, as soon as we made it back into town from our trip to Indiana.  Since we didn't have time to cook, we ordered homemade tamales which are always delicious and a crowd pleaser!

Everyone say "tamale!"

It's nights like this that I'm glad our bar is super long.  Almost all of the kids can squeeze in up there.

Before everyone scattered, we gathered around to watch Anna and Wyatt open their gifts.  I think they both loved everything they opened!

And then it was finally time for one of my very favorite Christmas activities...decorating the gingerbread house!  I love doing this with the kids (even if they do pour the sprinkles everywhere) but I secretly kinda want to do it without all the extra helpers sometime just so I can do it really cute.  

To me, Ramer is a clone of his daddy (my brother, Ben).  He enjoyed munching on all the candy while his daddy stuck all 10 of his fingers in the icing container (so he didn't double-dip, he said).  I really wish I'd caught him in the act, but I couldn't get my hands on my camera fast enough.

Katie Wynn was not really invited to help decorate since I don't really trust her around that much candy.  Didn't matter anyway because she was obsessed with Bren's sparkly shoes and trying to get them on her feet.

Still decorating...

Finally, after every single bag of candy and tube of sprinkles had been emptied, our house was complete.  If you had to, you could probably guess which side Anna and I worked on and which side was done by Bren and Parker.

We ended the night with Gigi's cupcakes, and I hate that I didn't get a picture of them because they were so cute!  They were decorated as Santa hats and snow flakes and Christmas trees.  You'll just have to take my word for it.

Don't you love pumping your niece and nephews full of sugar and then sending them out the door?  :)  

Sadly, I had to go to work for a few hours the next morning, but by that afternoon, our Christmas Eve celebration was underway!  Pics coming soon.