Christmas!  We happened to be at Chick-fil-A while Ben was doing some stuff at Lowe's, when this Santa came in.  I thought it was great how he took time with all of the kids who were there.  That is until he made my kids promise that they would leave peanut butter blossoms (the cookies with the Hershey's Kisses on top) for him on Christmas Eve.  What the heck, Santa!  We don't make those for Christmas.  But this year we had to.

Later that evening, we were at a Christmas party at the base chapel where we saw this Santa.  You would think my kids would have raised an eyebrow, expressed some skepticism after having just seen a different Santa at lunch.  Nope.  Magic.

We got to go to Utah for Christmas and spend it with my family.  So many presents!  But so much fun.  We even got together with Ben's family during a break in the weather, which had caused us to reschedule our previous plans with them.  I think everyone had a good time.

We were home for the New Year, and I had plans.  However, I had also brought Dad's cold home with me, and it had made plans for its own party in my lungs.  I was so sad that that I wasn't able to do any of what I had hoped, but things actually turned out okay.

When bedtime rolled around, everyone was having so much fun that I just left them alone.  Near 10:30 that night, things had started winding down when the neighbor kids came to see if we wanted to watch their fireworks.  While Ben took the kids there, I continued to hold down the couch.  They were pretty wired when the got home, so we stayed up, got out the party favors, and rang in the new year at midnight.

 

Ty was almost too tired to blow his horn.

Zack stepped in with some encouragement.

Happy New Year!