That's a Wrap

That's all for this year.  I know the blog was a little disjointed this year due to my delayed posts, all of which were eventually completed and then properly backdated.  We're going to continue to blog next year, so head over to http://thousandwords2017.blogspot.com/ to join us.  To keep our sanity, we'll probably blog a little less frequently, and the layout of the blog will change a bit, but please stay with us as we continue to document our crazy and wonderful life!

New Year's Eve: Wii and Biz Markie

Tonight is New Year's Eve.  We celebrated by popping some Christmas crackers, which I guess for NYE are called New Year's Eve crackers?  I don't know.  I'd never heard of them until I met Meghan, so I'm a little new to the concept.  We also played some Nintendo Wii, which we did last year as well.  Last year the kids mostly liked the Wii Sports, and they did this year as well.  They liked bowling most last year, but tennis was also very popular this year.  Last year they played Mario Kart a little, but this year they all loved it.  Clara and Hannah needed help to keep driving in the right direction, but Joshua grasped it pretty quickly and was able to make his way through the easy courses.

I broke out the bag bombs.  We first tried them last year, and the kids were terrified of them, especially Joshua.  Basically it's a chemical compound that once activated, expands in the pouch until it pops with a pretty loud bang.  Joshua was braver this year and wanted to watch, albeit with his ears covered.  We then did a countdown well before midnight, because the kids can't stay up that late, and then we all blew the horns to celebrate.

We finished the kids portion of the evening by having a dance party by the light of the disco ball.  The flash of the camera ruins the lighting, so you can't get an accurate depiction of the party vibe from these pictures.  It wasn't a huge party vibe, because it's just a tiny disco ball with our family dancing around, but it was a party vibe nonetheless.

After the kids went to bed, we stayed up and watched Pit Bull's show, which was again the best one.  But it was even better than in previous years, because it featured a full line-up of old school hip hop artists: Biz Markie, Coolio, Naughty by Nature, Rob Base, Salt-N-Pepa, Tone Loc, and Young MC.  It was pretty entertaining, even if a bit sad because some of them can barely sing anymore (Coolio, especially).  Anyway, it was a fun night, and it's been a pretty great year, all things considered.

Chemistry in Action

One of the gifts Joshua got for his birthday was a collections of science experiments from Grandpa and Grandma Williams.  He's been asking to do them, and I thought today would be a good time to do one.  I chose the one called "Dancing Powders".  It sounded exciting, but it was simply mixing citric acid and baking powder to create a chemical reaction causing lots of fizz.  It was good enough for the kids, and they asked me to repeat it several times, so I did.  The first one was a success, so I'm sure we'll be doing another one soon.

Some Chicken and Some Dirt

As I mentioned a couple days ago, I have this week off.  Today I decided to take the kids out for the day.  We first went to lunch at Chick-fil-A.  We had a nice meal, with the only problem being when the table slipped when Hannah pushed against it slightly, causing her chocolate milk to tip over and spill all over the floor.  For some reason there was almost no traction with the table and the floor, as it could very easily slide around.  Other than that we had a good time eating the tasty food.

 Yesterday our dishwasher failed.  So we are now in the market for a new one.  I wanted to see some of the options in person, so we stopped at Lowe's, Best Buy, and Home Depot to see them.  The kids were not thrilled with this part of our day.  By the third one, they were like, "Do we have to look at more dishwashers?"  But it was necessary.  Or, maybe it wasn't, because after looking at them, they didn't really have what we wanted, which was a fingerprint-proof one with good ratings and good features.  We generally like our stainless steel one we have now, but it's so bad with fingerprints and drips.  Some of the newest ones don't have that problem, but those ones didn't have the other things we needed.  So I'm thinking we'll just pay the 200 bucks to fix our current one, which hopefully will give it a few more years of life, and then when we are ready to replace it the next time, there will be one that's a better fit for us.

The last component of our day was to go to the dirt pile.  When I took all the kids last month, they all loved it and have been asking to go back, so I figured that would make for a good activity today.  It's cold today, but not too bad, and it's sunny.  So we brought our coats, and we played there for awhile.  They again loved smashing, digging, poking, and climbing, even using the screwdrivers like ice picks in climbing a mountain.  At some point they'll finish the house which has this in its back yard, but clearly something is holding that process up, as it's been here for almost a full year.  If it gets to spring time and it's still here, we'll probably come back again.

Dentist Day

We now try to schedule all the kids' dentist appointments on the same day at the same time, out of convenience.  My company gives us the week between Christmas and New Years as free time off, meaning we don't have to take vacation but still don't have to work, so I'm off this week.  The kids' dentist appointments were today, so I took them to go see Dr. Matt.  They all went at the same time but in different stations with different hygienists.  Fortunately, none had cavities, and all got good reports, so hopefully that continues going forward.

December

I didn't take that many pictures of general activities in December and I couldn't do as much as I normally do because I have a job now. However, we still made time for cookies. Here is Joshua enjoying his first ginger snap and egg nog of the season. The kids figured out these are two things best combined by dunking all by themselves. They are not wrong.

Less exciting, the purple wall above my desk now has vinyl lettering on it. Do you feel more motivated now that you have see it?

The Whole Family Goes to See Moana

Joshua has been going to our neighbor Leslie's daycare before school and/or after school as needed on days when I'm out of town.  It's only a handful of days a month, but it's a good arrangement.  For Christmas, she gave Joshua a gift card to AMC.  We decided to use it for our whole family to go to a movie together for the first time, so today we went to see Moana.  The gift card covered our five tickets almost exactly, and the movie was really good and we all enjoyed it.  I'm not sure this will happen all that often, but after multiple times of me taking one or two kids, it was pretty fun for our whole family to go together.