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.

Christmas Afternoon and Evening

After we had lunch at our house, we went over to Christine and Eric's house for the Williams Christmas.  Mark and Barb and their three daughters are in the same place very often, so we tried to get some pictures and ended up with some pretty nice ones, including one with them and their three grandchildren.

Eric and Christine prepared an awesome meal for us, and after that we exchanged gifts.  Joshua especially liked his military set with a tank and some Army guys.

Mark and Eric stayed upstairs to chat, but the rest of us headed downstairs to have some game time.  Hannah, though, couldn't stay awake and crashed on Meghan's lap.

We played Taboo, which is kind of a retro game at his point, but it's a favorite in our family.  Michelle and I emerged victorious, and the Taboo champs are memorialized here in this photo that you know is from Michelle and not me, because it has some sort of filter on it, and I'm not young enough or cool enough to do filters.

Joshua and I had on similar shirts, so I wanted to get a picture of it.  He was whispering something in my ear here (I don't remember what), but he apparently found it to be pretty funny.

When we got back to the house, the kids had a little bit of time to play with their toys before bedtime.  Hannah was excited to wear her new ladybug jammies.  These are notable, because they are perhaps her all-time favorite jammies from when she owned them in a smaller size (two or three sizes smaller than these), and she wore them even after they were way too small, but at some point it was just too much.  But Meghan was able to find the same exact ones, but in Hannah's current size, and she's super excited to wear them tonight.  Another fun gift she got was a motorized tricycle for Chicken Baby.  You can actually prop Chicken up on it, press a button, and it will drive around the floor, giving Chicken a chance to be a big kid who rides trikes.  You're growing up so fast, Chicken!

The next night Michelle came over to hang out with us and the kids, and she engaged in a lightsaber, er, space sword fight with the kids, and by the looks of it, I don't think she was winning.

Anyway, we had a really fun time at Christine's house with the whole Williams crew, and I don't know if it'll work out next year, but I think it would be a fun new tradition if we could make it happen in future years.

Christmas Morning

Today is Christmas!  The kids, of course, were very excited.  I made them wait until I was ready to record a video of them coming downstairs.  Here they are at the top of the stairs barely able to contain their excitement.

 The stockings were hung by the chimney with care not to overfill them such that they would pull the stocking holders off the mantel, which is a concern every year.  We did stockings first before moving to the presents.

 Joshua's favorite gift was probably this Darth Vader costume.  The helmet includes the ability to make it say things in the classic James Earl Jones voice like, "You don't know the power of the Dark Side." and "You have failed me for the last time." But you can also just turn on a voice modulator and talk while wearing it, and it will make your voice sound like Darth Vader.

We also got the kids some lightsabers, except instead of paying a ton of money or Star Wars branded ones (I saw them for $45 in some places), I bought "Space Swords" from Walmart for $4 each.  They are really good, as they light up nicely and make lightsaber-like noises as you move them around.

Clara's main gift was this writing desk.  We found vintage desks on Craigslist that had been refinished by some kids to raise money for something or other, so we got her the pink one.  It's the old style of desk that's metal and has storage in the chair and in the desk itself.  She was elated by this.  She loves to draw and color and create, and this will give her a space in her room to do it.  One of my main gifts was a compressor, which I wanted and needed, and is to the left of Clara.

Meghan's main gift was the priciest one, but the most necessary one too: a laptop.  Her previous one is very old and is slow and overheats and blue screens a lot.  I was concerned the hard drive was about to fail on it too.  She uses it a lot, so it was time to get her a nicer, newer one.  I replaced mine earlier this spring with the newest version of the Dell XPS 13, and I like it a lot.  Meghan has zero interest in researching electronics, but I like it.  I had asked her for her basic requirements and took it from there, and in the end, the best choice was in fact the one I had gotten, although hers has the newest Intel microarchitecture (Kaby Lake vs Skylake), which is something I'm totally interested in that bores her to tears.  Hers is also a Rose Gold color, which lets us tell them apart at a glance, which is nice.

Clara had a bonus gift, which was fulfilling her recent desire/request to get a new pet.  We are not getting any new dogs or cats anytime soon, but we decided a betta fish would be a good start.  I recently went to PetSmart and bought all the equipment and the fish.  There were a surprising amount of types and price points on bettas, but I bought the one I thought was by far the pretties, and conveniently he was in the lower tier or pricing.  So meet our newest family member, Blue!  Clara named him, I guess because he has some blue on him, but we didn't question it.  She is super excited about him.

I tried to take a picture of the three kids in front of the tree while wearing their Christmas jammies, and despite dozens of pictures, I'm not sure I got a great one that just has them standing there, smiling, and looking at the camera in a classic posed picture.  Instead, I got a lot of pictures of moderate disregard for my goals, but instead a lot of love and joy, as you can see here.  And that's even better.

Williams Family Lunch

This morning we went to do our annual tradition of delivering Christmas gifts and food to families through City Union Mission.  As I mentioned last year, this is an important value in our family.  But this particular event has increased in popularity, so this year they only had one bag for us to deliver, and unfortunately that family wasn't home.  So we said a prayer for that family and dropped off the gifts and food back at the main office.

We then headed home briefly before going to lunch with Meghan's extended family. Mark and Barb are in town for Christmas, and Michelle is too.  We met with all of them, along with Eric and Christine, at Chapala for a nice lunch.  We'll see them all on Christmas afternoon at Eric and Christine's house, so thankfully this wasn't our only chance for interaction.  But it was great to see everyone, and we're looking forward to the main event on Sunday.

Building a Snowman, Barely

Joshua is now on Christmas break, and Mom and Ron watched all three kids today.  We finally got a bit of snow last night, so there was still some on the grass today, and Mom and Ron took the kids out to play in the back yard.  There wasn't a ton of snow, but there was just enough to make a snowman.  The kids worked hard and were able to complete one.  Here they are with their snowy masterpiece.

Bed Crashers

We've been having a problem lately with the kids wanting to sleep in our bed.  Meghan will sometimes let them when I'm out of town.  But if I'm in town, they are generally not allowed.  That doesn't stop them from sometimes sneaking in during the middle of the night when we are asleep and climbing in our bed.  This morning I woke up to find these two intruders fast asleep in the middle of our bed.

Keeping Warm with Salvy

Joshua received a little Salvador Perez Itty Bitty from Mom and Ron for Christmas, and he really likes it.  It's super cold today, so when I went to run an errand, and Joshua wanted to come with me, he needed to bundle up in his poncho (a custom fleece poncho that Meghan sewed for each of the kids a couple years back), but he also wanted to take his Salvy on the trip.  So here is my bundled-up boy, clutching his new favorite toy.

Joshua's School Pictures

Joshua had his school pictures taken recently and I thought I would share it:

The Nicholl Christmas

Today we had Christmas at Mom and Ron's house.  I didn't bring my camera, unfortunately, so I don't have a ton of pictures.  But here are a few that Andrew took on his camera.  It was a really fun day, as these days always are, with a lot of time to hang out with family and a chance to see the grandkids get to open their presents.