On the 10th Day of Christmas... (part 2)

That evening, Dave and Carla hosted New Years Eve at their home for all of us and Dana, Phil and the twins - who opted to stay the night, knowing the kids would have to go to bed before midnight.  It was a super fun night - and so nice to get to spend more time with Dana, whom we haven't seen in several years.  The Jackson and Coleman  played downstairs most of the night playing with one of Coleman's new toys (which J was fortunate to also get for Christmas) and Zoe and Ethan played upstairs until E/J had to go to bed (10p!).  Dave and Carla had a spread of food and Dana and Phil brought over this amazing stuffed chicken!!!  Wow, was that good!  Later that night, it started snowing - and at midnight, the neighbors shot off fireworks!  After the NY was rang in, we had mimosas and played Apples to Apples til we were all too tired to move.  What a great night and awesome year!

 

Trust me, you don't want to know.

 

On the 10th Day of Christmas... (part 1)

I don't know what happened but on New Years Eve, we took a ridiculous amount of pictures - too many to share on one posting... so I'm breaking it up into two.  Morning / Night.  So this is Part 1:  Morning.
When the boys woke up that morning - they found lots of fun little critter friends outside.  Ryan's brother - Dave loves birds so he has many many bird feeders and even puts out corn for the squirrels - so there were so many out that morning - they boys were thoroughly entertained!

 

For several years now, we have been doing our "Family Christmas" around New Years Eve time.  We've been rotating who's home we do it at, so first it was Milwaukee, then our home in Arkansas, and now we're onto Minneapolis.  So since we were all ready to have our Christmas, we did it first thing Saturday morning!  Something I absolutely love about "Stearle Family Christmas" is that traditionally, we open these enormous goofy stockings and then we do presents after... all while drinking coffee and mimosas, eating a yummy breakfast and eating crazy amounts of candy.  It usually lasts all morning into the afternoon.  So much fun!  I LOVE it.  We have been drawing names for stockings for quite a long time too - and that just makes the stockings that much more fun.  Stocking gifts are a mixture of cool, unique items and goofy silly items and also your practical stuff.... The idea being that you pick up things here and there throughout the whole year.  Totally fun!  For the last 2 years, I've made Jackson a stocking too - a very very very very small stocking but just something he can do while we open ours... This year, he got so excited about each thing in his stocking that after we were all done, he hadn't even finished his stocking!  He was busy playing and eating chocolate... Awh... Christmas.  :)

On the 9th Day of Christmas...

Friday, December 30th.  We wake up in Milwaukee.  Ryan and I immediately bust our our P90X for the day and get that overwith (yep folks, we did it even while traveling!).  We round up the toys and clothes... Ryan re-packs the truck again - this time in pouring down freezing rain (boo!) and then we jet off, with Ma in tow, to Minneapolis.  We got there a little before 5p.  This was Ryan and my first time to visit Minneapolis and to see Dave and Carla's gorgeous home there.  Dave and Carla visited in September and Carla told J all about Minneapolis, so J was beyond excited!  Shortly after we got there, Ryan's cousin Dana, her boyfriend Phil and her two precious 4-yr-old twins (Coleman and Zoe) came by for a visit!  I didn't get too many pics on this day cuz we were all just so wiped out! 

We did, however, start working on Dave's massive wine collection... that makes everything better.  :)