Getting Ready for the New Year Celebration!

The girls are pretty excited to go to their Uncle Joe's house for a New Year's Eve Celebration...Grandma Klepfer and all of the cousins will be there not to mention Aunt Karrie and Uncle Joe! According to Dylan, Uncle Joe is the best, "I don't want to play with my cousins today, I want play with Uncle Joe".  Maybe because while the rest of us are hanging out, Uncle Joe wrestles with her and throws her in the air about a million times...I don't think Uncle Joe knows how to say "no". 

To get ready for the afternoon and evening fun we woke up early to move all of the furniture out of the upstairs rooms so our carpets could be cleaned...what a great day, the carpet cleaners showed up 10 minutes early (I was a bit worried as they have given me an 8am-10am window for their arrival)....now our carpet is white again...why we purchased white carpet is a whole different blog all together about men and their bright ideas...Kirk still believes he has control over the children - denial... anyway - back to getting ready, now our house will be nice and clean so we can go and have a great time at someone else's house and come home to our tidy home - I love it! Dylan is having a hard time as she loves her room - we moved Tyler's old loft bed out of her room and into Dylan's. In addition, since we have one last non-HD TV, we decided that rather than buy a converter or get cable/satellite, we would just use this old, nice, large TV as a DVD/VHS machine for Dylan and her movies... so we put this in her room... well if that didn't make her the happiest three year old... she now plays in her room non stop, wants to be in there all the time and sleeps in her own room (finally)... she likes the TV to be going while she plays. Never thought I would put a TV in my child's room, but there you go, say I won't and then I do.

Tyler is quasi excited about going to her uncle's today, after all she is 12 and getting excited about family stuff is not cool. She wanted to bring a friend, but dad says no so she is stuck with the little cousins or with the adults. She would love being with the adults, but her mother is "so embarrassing, seriously" so that is almost torture. I am actually having fun with being the embarrassing mother, I don't even have to try - sometimes I can just walk into a room and get the whole - "MOOOOM" reaction and the storming out routine... honestly, there are moments when I seriously do not know what I have done. On the other hand, when Tyler has friends over and they are playing RockBand and I know all the words to the 80's tunes they are playing and sing along and dance I am completely being "embarrassing mom" on purpose and her friends love it (they then can tease Tyler at school about her mom, "remember when your mom was dancing at the grocery store; remember when Tyler's mom said Tyler's dad was a hottie; etc...). Those moments make all the hormonal ups and downs bearable when you live with a 12 year old female.

Kirk is convinced we will leave the girls with his brother and go for an afternoon bike ride on Casa Grande Mountain this afternoon. It sounds fun, just not sure if that is going to happen or not. He is quite a bit more proficient on the mountain bike than I am and gets sort of frustrated when I do dumb things like fall because I forget how to get the clips off in a perceived emergency situation (like I am going backwards down the mountain). I have finally healed from all of the previous bruises and cuts so why not get back on the bike?

The last preparation will be meeting Kirk's mother to buy groceries and cook the feast for this evening. We will be preparing food for the adults, a different meal for the kids, and then Kirk and I have a totally separate menu based on Kirk's health choices and my limited food choices (food allergies to Wheat, Corn, Soy, Refined Sugar, Dairy, Meat, and anything with Gluten)...so this will actually be fun and keep us busy until let's say 11pm.

The girls had a fun time over the past week - it is the first time in a long time we have all three had the time off together. We have been relaxing at home, shopping, and watching some movies.  Here are a few photos to chronicle the time spent over winter vacation so far...