New Year's Eve

Farewell 2024, please let the door hit you on the way out!

We've done a more lowkey holiday season this year, but a few days ago Michael decided he wanted to have a NYE party. Unfortunately, many other people had made that decision a while ago and had already invited many of the people Michael invited. But he had 4 people come over for some of the time (only Angela stayed until midnight) so he was able to play games, eat food, and have a good time. Part of his plan involved a marathon of Star Wars movies. He did start that in the morning which turned into Michael, Angela, and Ben getting a good nap in. They migrated over to games on the Switch in the evening followed by some of the games we played on Christmas Eve, and then a Pictionary/Taboo hybrid game with the whiteboard.

Towards midnight Jason, Ben, Isaac, and I took on obligatory selfie and watched the impressive and illegal fireworks display one street over. Michael and Angela had enough energy to go drive around to get closer and the rest of us went to bed.

Happy New Year!

December on FB

 

It's dangerous when your friend gives your mom your phone at the swim meet 😆

Second place in the varsity 200 freestyle! The photographer caught this moment right afterwards 💜💜💜💜

When your mom refuses to budge on her "absolutely no slime" policy so you have a to make an ornament instead

Christmas goal 2024: do not enter a grocery store or Costco between now and Dec 26!

Isaac got a lot of cool bday cards this year, but this one from Doug and Cody wins. 😆

Isaac really wants a white Christmas. I told him there's a 100% chance we'll get melted snow on Christmas Day.

He was not amused. 😆

I got this for Christmas and I feel seen

My top 5 favorites of 2024.

Bowling

Rachel likes adventures. So when she visits there are usually fun activities. After conferring with, well Ben mostly, bowling was added to this agenda for today. There were some scheduling issues but we ended up in Yelm with two hours of bowling. The place was small and we had two lanes for the 7 of use. The teens had a lane to themselves and their scores were significantly higher than the adults plus Isaac in the other lane. I suck at bowling so by the end I would just yell "PINS" and cheer myself if I didn't get a gutter ball.  

I will refrain from posting the absolutely humiliating scores but we did all have a good time and enjoy our adventures with Rachel.

Christmas Day

I have to say that we are very, very slowly moving our Christmas morning festivities to a later hour of the morning and I am thrilled. We managed to schedule gift opening for 8am this morning so that Michael and Ben could take showers before we got started. 

Josh may no longer live at home, but is a good sport and still came over wearing his matching pajamas. I am going to try to keep this tradition going as long as I can.

Look at all these bright, happy faces! We are so fortunate to have these lovely people close by to celebrate with us.

One of the coolest gifts of the day were these Fortnite boxes that Cody made himself with their 3D printer. Cody is some sort of 3D printer wizard and the boxes were full of fun items some of which were also 3D printed. 

    MORE presents and then a family pic and dinner.

Another great Christmas on the books.

Christmas Eve

As soon as Ben finds out that I have used this picture on the blog I am pretty sure I will have to take it down, but here it is for now. Swim team is an intense commitment which involves practice all the way through the winter break. To mix things up a bit, they have a tradition of playing polo on Christmas Eve. Apparently their version of water polo doesn't have many rules so there are some (minor) injuries. I have almost no knowledge of water polo, but I suspect this attempt by Ben to tackle Isaac is probably not legal in a typical game.

Having received no significant injuries, Ben and Michael went to go see Wicked in the movie theater with Jason and Aunt Rachel. That film is an epic 3 hours long and everyone agreed that it was good but could have used an intermission.

Later in the day, we had family over for our Christmas Eve dinner and game night. (Minus Michael who spent the evening participating in Angela's family's festivities.)  Jason and Cody made a variety of appetizers for dinner and then we moved on to minute-to-win-it style games. 

Lessons learned: Ben has a hard time not laughing when balancing plates on his head. Jason's head is very round and his hair is slippery. Rachel and Josh have the most experience with chopsticks. Absolutely no one in this group of people is at all competitive. (HA!)

Surprise! The boys got to open one gift on Christmas Eve and they got pajamas. The older boys got these shirts:

Then everyone went home to attend to dogs or food for the next day and the Millers all settled in for a long winter's nap.

Isaac Friend Party

It's an even year for Isaac's birthday this year so that means FRIEND PARTY! Of course, the issue is always that his birthday coincides with weather not conducive to outdoor activity so the number of kids he can invite is limited to the number of kids I can handle having in the house. My genius idea this year had to do with the fact that his birthday and the Sonic 3 movie were not too far apart so he got to invite three friends for movie at the theatre and pizza at the house.

Jason took one for the team and took Isaac, Maggie, Murphee, and Harley to the movie.

After the movie they came home to eat Domino's pizza and open presents. Isaac got some pretty fun stuff.

They had some energy to burn and we had a bit of time to kill before the other kids' parents arrived so there was a balloon battle - everyone for themself!

Then we sugared them up right before they went home!

Isaac has a crazy lovely bunch of friends and they definitely made this fun birthday.

A Year in Review According to My Apps

We still have several days until 2024 comes to an end (finally), but some of my apps have already created images giving me a visual of 2024 Year in Review. 

Spotify

This was interesting. Hamilton and some classics.

In case you were wondering what I play on repeat...

Goodreads

It's amazing what can happen when I am not in grad school all year! 

Starbucks

This was amusing - apparently I am actually Jason because this is his typical order. I suspect the issue is that I often order for both of us but I order a wider variety of items so his consistent items are at the top of the list.