Last Post of 2016

Between Halloween and New Years Eve life gets a little crazy. Well, calling life crazy is an understatement. It might be have been crazy before kids but now with three young kids it is like trying to herd a dozen cats all hyped up on catnip while trying to balance on one foot and look like you know what you are doing. But as I sit here and think about the past two months, it went by way too fast. I have tried to be more in the moment with the kids and not take so many photos this past year but its hard though when I realize I don't have a picture of this or that and just have to hope that the memory won't fade. We even went to Ohio for a long weekend a few weeks ago and I have no pictures to show for it. I just need to take a deep breathe and know it was worth it in the moment.

During the holidays, we always try a few new recipes. Now that Madeleine likes to help in the kitchen its more messy but much more fun too.

The start of Thanksgiving break! Everyone was still smiling ;)

James had a school fundraiser at a trampoline park - he had a blast with his school friends.

My Thanksgiving sous chefs!

John told the kids that they had to go catch the turkey for dinner, so they got their nerf guns and spent a good part of the morning hunting turkeys. James was not thrilled when they came back inside and he realized the turkey was already in the oven.

Madeleines picture of our family. Its one of my favorites.

Madeleine made her "throne" to watch TV. She's a ham.

I started outsourcing some duties and Madeleine was excited to take the job.

Baby's first official head bump from trying to pull himself up.

Santa Claus!

This little man LOVES his baths. I truly think they are a highlight of his day.

So because our house isn't busy enough, we adopted a 1 year old border collie mix from the SPCA and named him Dash Flash. He is the sweetest dog with tons of playful energy. We are still working on some manners but he has already come a long way in just 2 weeks.

Dash is full grown and his little 30 lbs makes Duke just look massive. John's brothers call Duke a hippo and now I can see why!

Dash also loves bath time like Matthias. He loves to try and catch the water as Matthias splashes around.

Christmas is not compete without Christmas cookies! We have a tradition with friends where we make our Christmas cookies with friends but this year Madeleine came down with a stomach bug so we had to miss out. The kids were bummed but from a mommy point of view it was sort of nice just to make cookies with just us this year.

Christmas Eve snuggles! It took Duke a few days to warm up to Dash, but now they snuggle and play and its been really good for him to have a friend again. He has really missed having another dog in the house. And since he outweighs Dash by over 70 lbs, he can still hold his own when they play.

So there's this app on my phone where I was able to add in Santa into our picture! I had a friend text it to me on Christmas morning and just changed her name in my phone to Santa Claus so the kids thought that Santa sent them a picture of him delivering their presents from the night before. They got a huge kick out of it.

Here's the picture I was able to add Santa into. Pretty cool, right?

Christmas morning was wonderful, so fun to watch the kids open their presents and play - and then we stayed in our pjs all day and just relaxed and ate too much.

John and I looked back through past Christmas morning pictures, and in every picture for the past three years James is putting together Legos and Madeleine is in a new princess dress. They are consistent!

James got scrabble junior for Christmas and it was a huge hit. We love board games in this house and have played the ones we have to death so it was fun that we got a few new ones for Christmas.

Every year, between Christmas and New Years John has off from work. It is my favorite week of the year. I look forward to it so much every year because it is our family time where we can just be together and do whatever we want or nothing at all. The kids love it just as much as I do and we all take advantage of this week to just recharge as a family before we get back to the schedule of life.

Right now I am watching Ohio State lose to Clemson in the Fiesta Bowl. It is a huge disappointment to us Buckeyes, but probably even more because John, Steve, Stephen and Will are all at the game right now. Whoops!

This is who I spent my last night of 2016 with and I could have asked for a better way to end the year.