Christmas, New Years and everything in between

Since it's been a little while, I'm just going to jump right in with our Christmas Eve.

Let me just say that Patrick looooves hanging out with his cousins.  Aiden does as well, but Patrick is definitely my social little man who is constantly asking to go hang out with various kids.  As soon as he sees a friend/cousin, mom is not in his thoughts and he runs off playing.  Aiden, on the other hand, will play for a while but still wants to come back to be held before going off to play again. 

Christmas Eve was spent with lots of family.  We did a lunch at the Blackburn home followed by a little Nativity production put on by the kids.

 Apparently Marcus does not like costumes so he's the only one not dressed up.  I sure hope these two are buds someday because they're pretty close in age and Aiden loves following Marcus around.

 I'd say we were a little more organized this year than last.  I think the girls are outnumbered by a lot...

 And a little family picture before heading home to open Christmas Eve presents at Grandma Clifford's house.
Since moving, we've only had a handful of nights where the boys have actually slept in their beds until 6:30AM(which is still way too early in my opinion), and Christmas was no different.  They were ready to get up and go by 4:30 but I made them go back to bed.  By 7:00, I re-woke them up for the festivities!

We were all definitely spoiled this year!  The boys have stayed occupied since Christmas with their toy horses, books, paint sets and every other toy they got.  This is a scene I see a lot; the boys sitting at their new little table with paper and some sort of art supplies.  Aiden just likes to make a mess but Patrick is quite obsessed with any type of art project.

And one last picture of cute, little Aiden dressed in his new Christmas coat.  We got quite a bit of snow that day so the boys got to get all bundled up to go outside.  Unfortunately it was also incredibly cold and Aiden lasted a whole minute.  Snow+Aiden=Meltdown.

And here is my only picture from New Year's Eve.  Sometimes I'm just so great at taking pictures.  But really, it was a nice night spent with a few friends and followed by coming home to play games for a little bit, eat some snacks and say cheers to the new year.

The next day, we went to hang out with cousins some more and bond over some bowling.  Gotta be honest, bowling's not really my thing.  I enjoy it...but I stink at it.  Or as Mike would say, it's just a given that I would lose. :)  Not much of a booster to their self-esteem if they beat me.  Those Blackburns take their bowling seriously!  I, other the other hand, can't even figure out what my body is doing enough to figure out how to get better.  Maybe someday........maybe.  I'll stick to running. 

 Again, Patrick loved bowling and doing everything his cousins were doing but Aiden mostly just wanted to ride on these motorcycles.

More selfies. :)

Today Patrick was asking to do everything under the sun besides stay inside.  He wanted to go to Charlie's house again, go play with cousins, play with random neighbor kids, go throw snowballs on our land, etc.  So after nap time, we enjoyed a little family sledding in my mom's back pasture.  And by family sledding, I mean Patrick and daddy sledding.  Aiden went on the sled once with Patrick, face planted in the snow and wouldn't leave my arms afterwards.  The smiling picture is before the face plant.  Patrick didn't care about the cold and would have stayed out all night.  Noticing a pattern with my kids?  I think they are opposites in every way possible.  

Goodbye to 2014.  Considering we've had some pretty rough years, 2014 felt like it was the start of an uphill.  For the first time in years, I actually wrote down some new resolutions for 2015, and while I'm always making little goals for myself, I love the idea of a new year with new accomplishments.  Really I have my whole year planned out, month by month, but I've come to learn that life never goes as planned.  2015 has already started with word that my Uncle Rod(my dad's only brother and sibling) passed away last night.  I know how my cousins are feeling.  I feel their pain and their sorrow  and sometimes like just sucks.  Excuse my language, but really, it's a hard thing always having to accept God's will.  Growing up, we didn't see my dad's family a lot but lately my uncle had started commenting on these little blog posts of mine and it meant a lot to me.  Not because it increased my number of facebook comments, but because I felt like a little piece of my dad was still here, paying attention to my life.  It might sound dumb, but it felt like another piece of my dad was stripped away again.  But mostly, I just feel empathy for people who are going through what we did just a short while ago.  Healing doesn't happen overnight and feelings stay fresh for awhile and the littlest thing brings everything back to the surface.  The more I endure through this life, the more grateful I am for the knowledge Joseph Smith restored to this earth.  It seems that each passing day gives me reason to be a more fervent defender of a man who, though not perfect, brought a knowledge to my life that has given me more peace than anything else.  

Happy New Year, everyone.