Science Night

New Year's Eve and Magic House

We went to St. Louis for New Year's Eve.  First we went to the Holcombe's party.  They moved to St. Louis in the fall so we got to see their new house, new baby, and celebrate Joffroi's 30th birthday.  It was a fun time, but I don't have any pictures to show for it.  It was also the first year that both girls stayed up to midnight!   I wanted to get a picture of the landmark occasion, but as you can imagine girls that stay up four hours past their bedtime aren't in the mood to take pictures.  So all I have are a few pictures of us at the McGuires on January 1.  We had a lovely time playing games in our pjs all day.  This picture sums it up: Olive and Gwyneth are playing with dress up magnets.  Hannah and Colin are playing Exploding Kittens (Hannah and Steve's new favorite card game).  And Kevin is building legos.

We got to see their new kitchen!  It almost inspired me to do work on my house.  Almost.

We also went to the Magic House in St. Louis.  Steve and I both have memories of going their when we were kids.  The first time at the Magic House Olive was just a baby, so we wanted to go back now that she can remember it.

These are the serious faces of the president and vice president.

It's hard to see, but she is making a big bubble.

This is an even bigger bubble.

Somebody was more interested in their phone than playing in the sand.

Then he found something to do.  Lego cars.

Our plan was to leave when they got hungry for lunch so they would want to leave.  Excellent exit strategy, except they still didn't want to leave.  They built creations out of craft sticks, cups, and straws for a solid 30 minutes while my stomach was eating itself.  We were finally able to drag them out at 2:00!

Snow!

We did not have a white Christmas.  In fact it was very warm in December.  But at the end of the month, we finally got some snow.  The girls were overjoyed!  And now it's January and it is all gone and we're hoping for some more.

Christmas 2015

The rule in our house is the girls stay in bed until 7:00am, but I was feeling generous at Christmas so I told Hannah she could wake us up whenever she got up.  Big mistake.  She got up, woke up Olive and they both walked into our room at....2:45am.  WHAT?!  I sent them back to bed.  Next wake-up call...4:00am.  I sent them back to bed again.  I said the clock has to at least say 5 something.  Why did I say that?  I don't know.  It was 4:00am and I had no idea what I was saying.  So when she come into our room again?  5:01.  Sigh.  Fine.  We made our way downstairs to open presents AT 5:00 IN THE MORNING!  Usually the girls open one present at a time and then play with it forever before I make them move on to the next thing.  This year it was all unwrapped by about 5:15.

This was actually on Christmas Eve reading our last Christmas book.  The girls unwrap a Christmas book every day in December for an advent calendar.

 I always get matching pjs for the girls, but Olive usually refuses to wear them.  This year they stayed matching!  They opened up their stockings and were super excited by things like notebooks, reading lights, rubber snakes, and toothbrushes!  I love how it doesn't take much to make them happy.  Also, notice it is pitch black outside.

Santa scaled it back this year and we didn't have quite the mess as in the past.  Here is the aftermath:

It was mostly a lego Christmas.

While everyone else was doing lego, I made this awesome fish out of Q-Ba-Maze for a marble run.

After a relaxing morning at our house, we headed to Chillicothe in the afternoon for Christmas Grandma and Grandpa's house.  Here's Olive with her new helmet.

And here's Hannah with a handmade sign from Aunt Becky.

Here's Steve with his new trashcan conveniently wrapped in trash.

The girls each got a set of talking owls and they built a home for them out of present boxes.

Then the day after Christmas we opened presents with the Kerrs.  The cousins really look like each other when they are all dressed alike, they have the same hair color, and 3 out of 4 also have the same haircut!

We got to meet the girls' newest second cousin: Clara.

This pretty much sums up trying to take Olive's picture when she isn't in the mood.

Christmas Crafts and Cookies

 Christmas Eve we spent the day crafting and baking.  I gave the girls an idea for a craft for their grandparents and great-grandparents...and then turned them loose on their own.  The only thing I did was cut out the hats for Olive and loop the ribbons.  Hannah's snowmen are on the left and Olive's on the right.

Then they decided to do some more crafting because, why not?  These are Hannah's creations.

And here are Olive's creations.  The craft sticks with eyes aren't very Christmasy, but they are pretty cute (or maybe creepy?)

 Then we did our annual make-something-from-scratch baking.

Hannah also treated us to a holiday party in her room.  She set up stations for playing games, writing Christmas cards, and dressing up in Santa hats.

The stuffed animals were also required to dress up.

After all that fun we spent the evening looking at our favorite Christmas light displays.  It was a pretty perfect day before Christmas.