Instagram January

I’ll begin this month’s stunningly riveting review with a peek at our New Year’s Eve.  We started off the afternoon with a trip to see The Adventures of Tin Tin.  It was excellent!  There was action and adventure, humor, a mystery, and the animation was amazing.  I can’t believe this movie wasn’t nominated for an Animation Oscar.  It’s probably not in theaters anymore, but make sure you see it on DVD.  After that we headed to our favorite Japanese restaurant where the kids drank Shirley Temples this time and we successfully kept our eyebrows from getting singed.

After a visit to my mother-in-law, whose birthday is on New Year’s Eve, we headed home and played The Diary of a Wimpy Kid Cheese Touch Game.  This game is very fun, and the kids love it, but it gets hilariously out of control quickly.  Which I may not have been entirely in the mood for at 10:30 pm.

After the game was mercifully put away, we watched Bedtime Stories (with Adam Sandler) and this guy started fading even faster than me:

Finally the ball dropped, we counted down to the New Year and drank our carbonated grape juice, hit some pots and pans outside (and Dave even set off some leftover fireworks from this summer) and headed to bed.  Jack was so tired.  He cried when I put him to bed, saying he was going to miss this year so much, and that next year couldn’t be as good as this year was.  My sweet baby.

Then the kids went back to school (yay!), however, all three of them have had a turn of a day or two or three home sick this month (in fact, Maddie is home with me now as I write this).  Here’s Ben, not feeling great early in the morning, but smiling because he’s not going to school!

 

We had family photos taken for my in-laws as a Christmas present this year.  Here they are in one, posing with the grandkids:

I celebrated my birthday this month with my favorite dessert:

                 Oh, crème brulee, how I love you.  You helped me turn 33 so much more easily.

Jack and I visited the police station with his Tiger Scouts.  Oh my Lord, 17 first grade boys surrounded by handcuffs, scanners, weapons, and very nice police officers makes for some ultra-bouncy, hard-to-contain seven year olds.  When our police officer/tour guide led the boys out to the garage and even lit up one of those traffic flares for them, joy burst forth in chaos and never-ending movement and chatter. When the police car was opened up, they all fought for seats inside, and each took turns in the driver’s seat.  The photo on the left below is the Scoutmaster, pretending he’s being taken away by the police. The kids loved this!  It was a really fun night!

We enjoyed a night out with friends at a craft brewery nearby which opened up recently.  I’m not a huge fan of beer, but they have one called the Javasomething that I swear tastes like coffee!  It was good!  You can get these little sampler trays (flights) so you can taste all of their brews.  We had a great time, and hope to make ourselves do it again (isn’t it sad when you get to the age [yes---33] where you have to make yourself go out?  Or probably, that’s just me.)

I know I’ve shown you this before, but this just keeps getting weirder.  Every time Maddie holds Herbie the guinea pig…

…he arches his head back and falls into an ultra-relaxed state, and even lets you pat his belly and tickle him under his chin.  This is very unusual for guinea pigs as they are always afraid something is going to swoop down and pick them up and take them away to their nests as appetizers.  They are always alert and ready to run and hide.

But when Maddie holds him he just gets all limp and happy.  We call her the Guinea Pig Whisperer.

Thanks for sticking with me to the end.  You can see it was all worth it, just for the Guinea Pig pictures alone.  Happy January!