Just put it away...

Brooke wanted to have a friend over and her mom asked Brooke to ride her bike and meet her halfway.  No problem.  It's a family rule that you cannot ride your bike without a helmet.  Problem.  Brooke had left her helmet out of the shelter and it was soaking wet.  Her (mean-old) mom wouldn't let her ride the half mile without it...  So Brooke manufactured her own solution to the soaking wet pads that were leaking water all down her face and back.  Thus the Washcloth Helmet was born.  And she actually wore it that way...  All around the neighborhood...  Awesome.

It's a mustache morning...

It was mustache day at the littles school today...  And we love the Seahawks.  So in keeping with Blue Friday, went Seahawks themed...  

Oops...

Found a few more pictures I want in the 2013 blog book, so bear with me.  It's the danger of having 2 cameras...  You get surprise downloads sometimes....

Tree farm where we get our tree

 Man, that's a LOT of kids...

 New Year's Eve air hockey tournament.  So fun!  The kids had a great time trying to beat the parents.

 And all the adults got beaten but one....  Sydney (she's 10) beat Tom for 2nd place.  She came all the way back through the losers bracket.  It was pretty sweet. 

 And our annual New Year's Eve father/children graham cracker building contest.  We won for the second year in a row...  This is Tom and the girl's version of the Eiffel Tower...

 And we made confetti poppers to pull at midnight.  They were awesome.  You ever want a spectacular mess, make your own confetti and let 12 kids blow it up all over your living room.  (I was glad this portion of the party had moved to the Walther's house.  I'll make confetti to mess up her house anytime!)

 Happy New Year!  

Brian did tell the kids he'd pay them each $10 if they could pick up every piece of confetti by hand...  They littles actually thought it was possible.  We let them pick up for about half an hour before we made them stop.  I think they would have kept going until morning if we'd let them...

Etc...

Man.  When did I become a bad blogger?  In order to (finally) finish off last year, here a post only my mother will love... A picture montage of the last of 2013.  Now I can print my book!

Brooke, Adrienne and Sydney in a food coma at Old Country Buffet for her birthday party.  They ate for hours...

 Then hit DSW shoes and tried on all the sweet heels and boots.  This is one of my better mom moments.  The girls had so much fun.  We stayed for an hour and a half and it was so fun.  They are a great mix of young-enough-not-be-too-self-conscious-but-old-enough-to-be-totally-interesting-and-fun.

 As if she weren't tall enough without 6 inch heels on...

 A little afternoon snuggle time.

 Alix and Ethan "cleaning" her room.  He's the cutest distraction around!

 Brooke's turn to put the star on the tree

 We love getting a real tree and having the whole house smell Christmasy

 Christmas morning.  My favorite moment of the day...

 Ethan didn't really know what was going on...

 But he got decorated anyway...

 We all got Nerf guns and had some epic battles during the Holiday.  It was the highlight of Christmas.

 Ethan tried all kinds of new things...

 We cut this beauty out of our neighbor's yard one night.  Seriously.  The girls snuck over with the saw...  It's a weed that they've let grow along the side of their house for 7 years (we know, we counted the rings...).  So we helped them out with some weeding and got ourselves a sweet kids tree!

 After Christmas, we burned our trees.  I was shocked at how little time it took.  Less than 30 minutes from big ol' tree to nothing.  The girls LOVED it.  

 Ethan eats food now.  He's even pretty good at it!

 The men of the house taking a quick man nap...

Cleopatra

Or Brooke.  Whatever...  She did an Egyptian unit at school and all the kids had to make an "artifact" to display at their "museum".  This is Brooke in her Egypt garb (they had to wear it in class when they were doing anything in the Egypt unit) with her Ankh.  

(Almost) a snow day...

I remember visiting the Pelton's as a kid and having it snow while we were there.  It was like, an inch of "accumulation".  And the Pelton kids were SO excited.  I didn't get it.  What's the big deal about an inch of snow?  

Well. Now that I live in WA and am raising children that only see snow in their yard once a year, I totally get it.  

The last day of school, before Christmas break, we got a couple of inches of snow.  My girls were out in it by 7:30.  School wasn't cancelled, but was 2 hours late, so we had some good time to play.  And being the cool mom that I am, I said they didn't have to go to school at all that day if they didn't want to... So for everyone, but Brooke (she had a party planned at school she didn't want to miss) Christmas started a day early...

Sam trying out the flavor of this particular snow fall

 We brought Ethan out so Tom and I could both play with the girls

 Erin didn't win the snowball fight I started with the neighbors...

 We did get everyone together to make a pretty sweet snowman though.  Our house is pretty much the gathering area for the street's kids...

 My girls and their man... 

Maybe next time we'll have enough for sledding... :)

Tubing

And I don't mean sledding.  We had a bunch of wrapping paper rolls left over from decorating the ward Christmas party and the twins turned them in a marble course.  It took several tries, but they figured it out in the end.  You could move one piece and they had three different routes the ball would take.  And when they lost the bouncy ball they'd started with, they learned that marshmallows would also go down the course...