Back from a break (from blogging)

We are back in the swing of things around here. We had a round of fevers (thankfully avoiding the baby), Lauri's eye surgery, out of town visitors, and two weekends with snow/ice. I'm ready for a little peace.

Of course, Brett takes his first business trip tomorrow, leaving me alone for 3 days 2 nights with five kids, we have Eli's birthday this week, Alyssa's next, and Brett's having surgery.

That's life, right?

Here are some pictures from the snow this past weekend. We had a perfect hill to go flying down. The kids had a blast sledding with Grammy and their Florida-born aunts.

From SNOW

From SNOW

From SNOW

From SNOW

From SNOW

We also had our fair share of wipe-outs. Papa was supposed to be catching the sledders from the utter doom of the creek behind him, but sometimes they were going a little too fast.

From SNOW

We had a full schedule day, but we still managed to have time for snowball fights and snowmen.

From SNOW

From SNOW

From SNOW

Poor Elizabeth didn't get a turn this year.

From SNOW

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!!!

We celebrated this year by hanging out at our house, just the seven of us. Lauri made us all party hats for our party. We feasted on pigs-in-a-blanket, mozzarella sticks (deep fried in daddy's new fryer) and chili dip.

The majority of the night was spent with our newest toy- a Wii. I was really surprised at how family-friendly it is. As you can see, Gavin and even Eli were able to play games. We just had to tell Eli to do his "Power Ranger moves" for the boxing game.

Here's Gavin testing out his golf swing. He's not quite the next Tiger Woods.

Lauri played us some songs on her new guitar.

And, ever the party-animal, Alyssa spent her time between Wii turns re-reading Peter and the Starcatchers.

The kids stayed up to watch the ball drop over NYC. We celebrated with a grape juice toast. After that it was off to bed, but not without incident. Lauri was carrying Brett's half-empty (or I guess, half-full) beer upstairs for him, when she tripped, hit the beer on the stairs, and splashed beer all over herself. Like I told Brett, I guess it's not a New Year's party without someone smelling like beer. I just didn't think it would be my 6 year old.

So, here's a final toast to a great 2006 and an even better 2007! Cheers!!!