2018!

New Years Eve falling on a Sunday is not my favorite. Easter, Christmas or Christmas Eve on a Sunday, great but New Years?  Regardless we had a fun time ringing in the New Year.  We are all getting over colds so we did not meet up with any friends which was a bummer, but we enjoyed celebrating with each other. We had to split up our festivities this year because of Mark's Sunday schedule and Monday work schedule.  He was at church yesterday from 11:45 - 6:30.  It was longer than usual Sunday.  Normally he is home by 5:30 but not yesterday. Once he got home and we ate dinner we went downstairs for our Glow party.  I think Jared and I enjoyed it the most this year.  As I was talking with Lydia before bed she told me that she had a hard time with the glow party "because she forgot her dance moves from last year."??  She cracks me up but it was a very sad moment for her so I did my best to empathize. I'm really not sure what dance moves she is referring to but hopefully she finds them before next year.

Sunday night I got our envelopes and crowns out and made sure all was in place for our Monday celebrations.  This year we played: 

9:00 Marshmallow toss

9:30 Categories

10:00 M&M transfer

10:30 Post It Race

11:00 Cottonball transfer

11:30 Sparkling Cider, International firework displays, New Years Mad Libs

12:00 Silly String Fight and chocolate fondue for lunch (can you tell eating healthier did not make the list of family goals for 2018...)

I was tossing to Lydia and Mark to Jared we both managed to get some marshmallows in their mouths.

It was so cold outside, like barely 15 degrees.  Lydia stayed inside and watched the Silly string fight. She is not really a fan of silly string to begin with and 15 degrees was not inviting at all. It was quick and fun and cold. 

We read over the goals Jared and Lydia made for last year and were happy to see that they reached all their goals.  We had completely forgotten about one of Jared's goals he had set.  He wanted to be able to identify all 50 states on a map so we printed one out and he sat right down and did it. He only struggled with Kansas.  I was impressed.  When he was little we played with a magnetic state set a lot but we really didn't talk about them or make an effort to learn them this year so it was extra awesome that he knew them all.  Must be that carpet in his room... We also noted that he started with the East Coast not West Coast.  Mark has observed that his students in Colorado would always start with the West Coast and here they always start with the East Coast when labeling a map.  Jared was born in CO and lived there till he was 4 and learned a lot of the states before we moved so I was curious to see which way he would go. I fully expect Lydia to start on the East Coast since she was just 2.5 when we left Colorado. End side note. 

Lydia's goals were too:

Be reverent at church especially Primary

Get ready for Kidnergarten

Improve her coloring and writing no scribbling

Ride her new scooter

Jared's were too:

Run a 5K

Prepare for his baptism

Look people in the eye when talking (he made good progress here)

Identify the 50 states on a map

Their goals for 2018 are:

Lydia:

Take a dance class
Not be afraid to play in the basement alone
Write upper and lower case letters in the right spots
Paint pictures

Jared: 

Travel lots of places
Follow my morning routine: make bed, get dressed, read scriptures and practice piano

Improve my handwriting
Play songs on the piano

One of my big goals is to go through our thousands of pictures and delete extras.  So often I take three pictures of an outing or Jared or Lydia. I would like to go through them and quickly pick the best one.  We will see.  Mark looked at me like I was crazy but I think I can do it!  Heres to a great year ahead!