christmas, new years, catching up

Whew--I've been really terrible at blogging of late but to catch up as we've been having a LOT of fun! Kelly and Bryan brought Adam over the weekend before Christmas for a few projects and to hang out for a day. The kids of course love their baby cousin and we had fun handprinting sweatshirts for Grandma and Grandpa Mick despite Adam trying to eat some of the paint (it was only a touch to the mouth but it was so fast it surprised us all!). He seems fine and is not turning blue at this point. Some friends from SC came to visit for a couple days which was a nice distraction for the kids from the holiday excitement. It was great to visit with them and reminded us how much we miss our longtime friends but how quickly things kind of fall back into place. Jeff's mom came down two days before Christmas and then the elf himself managed to find our house. Heather wrote a sweet note, Charlie managed a thank you for the gifts comment along with his wish list, and Cameron just kept saying that santa was coming to his house. Of course Christmas morning was great and we actually had no storming out of the room this year-probably b/c the kids got WAAAAY too much stuff which they loved! Christmas night it was off to have dinner with Kip, his fiancee, and his parents which was a nice way to spend some of the evening.

Battling the snow we headed to Athens for a Mickelson Christmas. The kids again enjoyed opening presents and visiting with baby Adam, Kelly, Bryan and tackling Christopher while getting spoiled by Grandma and giving Grandpa lots of hugs. The kids always love being around family for any occasion and it's especially nice when everyone can be together for holidays or other occasions. Despite having only a bit of snow the kids had a good time sledding down the hill that my siblings and I sled down as kids. We headed on to Cincy for new years with some MS friends at CoCo Keys "resort". The waterpark was a great size for the kids and safe enough that the kids could kind of roam a bit on their own. The kids loved seeing their friends and were best of buddies almost all the time we were together. New Year's Eve the kids played at the waterpark and stayed up until 11:45 (cameron) and post midnight for the other two. We traded kids so they could have "sleepovers" in the hotel room and they even slept in a bit in the morning!!