Just Soap'n You Have a Happy New Year!

Our friends, the Furness Family, came back to MI for New Years.  While they were in town we had them over as much as we could!  

Scarlett was so excited to show her friend Lyla her new puppy socks:

For New Year's Eve we had the sister missionaries over for dinner.  There were so many girls in our house!

After we took the sisters home the adults played several competitive rounds of Spot It, hipster version (thanks Snort!)  It was so fun!  We couldn't stop laughing.  It was fun to see the competitive side of everyone come out.

We let the girls stay up for the holiday.  When we were ready to put them to bed we showed them the Carebears New Year Countdown on Netflix (I love whoever thought of that idea!)  Then the adults kept on chatting, and chatting, and chatting....

Finally we decided it might be time to put them to bed... passed out girls were everywhere!

The next day the girls wanted to play their Frozen version of Spot It - and I was impressed at how quickly they caught on!

The late night also brought on MANY tantrums.

So we put everyone down for a nap - even Scarlett (which is rare) and Aunt Jami (which isn't rare, haha!, to be fair we take turns napping during the week, she does a great job of taking care of me and the girls!)

The next night we had the Furnesses over again with the Sawaya family - more girls!!!!!!!!  I didn't get a pic of James - the little man handled all that estrogen with grace!

So my neighborhood is not that friendly.  Such a contrast from the neighborhoods we grew up in.  But we're trying to change that.  We wave to every car that passes by.  We try to chat with neighbors when we are out on walks.  And every year I take a little gift to them during the holidays.  This has been the most fruitful in forging new friendships.  It gives us a chance to chat with them for a few min, but during the year we've noticed that they are more welcoming and friendly to us.  So even though it's a pain to do one more thing during December, we will continue this tradition.  Last year my mom gave me the genius idea to take around New Year's gifts instead of Christmas gifts.  Several of my neighbors are different religions and frankly the week after Christmas is much more relaxing than the week before.  This year I found these fun hand soaps and made a little tag to go with them.  I don't like taking baked goods (food allergies, plus so much work!) and I like taking something that I can leave on their porch without worrying that it will freeze overnight.  Last year it was popcorn, this year soap!

I've decided that my goal this year is just to relax and stay calm.  Haha!  Hey, it's called a goal cause it's something that I'm working toward, ok?  ;-)