New Years' Celebration

On Christmas, Kira Bowen, my cousin David's wife, sent me a text inviting us to go up to their house for New Years Eve. We didn't have any plans, of course, so we decided to go up. Daniel worked a partial day on Wednesday, the 31st. They let everyone go home early from work, because it was a holiday, so Daniel got home, we gathered everything together and put the babies in the car and left. It took us about 3 hours to get there since we had to stop once to change and feed Camille. It was a pretty pleasant trip up there. Daniel and I started listening to a book, "Unbroken", Camille slept most of the time, and Brooke snacked on chips and crackers and read from her princess book.

We got there about 6pm. Brooke hadn't taken a nap, so we had dinner with them and tried to get Brooke off to bed quickly. Once Brooke was in bed, and Camille was still sleeping in her car seat, we played some games with the little Bowen kids. Kira pulled together some funny "Minute to Win It" games: 1) put an Oreo on your forehead and move it down your face, into your mouth and eat it without using your hands in less than a minute; 2) put some oranges in the feet of some stockings, put the stocking waste band around your head, and without using your hands or moving very far from your central location, knock over a circle of water bottles in less than a minute. It was good fun, and so funny to watch those kids do it. I was dying!

We played some other games, then watched a countdown video with the kids before they went to bed (it was 9pm). Once the kids were in bed, we grownups played another games, called "Wits and Wagers", which was really fun. It asked a trivia question which we had to write down our guess for the correct answer, we would bet on each others answers, and then find out the real one. We really enjoyed it. Then we talked and snacked until midnight, yelled "Happy New Year!", and promptly went to bed. I was exhausted. I was pretty much ready for bed when the kids went to bed. :)

It was a bit rough, all 4 of us sleeping in the same room. Brooke woke up when we went in to bed and was a bit restless and fussy for a while. She started crying at one point and woke up Camille. I put Brooke back down and told her to go back to sleep, and then started walking Camille around to put her back to sleep. A little later, Brooke woke up, stood up in her crib, and started fussing again. I told her to lay down and go to sleep. Then about an hour later, Camille woke up to eat. I didn't get much sleep that night.

Camille woke up around 7am to feed again, and not much later, Brooke woke up to play with the kids, and Camille and I went back to sleep for another 3 hours. It was glorious!

We lazed through the whole day yesterday, me mostly taking care of the baby and talking to the kids. Brooke and Daniel played games and colored with the kids. It was a nice day. Brooke, of course, didn't sleep, again. I think she was too worked up and excited to be with so many cool people.

We had dinner, and then we put Brooke to bed. She woke up several times and cried for a while. Daniel usually went in to her, to comfort her and put her back to bed. Once, while we were all playing Skip-Bo, Daniel brought her out to be with us for a little while before putting her back; and even then, she started crying again after a little while. Silly girl.

We stayed up talking and playing games with David and Kira after all the kids went to bed. I really love to be around them. Kira and I are very similar in many ways. And she is the mother I aspire to be someday, so I was just drinking it all in! Her house, the way she treats her kids, the activities that they are all into, everything. It was just refreshing to be in such a loving and peaceful atmosphere. That's not to say it wasn't crazy with all those kids, because it was. But everyone was obviously well taken care of, and you could see they all loved each other and loved to be with each other. I would love to live close to them!

Anyway, we left this morning, after Camille and I finally woke up and fed. The drive back was uneventful. We listened to that book some more and stopped once to get gas and feed Camille. Brooke was clearly so tired towards the end of the drive. We gave her her pacifiers, but she was still a bit grumpy and fussy. She's fortunately taking a nap. Hopefully we can get her well-rested again in the next couple of days.