new year's eve and beyond

Whew.... we made it! I think now we can coast for a bit. We're done with the holidays and Jeff's brother and his family left this morning. It was fun.... but totally and completely exhausting. :-)

Here's a recap of the past couple of days...

New Year's Eve, Jennifer and I took the girls to the American Girl Store for shopping and lunch.

Here's Clara helping Ruthie with her "hot cider"....
The cousins...On our way home from the AG store we stopped at the nature museum for a bit...
After we got home, we started getting our party food ready for our little family New Year's Eve Party.

Later in the evening Jeff mixed up Shirley Temples for the kids...
Then it was time for some wii fun. Here Jeff and his brother are duking it out with the boxing game...
(Alex is boxing along and Clara is trying to control Jeff's "boxing bum" shake - I shot some video to prove to Jeff what he does when he boxes... not sure he'll let me post it though :-)

We did the countdown at 11:00 when the ball dropped in NYC.

Here's our party girl...
and Alex...
We tried to make it to actual midnight here in Chicago but we finally gave up at 11:50.

The next day, the boys had these...
(Jeff took the point and shoot camera and took a bunch of pics which I will post later)

Us girls stayed home and relaxed a bit. Clara and her cousin watched a movie, had some lunch, took a girly girl bath (with a Lush Think Pink bath bomb) and decorated and baked some slice and bake cookies...
Today we went out for a bit of shopping and then came home to hang out and clean up (so much laundry to do!!!).

Hopefully things are basically back to normal!

Anyway... I should probably go and help Jeff with packing up the Christmas stuff!