Almost the New Year

Jessica works noon to close (around 11:00 pm) today so we decided to start celebrating the New Year last night. She's going to try to get off early if the theater isn't busy, but you never know. Everyone is probably going to want to get off early.

Sunday morning everyone went to church as usual. I'm glad my adult children still go by choice. Tyler goes to a different church than us. It's Southern Baptist like ours, but much smaller which works better for him. There was no evening service at either church, so we played games together. Normally both Adam and Jessica both have to work Sundays after morning service, but Jessica was off  yesterday.

Just Dance Disney has turned out to have been a good choice for these guys. The most used present so far.

We took a break from the games and went out to light sparklers to remind us that Jesus is the light of the world. Thankfully Jesus shines without all the trouble we had getting the sparklers lit.

Aww. Ty's sparkler went out before I got the picture taken. My camera does not like to take  photos in the dark.

Kaleb does not look thrilled. He didn't quite get this game. 

There was a whole lot of cheating going on this game. Some not so sneaky trading of tiles!

Jessica wanted to play Apples to Apples.

The game can get a bit out of control.

Tyler went to the kitchen to get something and lost control. This is not posed.

Today we went to DQ for "Happy Hour" when drinks are half priced. Our first time to do this, but not our last.

Hope you all have a good evening and a happy New Year!

Just Hanging Out

We've just been hanging out a lot this vacation. We don't have anything big planned due to schedules and finances.

Jessica sometimes brings home a huge bag of popcorn left over from the theater. She added marshmallows and karo  syrup to make some ymmy popcorn balls.

Jasmine has been really faithful in her drum practice.

Some of us took Jessica to work today and stayed for  Hotel Transylvania.

Ice cream from Chick Fil A. We had three free coupons.

Ready for the movie.

Just to keep our brains alive, we've had a daily challenge each day of vacation. Here's what we've done:

Addition time test

http://www.mrmyers.org/Math_Mania/ttadd.html

Subtraction time test

http://www.mrmyers.org/Math_Mania/ttsub.html

Multiplication time test

http://www.mrmyers.org/Math_Mania/ttmult.html

Division time test

http://www.mrmyers.org/Math_Mania/ttdiv.html

Presidents—any order

http://www.jetpunk.com/quizzes/name-us-presidents.php

States—any order

http://www.jetpunk.com/quizzes/how-many-states-can-you-name.php

State capitols—easy

http://www.lizardpoint.com/fun/geoquiz/usacapquiz.html

State capitols—type in answers

http://www.sporcle.com/games/g/uscapitals

Find the countries

http://www.kongregate.com/games/crafics/globetrotter-xl?acomplete=globetro

If you try any of these, let me know how you do. And if you have kids, challenge them to try these.

It has been fairly calm this vacation, but we do have one trying very hard to sabotage things, but thankfully no one else had gone along with it or given her attention for it. So basically, she's just ruining it for herself. She knows how to fix it but has a strong will and a need to be in control. There are some areas she can be in charge of, but some that she doesn't get to control. Since she was mad at me yesterday because she had to do her job, she decided to make five big cuts down the back of her nice jacket. She also just stood and refused to do the job. So she missed out on the fun, and still has to do the job.

Beyond that, everyone is getting along well and different groups of siblings are teaming up for games, Wii, playing and working on Jasmine's big history fair project that's due a week after they go back to school. It's really nice to see them pull together. And I'm really glad Jessica knows how to put together a power point presentation!

We haven't watched many movies like we thought we would because the kids have been doing so well playing Just Dance Disney and other games.

Christmas Night

While we were waiting for Jessica to get home, we took a bunch of pictures. I won't post them all or you'll be in photo overload. Everyone changed into clothes they'd gotten Christmas morning.

Brothers

Jessica's home!

Shared gifts from Grandma Sims. We open hers Christmas might so there's always one present left to look forward to. Hers is usually games for all ages.

Had to Facebook of course.

Just Dance Disney. We have some videos I'll try to post.

Here are some very short videos of our time at Genghis Grill too. Here's my food cooking:

Twas the Day After Christmas

...and we just took the tree and decorations down to have more room for Just Dance Disney edition.

On Christmas Eve the kids got their stocking gifts. That was mostly food, with one present--pillow pets for the three littles, a watch for Tyler, athletic shirt for Adam, headphones for Jessica and the new Spiderman movie for Rick. The kids also handed out the gifts they'd  bought. I didn't get pictures of that.

We watched the Nativity kids' movie and Preacher's Wife and had hot butter beer while waiting for Jessica to get off work and home. We like the cold butter beer much better!

This was taken in October when  Jeff was here. I took him to the mall to choose his present then, but I didn't want to leave him out of our Christmas photos now. He is in Afghanistan.

The black shirt in the picture is the only kind they are allowed to wear with their soccer uniform--which is shorts and a short sleeved shirt. Even north Florida gets cold at night, and his games are at night.

Jessica helped me put out gifts. She had to get the ones I stored so high I couldn't reach them.

One tired elf!

We open all the presents from one person, and then take a picture of us with them to e-mail the person. (They sent money for me to buy gifts so they don't always know what they've bought us!) These are all from my brother Ken. The twins got things for camp next summer--PJs, sleeping bags. The girls got black jackets and a shirt, Ty got a game that he actually went and got himself on Black Friday but he thought was going to be his main gift from me. Rick got a movie, Adam got Aeropostal clothes. I got a waterproof watch.

These are clothes I bought everyone.

These are gifts from my sister known as Aunt Lou to the kids. She sent me a panini grill through Amazon and Notre Dame sleep pants for Rick. Jasmine got the brave movie and DS game, the twins got swimsuits, water shoes, beach towels, Jessica got a shirt and jacket, Adam got khaki shorts and an Aeropostal shirt.

These are the main gifts from us--boots and dive watch for Jessica, barking dog and light up shoes for Kayla, Spiderman three in one vehicle and Iron Man shoes for Kaleb, Kindle (new less expensive kind) for Jasmine and the watch she's wearing, Adidas shoes and blanket for Adam, drill and tool case for Rick, blanket and Hoover Assault Helicopter for Tyler and Rick got me two suitcases.


We went to Genghis Grill with money from Rick's parents and my mom sent money for a shared gift so we bought some games that I'll show you in the next post. I took so many pictures I'm not going to put them all in the same post.

Below are pictures of everyone with their stuff and some random ones of us, and the kids in some of their new outfits.

Jessica doesn't fit on my lap as well as Jasmine does!

Lunch on Christmas for us is make it yourself individual pizzas. We made them in twos.

Jessica had to work at the theater. I kicked Rick, Tyler and Adam out to watch Taken 2 during the afternoon.

More pictures to come in the next post. Hope you all had a nice Christmas.

Happy Boxing Day to my British followers.