the last week of the year

confession: dave just now took our REAL tree out of our house.  january 12th, people.  

it's taking us a bit to find our groove here in 2014.  

ian's snoozing, ash and aves are listening to adventures in odyssey and disasterfying their room, i'm sure, but for now, all is quiet, coffee is hot and we get to take some of our closest friends on a date tonight.  

i will continue in my quest to sufficiently document the merriment of christmas 2013. 

 i chose the word merriment there for my father.  that's such a jon elsberry word. ;)

the day after christmas was the elsberry christmas eve.  the kids and i went over to mom and dad's in the late afternoon and waited to head to the airport together to gather matt and rocio.  look at that gg, she's on the floor playing cars with ian.  amazing.  

they're here!  in this pic, matt is telling quite the tale of the loch ness monster, in his scottish accent of course.  the kids were totally enthralled. 

look at my mom's cute snow man cheese ball.

ashton go to open some "button dolls" on "christmas eve"

avery opened some barbie legos. 

this is the next morning, mom did stockings for all of us. 

 matt and rocio got ian a buzz light year gun.

we got matt some old childhood games.  can you believe we never even played this?!? we watched too much downton abby.....you guys have to come back....

the girls got elsa and anna costumes from matt and rocio.

a rainbow loom from gg velma and a magnet lab from gg elaine.  such cool presents. 

opeing their dolls!

 these ladies skip bo their way through life!  what treasures they all three are!

battle ship. 

all of the ladies went to montagues one afternoon for tea. 

ben's girlfriend, sarah, is a crowd favorite. ;)

 new years eve at kayla and luis' new house.  luis kept these guys in line during dinner. 

we love you ben!

emi opening her wooden activity cube from us!  

avery made a scarf for all of the girls.  she made 11 total! it was a lot of work, but it was so fun watching her give these gifts out!  emi has hers on in this pic! 

 sarah's about to open her scarf!

 aunt sharon loves her scarf!

 ian's giving aunt fay a hug, she gave the kids some crisp dollar bills for the dollar store!  

we opened presents, played a super fun game and then left kayla's house around 10 and all of us were in bed before 11.  we were so old and lame this year.  there was no toasting or kissing to ring in the new year.