17!

Happy Birthday Owen!!

Intrigue

January means it's time for Intrigue to come to Paige's studio for the weekend! Friday night they have a solo competition and Paige got to perform hers for the first time! She did amazing and of course brought me to tears. This was her first time in the teen category and ended up getting 3rd for teen contemporary and 8th overall for all teen solos!! So exciting! Saturday they have convention classes and then an improv competition. I think it's amazing what these kids can do. You have to be so brave to dance in front of a bunch of people not knowing what music you're going to have to dance to! Sunday is more convention classes and then a performance. Paige had so much fun!

 

New Year's Hike

I can't say the kids are ever super excited about our New Year's Day hike but they are nice enough to indulge me! It's probably especially hard when the weather is as gloomy as it was. We normally try to get to a new spot but with how muddy we knew everything would be we decided to get to some trails that we thought wouldn't be too bad and that we were very familiar with. We ended up encountering a bunch of mud and washed out trails anyway but no one minded! On the way home we got stopped by a group of maybe 20 turkeys!

 

New Year's Eve

We usually have a pretty lowkey New Year's Eve but this year Paige had four friends over and Owen had a couple friends over as well! We ate our Chinese food before everyone came and then had a veggie tray, and ice cream sundaes for everyone to eat. We had pipe cleaners to make festive headbands and had confetti poppers for when the clock hit midnight and the girls all went out with pots and pans to ring in the new year too. 

A small but festive setup-headbands, confetti poppers, crackers

The scene for the countdown

Chinese Food

Eating!

Writing resolutions

Time for video gaming

Paige and friends playing temps

Owen and friends with sundaes

Pat and I 

Almost midnight!

Pat was very cold when he had to go outside

Aftermath

 

Candyland!

Candlyand! Now this is actually a tradition we get to every Christmas break! My mom wasn't working so she got to enjoy the event with us. It was pretty crowded but we walked through the game once, made crafts and then checked out the rest of the nature center. Then we got some food at BJ's and went back to their house for games. We played Pictionary and laughed so hard!