New Year's Eve at the Marbles Kid's Museum

On the 31st of December we went to Marbles Children's Museum in downtown Raleigh.  Since we are members we figured we should go because at noon they had a "Marble Drop" for kids to celebrate New Year's!

Before they started they made a big circle and put bubble wrap for the kids to step on once the clock hit noon!

Then as they announced the 10 second count down and lowered the marbles, they sprayed confetti and then  at zero all the kids went crazy and popped all the bubble wrap!

Long after most kids left the area, Avery kept trying to pop the bubble wrap.  Unfortunately she is so tiny that she couldn't pop them when she stepped on them!

 While we were there we had fun playing in the exhibits.  Avery loved learning about first-responders and even played the part herself!

There was a separate side room with an engineering exhibit, Avery had to go see that to make her daddy proud!

She like making big long PVC pipe routes to drop golf balls down.

And she made an arch to walk through, just like the one in St Louis where her daddy grew up.

And After we left the engineering exhibit we went back to the main part of the museum and of course she loved the mega-sized Thomas the Train layout there:

Avery and mommy tried hula-hooping:

And competed in a huge came of Connect Four

We also switched out our old white and gold fan in the living room and replaced it with a more modern look.  Before

After

Hope everyone had a safe and happy new years!

Christmas and Grandma's visit

Grandma Woods came to visit Avery (and us!) for the holidays.  On Christmas Eve we tried to get a head start on all the presents we had to open and figured we should open some that night or else we'd never get through them all the next day!

One of Avery's favorite gifts that night was her stuffed Broccoli guy, who has a face, arms and legs.  She loves to eat broccoli and calls it "boppi", so when Jim saw the toy at Ikea one day he had to get it for her!  She carries it all around, hugs it and loves to put her "boppi" in her chair with her, etc

At first Avery wasn't sure what all the presents were all about, but after the first one or two we opened, she started ripping opening the gifts really fast and then going to get more!

Another one of Avery's favorite gifts from that night was an Elmo book and smart phone that goes along with it!

She also showed her brain power by playing with her counting toy and even trying to slide them across and count one through ten!

Another favorite Ikea gift she liked that night was the vegetable set, she tried to eat the carrots!

The next morning when we woke up, Grandma Woods showed Avery how Santa came, and how he left some cookie crumbs and milk from what we left out for him!



Grandma got a great gift, a silhouette of Avery!

Colleen's cousin Charlene also came over to see Avery open Santa's gifts and to spend the day with us, joining us for breakfast, dinner, etc.

We had so many gifts to open that we first opened Santa's gifts to Avery, then had cinnamon rolls, then opened more gifts to each other, then had omelets, then finally opened the rest of the gifts.  We didnt' seem to finish until about noon!  Kylie was in the holiday mood too, wearing a nice seasonal bandanna 

We also finally got our fireplace going!

This is the first time in 2.5 years of living at our house that we used it.  We finally had a chimney sweep done a few months ago.  Of course, we had to turn the thermostat off overnight to cool the lower level of our house down enough to use it (it was really pleasant this year with most days in December in the 60s and even 70s, and it was probably in the 60s that day, not typical fireplace weather)

Other presents that Avery enjoyed were the wooden train set (Just like her daddy!)

 Her bassinet that she used to put in multiple baby dolls, Elmo, train cars, etc and would say "night night"

She actually had so many gifts she liked that we couldn't show them all here or else it would be too much to go through in one posting.  Thanks to all of our friends and family who gave her gifts, she seemed to enjoy all of them!

That night we all went out to dinner at a Chinese restaurant!  We didn't have time to get to the store before they closed on the 24th, and thought we would do something different this year.  Well, it turns out it was really crowded and everyone else had the same idea!  Apparently Chinese places are the only restaurants open on Christmas day!  Avery got all dressed up though

And when we were getting ready for the photo shoot, she put Boppi in the chair for his holiday photo

Happy New Year's everyone!

Ezra's Birthday Party and Vollmer Farm

Saturday we went to Avery's friend Ezra's first birthday party!

Ezra's mom Jessica is good friends with Colleen.  Jessica did a good job decorating and creating a neat theme for the party.  They used the book "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" by Eric Carle for the theme.

When we arrived Ezra had just woken up from a nap and was a little groggy, but was dressed up very handsomely and looked really cute!

Avery enjoyed looking through Ezra's first-year photo books with Colleen before we ate and opened presents.  She calls Ezra "Rah-Rah" and kept pointing at each picture and saying "Rah-Rah, Rah-Rah, Rah-Rah!"

 After we ate they let the kids open a pinata.  Well, not a real pinata but one where the kids pull the strings to open it up

 And instead of candy they used crackers, goldfish, etc:

Jessica made the whole thing herself, good job!

Ezra liked digging into the cake

And Avery liked digging into her cupcake!

Immediately after the party we drove out to Vollmer Farm for their "Christmas at Vollmer Farm" outing.  We've went to Vollmer Farm in the summer to pick blackberries and blueberries, and in the fall went to their big Halloween/autumn festival.

This was the first year they had this before Christmas.  They had horse-drawn carriage rides

And we rode a train around the farm

Avery loved playing in the corn box

And of course she got to meet Santa!  She was really excited in line, pointing out his hat, boots, etc.  But when it was time to sit on his lap, you can see she really wanted to stay with mommy!

With her Binky in she calmed enough to get a quick photo (with a tear in her eye still!)

We all pretended to be Frosty:

She was all dressed up for the holidays and looked really pretty out on the farm!