Fourteen And In A Routine

If there's anyone who loves a good routine, it's our Lijee. However, we mixed things up the routine on his birthday. First, the big brother came home for the birthday weekend.

This is 14.

Birthday dinner request over the weekend was breakfast for dinner. Zeke and Lijee even helped me make it. Eli worked on a special pancake-wrapped bacon. On the actual birthday, we went to dinner at Railhead.

Present time!

One of his presents was a bag of balloons.

I told him he had to pop all of them by sitting on them to get the gift inside each one. He quickly got a knife after the first one.

My littlest boy marches to the beat of his own drum and he's not going to be swayed by others' opinions. Although he is clearly a teenager through and through, he is still sweet to his momma and I love him so.

[January 21]

Snow Days!

  Two weeks of Christmas break, two days of school, and then two snow days! And the bonus: Zekers was still home from college so he got to enjoy them with us.

Keeping on track with Texas 'snow,' it wasn't really snow. It was too wet to be snow but too flakey to be ice. It was, however, enough to make a sow angel on the trampoline. At least according to Eli.

There was enough snow to make a snowball to toss at your sister.

There was enough snow for Eli to make a tiny little snowman.

Zeke and Daisy thought there was enough to make snow ice cream. I'm not sure how clean that snow was, but they ate it. Eli had been making yellow snow in the yard, so I hope they stayed clear of that!

It gave us time for some family games, including Samurai Swords for the boys. So I'd say those two snow days were a DanFam5 win.

[January 9,10]

12th Annual Hourly Envelopes of Fun

For the 12th year in a row, DanFam5.1 geared up for New Year's Eve with the hourly envelopes of fun starting at 12:00 noon.

12:00 noon 🕛 lunch at Kincaid's

1:00 🕐  balloon float 

 The object of the game was to keep the balloon afloat only by using party horns. Harder than it sounds.

2:00 🕑 obstacle course

The first activity of target shooting with a (very old) vintage BB gun actually took up the whole time, so target shooting was the only action for the obstacle course.

Daisy  hit the bottle!

Zekers poppen a balloon swaying in the breeze.

3:00 🕒 photo scavenger hunt

The one that stumped all of them was dog poo. Tooting my own horn, and Chuey's, that there was no poo to be found in the yard. She only goes potty on walks and doesn't like to get her yard gross.

4:00 🕓 Tik Tok video

We tried to recreate the video where Daisy and I wrapped our legs around the boys and then we all did the Macarena. We could not do it.

5:00 🕔 play Casefile

We got a new game for Christmas and had not played it yet. It's a lot like Clue but more complex.

6:00 🕕 make individual pizzas and 

ice cream snowmen

 creations from top to bottom: Daisy, Trish, Zeke, Eli

7:00 🕖 movie Pictionary with emojis

We wrote down several movies, then pulled them out of a jar. If it was your movie you weren't supposed to guess. They were so hard that everybody was guessing because we didn't realize it was our own movie. I may have been the biggest culprit of this.

8:00 🕗 'telephone' with texts

The idea was to write a really long text, then let someone quickly look at it, then retext and retext, like whispering a message in the telephone game. It didn't work very well.

9:00 🕘  one word compliments

We were supposed to write one word compliments for everyone, then draw them out of a bowl and guess who they were describing. But the kids started saying them immediately and we didn't write them down and it was over in 5 minutes. The up side: at least they had nice things to say about each other.

10:00 🕙 Psych!

We dusted off the game Psych! that we first played on NYE a few years ago. Unlike the first time, we did not incorporate the word 'butt' into every answer.

11:00 🕚 scratch off lottery tickets

Not one winner.

Little dog was ready for bed.

12:00 🕛 midnight toast

Daddy didn't make it to midnight. The rest of us counted down and started the year off 'on the right foot.'

Fireworks were going off all night. We went outside to see them at midnight.

Love my people and our little tradition of hourly envelopes.

Happy 2025!

[December 31, 2024]