New Year's Eve

I started the last day of the year with a hot cup of coffee and quiet reading. Later in the morning, we shared a huge breakfast of bacon, eggs, hashbrowns, bread of choice: toast/ bagels/ English muffins/ crumpets, and a pot of strong hot Earl Grey tea. While we ate, we started an even bigger game of Catan. It took 2+ hours for someone of us (Avril) to finally win! We were all so tired of playing, we were glad someone finally won. We're all quite good at Catan at this point, so it's really competitive and fun. 

We talked to my mom on the phone, and we sang her Happy Birthday. I'm going to see her in a few days for a few days before the next semester of grad school, homeschool, and co-op begin again. We also talked to Dwayne's sister today, and we are beginning to make various travel plans to see his family at different times this year. So now, we are starting to look forward to those trips and visits. 

It's a holiday break, so the girls enjoy much more screen time than they usually ever get. 

We had a nice visit with our neighbors today, too, and we exchanged gifts. They are always so generous to the girls. They gave the girls generous gift cards to Home Goods that the girls will be able to use more than once. The girls also had gift cards to Starbucks in their stockings from us and were given gift cards from church leaders for their volunteer work, so we took a brief trip to Starbucks first, then carried our delicious drinks into Home Goods to see what treasures we could find.  

For our holiday dinner, we had ribeye steaks, garlic creamed spinach, and corn on the cob. Then I did more cleaning and organizing and purging and donating, while Dwayne paid bills. Finally, we reviewed our finances for this last year and made some financial plans for next year. In all, it was an outstanding way/ day to end this year!