Ending 2013 Glover Style

Between Christmas and New Years, we still had everyone around.  Family time is fun (it's a good thing we both come from awesome families so I can think that).

One of the kids favorite activities was walking down the road to the see the lions (a house that has 2 lion statues in the driveway).  Grandma and Grandpa have collected enough 'vehicles' that they all have something to ride.  Kherington did really well with the bike.

Grandma took us all to the Children's Museum one morning.  There were lots of different activities for the kids, pizza making, banking, trains, obstacle courses, water table, doctor and dentist chairs.  One of the favorite pieces though was a huge doll that you could pull the intestines and organs out of.  It was so big both Kevin and I were able to fit inside of it!  Another fun moment was the picture wall where you stick your head in and take a picture.  Kherington didn't quite get it.  She wanted to peek over the wall.

Ryan's dad worked some connections he has and got some tickets to the North Carolina vs. UNLV basketball game up in Raleigh.  The boys and grandma and grandpa all went up (minus Cory who ended up working...sad for him).  I love that they do this stuff together and hope they do more in the future...last time they went to a different game and came home with NO pictures.  They did better this time around.

While they were gone Tiffany and I had a 'normal' day as mom's.  The kids helped them self to snacks and even lined their chairs up to eat.  After Cory got off work, we all went over to the park to play and feed the ducks.  I love watching Kevin throw bread (then eat the piece in his other hand).

One of the best stories of the vacation came from lighting a fire log to make s'mores.  The log was cut down the middle and had a wick running down the middle.  We lite it, but it was burning (or not) really really slow so we were trying to figure out how to speed up the process.  Well, grandpa went and got his gas canister.  Can you guess where this is going?  He started pouring the gas on the log and it worked so he went for it again, but got a little too close.  the flames were coming up the gas stream so he threw the canister out into the grass.  The grass caught on fire.  I'm trying to help keep the kiddos back and Jason ran for the hose only to find the water needed to be turned on and then there was a big kink in it so it took some time to get the water flowing.  In the meantime, grandpa decides to stomp the fire out.  Well, when you stomp on fire in a puddle of gas, you catch on fire and the fire gets bigger.  Not a good idea.  In the end the fire got put out, grandma was inside and missed out on the whole thing, and the kids asked right away to do it again.  It was pretty amusing to us...not sure how grandma would have felt.  The best part was that right when grandma walked out the door, Kherington totally tattled on grandpa.  It took her a split second to sell her grandpa out...haha!

While we were outside having all the fun, Tiffany arranged a beautiful platter of ingredients for s'mores. 

After S'mores, grandma and grandpa broke out the new years celebration supplies...dress-up, pop-its, and of course pan lids.  The kids ended up celebrating the new year Belgium time...not really planned but a cool coincidence.

So after dessert and celebrating the party moved inside for dinner.  The kids were a tad bit impatient and started dipping graham crackers into chick-fil-a's sauce containers...disgusting.  Chick-fil-a chicken nuggets, cheeseball, jalapeno poppers, fruit platter complete with fruit dip, veggies & hummus, buffalo chicken dip, meatballs, sausages, brie with chili pepper jelly....delicious...we ate some awesome food as we welcomed in the new year.  After putting the kids to bed, we followed up that good food with some great games including pit and peanuts (I'd heard so much about peanuts, but this was my first time actually playing).  Tiffany struggle and finally stopped taking out loans from the beans bank.  In the end I believe it was Adam who ended up dominating.

Before I close out 2013, here's a couple more pictures from the end of the year

We love being with family. It really doesn't get much better than that. I am very thankful for the love of both my family and Ryan's family and look forward to making many more memories with them all.