Post Christmas Fun

We finished up 2015 with a fun Christmas gathering with Daniel's extended family.  It's always lots of fun, loud, filled with many people and lots of laughing.  We had a great time at Grandma Stella's.

33 Staley family members pictured, only missing 1

all of the "great-grands" - the oldest is embarrassed by all of the people behind the camera acting like fools to get their kids to look at the camera and smile

boy cousins playing life-size jenga

there isn't any recovering from that

nope.

Then our Christmas gift finally arrived and was installed - new, soft, and luxurious carpet for the family room!  We wanted the girls to crawl around on something soft, and also got something super stain-resistant, because we are smart enough to get brand new carpet with babies! ;)

Ella likes to drink her bottles LIKE A BOSS.  One handed.  She wins the gold star for most bad-ass bottle drinker, and for doing it without help (which we just LOVE!)

oh looky there - Sydney has bad eczema on her face.  In the same spot as her momma.  Except we have a sneaky suspicion it's not cold weather. 

A few weeks later we discovered peas.  PEAS!?  Yep, peas.  And after consulting Dr. Google, it also includes beans, green beans, legumes, lentils, and nuts.  Anything grown in a pod.  Great - just great... Sydney, can you just give us a break and consume food like a normal baby??

I found cute stuffed elephants with HUGE ears for Christmas for E&S.  It tickles me that Ella loves hers (she is Ella the Elephant after all :).  I caught her sleeping ON TOP OF one of the ears.  My heart melted. 

Then the girls had fun on one of the stools that Grandma Georgia gave them for Christmas.

Ella spent the majority of the time laughing at Sydney

and then Ella found something more interesting than an expensive stool: her diaper

bahahah... this is Sydney's true form.  Crazy.

We spent New Year's Eve visiting our new friend Emmett!

And had a quick NYE photo-op before going out to eat as a family of four (and using our cool new travel seats).

oh hey girl!  you can definitely tell that Ella is taller than Syd

we had such a fun NYE dinner all together!  We quickly got some pizza, fed the girls bread (95% of it fell on the floor), but we accomplished it :)

After dinner, we headed to the Malady's to -supposedly- ring in 2016 with games, food, and booze... and sleeping babies.  Everything was going great - all 4 babies played on the floor together for a while, then we changed into PJs and put the girls into pack and plays upstairs.  Well, around 10:15ish, Sydney decided she didn't want to be asleep in a strange place any longer.  We tried to rock her and get her back down, but she wasn't having it.  So we packed up our things and headed back home, still in the year 2015.  We made it home just in time to snuggle our girls and watch the ball drop - all 4 of us together. 

Even though it wasn't how we planned it, it was just perfect.

--end 2015--

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