A funeral, more Christmas celebrations and New Year's Eve

We spent some time in the St. Louis area for my aunt's visitation and funeral.  It was a sad reason to be together, but it was still nice to spend a little time with family. It was also nice to hear more about my aunt Lorri.  We didn't know much about her professional life or her relationship with those in her community, but we heard lots of stories about how well respected she was as an attorney and friend and member of her community.  It was nice to hear that she had impacted so many lives, even in her short time with us.

It was a little stressful taking four small children (our two girls and my niece and nephew) to the funeral and visitation, but the kids did pretty good.  I think we managed to make it through both without being a huge distraction for anyone else who was in attendance.  If anything, I think the kids helped interrupt the sadness and gave people a reason to smile through their tears.

Again, a funeral is not something that you want to have to get dressed up for, but my girls were looking very adorable in their funeral attire.  It's not really an occasion for taking pictures, but I took a few with my phone, though they aren't great quality.

After the funeral, we headed to my mom's house in Iowa to celebrate Christmas with them.  Nana and Papa had fun presents for the kids, but like typical kids, I think they had more fun with the wrapping paper!

For New Year's Eve, we created a little party geared towards the kids.   We had glow sticks and a dance party.

We decorated and ate cupcakes.

At 8:00, we showed last year's ball drop on you tube.  It's possible that we led the kids to believe that it was already midnight...it's going to be annoying when they start to tell time!  After they watched the ball drop, we gave them noisemakers to make lots of loud noise.

Then we had a toast with sparkling cider.  Which none of the kids liked.  At all.

Then we sent the kids to bed.  I wish I could say that the adults stayed up partying the rest of the night, but we were pretty lazy and tired.  We ended up watching the ball drop in New York at 11:00 and quickly went to bed.

We had our final Christmas celebration on New Year's Day with my dad's side of the family (minus my dad and stepmom who were already back in Florida).  We ate lunch and opened presents at my Aunt Nancy's house, then went to visit my Grammy Lois in the nursing home.

Aunt Nancy made the kids matching snowman shirts.  Very cute!!!