Schmidt Happens: December 2014

Top 10 of 2014

1. At the end of Macy's first day ofKindergarten at Ishikawa Elementary, she was bummed because she wanted to stay at school longer. She is an official dragon.

2. Sydney's preschool class with Ms. Melissa includes her best friends, Gracie and Paige.

3. Kensie has the curliest hair around and receives compliments everywhere we go. We've even been asked if she wears a wig.

4. We've become masters of DIY projects. We trimmed in our windows in the family room and put up crown molding in the entry way. Tiling challenges with the kitchen backsplash Mixed with designing the backyard and spending hours planting and moving gravel.

5. Macy is only half way through the school year but has already become a kindergarden word wizard and has moved on to 1st grade words.

6. Sydney makes an awesome tap dancer. Her impromptu kiss blow at the end of the Christmas recital was precious.

7. Kensie has been crawling for 7 months and walks along everything except by herself.

8. Tim and I took our first trip to the Dominican Republic. Tim spent one of the days taking a formal kite lesson. We spent our day horseback riding on the beach, eating to our heart's content, and exploring the Dominican countryside.

9. TIm took an awesome trip to San Antonio Texas with the Life Smiles Dental Gang for the ADA convention. He had a great time getting to the know the team better and partying it up at Six Flags on Brittany's birthday.

10. Brittany mastered the best Halloween Costume of the year with Sydney and the snail.

New Year's Eve

New Year's finished off our eventful week at Jim and Rosalyn's house. Macy and Syd made it all the way to midnight for fireworks. My favorite photos show Macy's true colors. She's a cute goof celebrating with her noise-maker, and then she is a bit of a scaredy-cat with the fireworks.

Helper Syd

We spent the day cleaning out the garage and trying to get back organized after a busy year. Sydney decided to help pick up the pace while I was cleaning inside and worked on sweeping the garage. I turned around to check on her and found this. Sydney had the leftover camelback in her mouth dragging the back behind her while she swept. She looked at me and said, "What Mom? I thirsty."

Christmas Vacation

Christmas Break

All the cousins were down for the week (All Tim's siblings were down for Christmas). We are a fun, and growing group. We did Christmas dinner at Rosalyn's house and decided that our family has about reached the maximum occupancy limit. We all fit... but just barely.

We ended up hiking the wind caves

Tim played all sorts of football, basketball, volleyball and potato ball?!? with the bros.

We explored a train park in Gilbert

We took family pictures with 34 peeps.

Schmidt Family Pictures

Brittney Gurr, once again, with a successful photo shoot.

Christmas

We've been blessed with another great Christmas. We always joke about how many Christmas presents we have, because it seems like anything we buy after Thanksgiving ends up wrapped and under the tree (anyone else like getting deodorant for Christmas?)

The girls really got into Christmas celebration, including

-Checking where Elfman was hiding each morning

-Syd demanding we go home the "slow way" from Grammy's house to catch better lights

-Begging for double Christmas stories at bed time

-Macy's letter to Santa was terrific

Christmas Dance Recital

Syd has been talking for months about her marshmallow dance for the dance recital that was coming up. She was so excited to wear her candy cane outfit and get to wear makeup. So much that she kept getting into my makeup to practice her lipstick. She still needs some more practice with the lipstick and it usually ends up all over her chin. Sydney has improved a lot in the last six months since her last dance recital and was all smiles during her tap routine.