We had friends over to ring in the New Year and celebrate Año Nuevo. We all had a fantastic time together! We decided to take a progressive group photo beginning with New York NYE and ending with West Coast.

Phoebe was in full-on party mode with a house full of people!

A few early pics

We broke out the lighted fountain Amazon accidentally sent us and let us keep.

With the Miles, Andersens, Hoitings & Murphys

It’s all fun and games until a drone flies into someone’s hair! It got super stuck very fast! The guys were ready to grab scissors, but fortunately, the wives were able to untangle it with a little persistence and in the end it was like it never happened. We decided to use the tripod for pics after that!

With Becky and her new tattoo  

Lily, Coco & Layla

Playing Empire

Avery and Elissa stopped by

Another hour passed…

Being silly

Checked on Kieron. He just wanted to go to bed!

Seattle NYE! 

Declan, Gabe, Lawson & Silas

After midnight we all headed to the backyard for Año Nuevo. We burned effigies and wrote down things we all wanted to get rid of in the New Year, like unemployment, an icky political climate and 6-7. It was a really fun tradition we hope to continue in the years ahead.



 

The kids had a sleepover – here they are enjoying pancakes the next morning

A few pics Grammy shared from their New Year’s Eve

We had a great Christmas together!
  



   

We had a Merry Christmas Eve! It was fun celebrating without the house under construction this year, although Nana was down with the flu and couldn’t come. We did all our regular traditions, played lots of games and enjoyed being together.

Galatea on Christmas Eve

This year a few friends and I celebrated Mother’s Day with a girls trip to Scottsdale. We spent two nights in a beautiful, roomy suite and came back late Saturday night to spend Sunday with our families. We had an amazing time relaxing during the day and whooping it up at night!

The first night we met up with a college friend of Becky and her husband’s and he showed us the good spots to go downtown.

We went to a really cool espresso martini bar

Then we headed to Old Scottsdale for some dancing

We had a laugh the next morning about misbuttoned pajamas

The second day we got some spa treatments and spent the afternoon at the rooftop spa pool

Before heading out for night two.

Yajaira met up with her cousins for dinner while the rest of us met up with Niki, who moved to Arizona last year.

After dinner it was the four us again until I came down with food poisoning shortly after arriving at the first bar we went to. I Ubered back to the hotel and went to bed while these three lived it up. Fortunately, I woke up feeling well again.

Poolside, on our last day

Homeward bound