Happy New Year's Eve Somewhere!

Due to Hazel, Rachel, and Mike having a cold; and Allie a low grade fever, we celebrated New Year's Eve a bit early (like 6:00 pm).  Perfect for our group that needed to get to bed on time!  

In the morning we let everyone select one thing that would be necessary to have an epic New Years Eve party. So we got streamers, poppers, New Years Drink, treats, and sparklers.

The girls were excited to have a party.

We got the party set up during nap time int he afternoon (Hooray for streamers).

We started it off with a bang - Fireworks!  They were small compared to ones later in the night, but perfect for us!  

Sparklers made for some excitement as we all tried to keep Miles from burning anyone.

Each showed off her extra awesome sparkler skills by making letters and shapes. 

Miles loved it.

The sparklers quickly ran their course. 

We lit one right after the other and they were gone too quickly :( .

Everyone sat down to watch their fireworks. 

We let each kid pick one small firework to watch. No one wanted to light their own though, maybe next year.

We finished with the one Mom and Dad picked, which was definitely the best (and also the priciest). 

Next we came back inside to enjoy some treats and create our family Top 10 list for 2015. 

It was a great year for our family.

We had the countdown with King Julien (courtesy of Netflix) and then banged our pots and pans.

We blew our horns to celebrate the new year. Hazel really liked the gold one.

We had a toast to the New Year.

Miles really liked that part of the evening. His favorite thing is soda these days.

Then we all happily went to bed (or that would have been nice). Eventually the kids crashed and the party was over. The year came to an end a little early in the Meldrum home, but Hazel made sure to get back up for the real party a little later.

The Best Year Ever!

The Meldrum family had the best year eve! We had lots of fun, learning, and adventures this year. We did a little more traveling than usual, which added to all the excitement. We learned to do new things and challenged ourselves to grow. We had tears, laughs, and celebrations. It was a full year, but here are our top ten memories from the year.

10. We took a family trip to Houston to visit family and friends.

We spent time with our Shaw cousins, it was awesome!

  

We got crazy with the Tingey's.

And we had a little fun along the way.

9. Our family won Halloween with our version of The Wizard of Oz.

Our costumes were the best in the neighborhood (at least in my opinion).

8. Rach and I celebrated our 10th Anniversary with a trip to the Big Apple.

The views from the top of the world were amazing. 

(Special thanks to Melanie and Grandma for watching the children).

7. Allie read her first chapter book and has not put them down since.

6. We took trips to Sedona (swimming and hiking), Indian ruins (hiking), and Payson (rockhounding).

Indian ruins and Sedona slide rock. 

Digging for fossils in Payson.

5. We visited lots of family with a trips to Utah and visitors from Florida.

Meldrum hiking trip at the Superstition Mountains.

Crazy hiking with the Shaws.

Fourth of July with the Garlocks and Shaws.

4. Miles moved into a new bedroom with a big boy bed and loves to sleep on the top.

3. Hadley learned how to ride a bike, and even got a new one for Christmas.

Hadley showing off her riding skills.

2. We took family vacation to the beach in California.

Miles loved the sand, sun, and sunshine.

We became great at building sand castles.

The girls even tested the water.

1. We welcomed the newest Meldrum, Hazel Kate, to our family December 5, 2015.

Hazel is ready to help make 2016 even better than 2015!

Extra Santa Surprise!

A few days after Christmas, Hadley was playing around with the stockings and noticed that there was something in their stockings.  After excitement and unbelief, they opened their suckers which were Rudolph and Abominable Snowman faces and ate away.  

I guess Santa forgot to put them in their stockings on Christmas eve so he dropped them off a few days late! :)

Christmas Morning

Through the chaos of Christmas morning, we only got a few pictures, but had lots of fun and enjoyed our morning.  

It started around 6:30, later than I would have guessed and after everyone went potty, we lined up in order of oldest to youngest (Meldrum tradition) and screams were echoing through the house when they saw their gifts. We did get some video which might be better than pictures anyway!

Christmas Eve 2015

Christmas Eve was full of excitement in our family this year.  We were just our little (or not so little anymore) family and it was just perfect.  After a dinner of take out Outback and Sonic (still deciding on tradition for Christmas Eve dinner) we got dressed up to act out the nativity with our own baby Jesus!  

We read the story as we acted it out.

Mary took her job seriously and it was so sweet to see.

Joseph on the other hand took some convincing to hold still. Super hard to do on Christmas eve!

Our cute Angel watched over this little family and declared good tidings of great joy!

After the nativity, we continued with tradition of opening one present on Christmas eve, which happened to be pajamas this year!  :)   Thanks Grandma and Grandpa Shaw!

After jammie time, we used our jingle bells to set out our gifts for each other per Meldrum tradition. The person who jingles the bells sets out their presents while everyone else keeps their eyes closed.  When they stop jingling, everyone can open their eyes and admire the presents under the tree.

The girls were pretty good about keeping their eyes closed, not so much for Miles. 

 After they were all put out and admired/guarded from Miles, we loaded into the car to go see Christmas lights, an adventure we have done a lot this year with a new baby but still needing to get people out of the house.  We have seen some awesome ones this year!  

After the lights, we got ready for bed and put everyone to bed in Miles' room with his extra beds and after an hour they were all asleep, success!