A "Meet Ayden/Christmas/Birthday" Celebration!

Our very best friends visited last Friday/Saturday! Jenny, Derek & Aniyah arrived at lunch time on Friday and Cass, Kris, Waylon & Lawson arrived at about 4 p.m. They got to meet Ayden and the kids played, we caught up and ate. Just wonderful, relaxing stuff:) Once everyone was here, it was the lovely, loud chaos we all knew it would be. It was fun and interesting to see how they all played together. I find it kind of fascinating to watch them play and see how it changes as they grow. Collin actually wanted to tag along after Waylon quite a bit, which I guess makes sense considering he is always playing with Kate. Kate and Aniyah are the only girls! and always enjoy playing together. Kate loves having her friends come up to her room to play. There are lots of toys up there and they make quite a mess with toys that she doesn't play with most days - super fun. 

Godmomma Jenny meeting Ayden!

Aunt Cass soaking up some newborn snuggles!

Uncle Kris with Ayden

Kate and Waylon are the leaders, of course. Sometimes it is a power struggle and other times they rule well together:)  Lawson seemed to prefer the company of us adults:) and Ayden! He was so interested in the baby and kept bringing me things. So sweet. We adults tried to have quality conversations, but you can imagine that it was a bit difficult! 

Collin and Lawson

Kate and Waylon

Kate and Aniyah with their new necklaces

On Saturday, the kids did get outside a little bit - can't wait until we are out more! Thank you to Kris for being the "outdoor parent":) Dave was on call and had to go in to the hospital. Cass and I managed the newborn and endless snack requests from the other kids!

We also were celebrating many things in this short time together....Ayden's arrival obviously, but also Christmas! It was the first year that we drew names between the kids and they did a gift exchange. And Collin's birthday is around the corner and the Lawson's a couple months later...so there were many gifts. I think Kate was a little confused about all the gifts, oops - guess I didn't explain that very well. 

Collin loved his new train book

In jammies the next morning

The Swobodas stayed in a hotel that night and then headed to Madison to see more family and friends during the weekend and the Petersons stayed overnight with us and spent most of the day Saturday here. It was one of our shortest get-togethers and I really missed the extra time to talk with Jenny and Cass, but that is just the way it had to go this time. I think the plan is to have just us girls get away for a day or two next time. Much-needed and much-anticipated!

Me and my best gals, back in the day:)

A special thanks to these families for bringing lots of food and making it super easy for us to host. You would think it would be hard to have all of us inside for so long, but it really was much better than I think we all imagined! I hope so, at least:) Dave and I are thinking about/wishing for/exploring options for a larger house but for now we are just going to have to figure out how to make it work in this house. And we totally did:)

Our growing crew! Such great smiles:)