Ringing In 2015

After the holiday rush is done, there's usually a wonderful period of sitting around the house, not doing anything particularly important. Such was our situation after our Phoenix day trip. What should we do, to finish off 2014?

Well, we watched more of our Christmas DVDs. We ate more junk food. Nathan golfed a little bit. The girls played with their Christmas gifts and worked on some crafts. I tried to act as lazy as possible. But we also found time to have a little family fun...like cashing in the girls' Build-A-Bear gift cards that they got for Christmas!

The girls have been wanting to go to Build-A-Bear for a very long time now. All our girls are big stuffed-animal fans, even nine-year-old Lorelai, so watching their very own stuffed animal being made was doubtless a dream come true for them. Personally, I've never been that interested in how stuffed animals are made, but hey...it's their present, not mine. So one afternoon, the whole family drove up to the Tucson Mall and visited the local Build-A-Bear store.

Unfortunately for the girls, we did put a price cap on their purchases. That darn store can get very expensive very fast! That meant no Ninja Turtle or My Little Pony stuffed animals. And no wardrobe, either (seriously, who needs a wardrobe for their stuffed animals?). Yes, we were cheapskates, but the girls still managed to find a product that satisfied them.

Aurora was the only girl who didn't build an actual "bear"...she found a cat that she fell in love with!

Watching each animal get stuffed, massaged, and sewed up was kind of a mesmerizing experience.

 

The girls also enjoyed picking out a small silk "heart" to place inside their bears:

 

Here are the final results of all their labors...meet the newest stuffed members of our family!

Celeste's rainbow-colored bear is named Sparkle Princess Bear. A very fitting name for Celeste's bear, indeed. Oddly enough, Celeste also chose a sound chip to put inside her bear; it was the sound of a ferocious roar! So even though Sparkle Princess Bear has kind of a sissy name, she's pretty tough on the inside! Aurora's kitty-cat was named Princess Precious. Seeing a pattern here? Well, it was a pattern of two bears, because Lorelai named her camo-bear Army Bear...and she got a sound card that played the "Star Wars" theme! Overall, it was an interesting mishmash of styles and personalities; kind of like our girls themselves.

Each bear got its own "birth certificate" at the store, complete with its full name, size, coloration, and date of "birth." This made it all seem very official. The girls felt the trip was a success, and they've been very pleased with their bears. Our family also stopped by Bookmans after our Build-A-Bear adventure was done, and loaded up on second-hand books & movies. That's becoming another post-holiday tradition for us!

This outing was to be our last major outing of 2014. The following day, we only had time to buy a few groceries, then set up for our New Year's Eve party, complete with a big dinner, lots of friends (we had the Perrys come over, as well as our next-door neighbors the Gillespies), and plenty of board-game action. Even the missionaries stopped by for a brief visit! It was a fun evening, and the kids running around and shouting added to the delightful chaos.

Lorelai has made it to midnight the last few years; Celeste badly wanted 2014 to be the year she made it, too. But three-quarters of the way through The Lego Movie, she just couldn't hang in there any more:

That extra girl is our neighbor Jamie...she fell asleep about when Aurora did.

Once again, Lorelai was the only Barrett child who made it to midnight with her parents (who barely made it themselves; all our friends cleared out around 11:15 or so, so we fought to stay awake after that). Celeste was very upset the next morning, but we reassured her that her day would come, one of these years. Our New Year's Day was relatively uneventful: we slept in, we watched the Tournament Of Roses parade, and we ate our traditional New Year's Day breakfast:

Monkey bread! Never begin the new year without it: that's my motto. Well, it would be my motto, if I had one. We spent much of the rest of the day hanging out, eating junk food, and playing games at the Perry's house (returning the favor of their coming to our house the night before!). It was indeed a wonderful way to ring in the new year.

As you might have seen in our last blog post of 2014, this previous year had many emotional ups and downs for us. We don't exactly know what to expect in the coming year, but we hope 2015 will bring us happiness, peace and (relative) prosperity. I am trying to work on the little things (increasing my personal prayer & scripture study, being a kinder person, etc.), in the hope that these things will better prepare me for the "big things" when they come along, whether good or bad. Here's wishing you all a successful, blessed 2015 as well. I'll keep the blog updated; stay tuned!