FOR THIS YEAR'S CHRISTMAS BREAK, my mom had the brilliant idea of allowing each of us our own special day. On our special day, we are allowed to call all of the shots--what music to listen to, what movies to watch, what to eat, what games to play, etc. It has been a lot of fun, so far! Unfortunately, our camera broke on Monday (Hannah's day), so we were not able to take pictures of all that we did! But it was so much fun that I have to document it:
We made her pancakes for breakfast, dressed her up nicely, read her all of her favorite books, listened to PARTY ROCK ANTHEM by LMFAO (her favorite song), and just tried our best to make her feel extra special. Later in the evening, we all left as a family to run some errands. While we were out, we thought we'd go out to get something to eat. Hannah wanted Chickfila. Well, on our way, it very suddenly began to rain. And I mean REALLY rain....it was almost like a flash flood!!! And what made it even weirder was that it only lasted for a few minutes! Anyways, because of the rain, we almost went home. But then we saw the TROLLEY!!! We live in uptown Dallas, but still very close to the beautiful skyscrapers of downtown. There is so much to do and see here. I have ridden the trolley before with my friend Johanna, and it was a wonderful experience that I tell to family often, which made them so excited to ride it for themselves sometime. So when we suddenly saw this trolley, the rain stopped simultaneously (so weird!), and for some reason we just parked the car and hopped up onto it. Talk about being spontaneous! All of us were so happy and terribly confused about what the heck we were doing. As we were enjoying our fun ride on the cute little trolley together, we decided that we wanted pizza. The trolley coach/director/whatever-you-call-the-guy told us of the many pizzerias that we could find along the route, mentioning a "Sfuzzi's" that served pizzas for half-price on Monday nights. Naturally, we went there. :) It was a super fancy restaurant, somewhere that we did not belong. (With 9 people in our family, we attract tons of attention wherever we go!) But we went there anyway! We found a round table in the corner of the restaurant, with a curtain that we were able to pull in front of us for privacy. We ordered lots of Dr. Pepper, 2 XL pepperoni pizzas, a heavenly toffee cheesecake, and a devilishly delicious chocolate cake a la mode. We all laughed and rejoiced as we spent such a wonderful time together. When we got home, we watched Hannah's favorite movie, Father of the Bride II, while Mom and Dad finished up the rest of their Christmas shopping. I think that we all enjoyed the day as much as Hannah did! So very much fun! I really regret that we don't have any pictures to document everything. :(
Yesterday was MY day! It was out of the youngest-to-oldest order, but it seemed appropriate as I had already scheduled for my friend to come over on this day over a week prior to my mom's idea. I will post about my friend and everything that we did in just a moment, as I have pictures that deserve their own blog post. Oh, and later in the evening, we went to Sister Giroux's house for a small Christmas party. She is a very dear elderly woman whom we met when we had first moved to Mesquite 8 years ago, and she still has us over for Christmas every year. I will also write about this in a separate post.
Finally, today was Heidi's day, which is what all of these pictures are for. I started her day by dragging her out of bed, dressing her up, and making her stand outside in the cold weather so that I could take pictures of her. :/ But everyone else has been very kind to her! In fact, as I am writing this, Randy is tucking Heidi into her bed as he tells her cute little bedtime story. And as you can see in one of the above pictures, he had also made her bed for her extra specially this morning! He even arranged some of her stuffed animals by her pillow. When he finished, he gave her a hug and told her that he loved her. He is such a kind big brother. :) I made up for my cruelness later in the afternoon, as I took her on a ride on the trolley again along with Hannah, my camera, and a small lunch that we shared at the end of the tour. We went round-trip, and took lots of pictures as we enjoyed being a trio. At home, we watched many of her favorite TV episodes, and later in the day, we all went to church for tithing settlement with our Bishop. We then watched one more AFV episode before we wrapped things up for the night. We all had fun making Heidi feel loved and appreciated. I hope that she enjoyed her day. :D
I will write about the boys' days, too. To be continued!