The Schwabs were over again tonight and we made bunny cupcakes. These were so cute, and they were by far our best cupcakes ever:

The first real party of the new house was a Super Bowl party tonight. We had the Schwabs over and it was a lot of fun:

We decided to make a huge gator cupcake concoction tonight. There’s no gator in the Super Bowl, but it was such a cool design that we decided to make it tonight for the party:

Here are some pictures of Beth and Sky-Sky from earlier today:

Monkey Grandma is visiting and we made cupcakes shaped like panda bears:

Lauren’s friend Adelle came over and we made snow-globe cupcakes:

Here’s a picture of the kids in their new house:

We made the obligatory trip to Mt. Storm Park this morning:

We had Christmas dinner at Aunt Bab’s house. With Lauren, Jake, Beth, Amanda, Nicholas and Matthew it got pretty wild. Later on things settled down and the kids put on a pretty good play.

We made it to Monkey Grandma’s house last night, and we got to have Christmas morning at her house:

We hadn’t been to the zoo in a long time, so we hung out there for a bit today. We did it all, too. Usually it’s either the animals or the playground, but we hit them both, and played a lot. We even did the Grassmere house, which we usually skip.

We spent a lot of time taking advantage of all the fun holiday stuff at Opryland today. Everyone’s favorite, though, was the awesome hot tub (outside on this day of beautiful weather) and the pool.

We’re on our way to see Sabrina’s piano recital. It’s right near Vanderbilt and the kids wanted to go to Children’s to have lunch. We were pretty silly in the cafeteria. Good thing it’s a weekend and not too crowded today:

Lauren had her winter cotillion dance. Parents weren’t invited, but I did get to peek in some. I got to see her get an award (Hershey Kisses candycane) for winning the Beach Shag competition, which is pretty good since there were nearly 100 couples dancing. Yay Lauren!! I teased her that she got kisses at the dance, but she didn’t think that was a funny as Jake and Beth thought it was.

I’m basically homeless right now (closing next week), and the Extended Stay I’m in isn’t exactly a place for three kids, so we’re staying at the Opryland Hotel this weekend. It’s really pretty awesome here. We’ve wanted to do this for a while, so this was the perfect chance. We wandered around the hotel tonight. I took a couple of pictures:

Lauren and Beth had their piano recital tonight. They both did awesomely (of course). I tried to make audio tapes again, but they didn’t turn out so well. Here are a few pictures, though:

There was a full BMS Band show tonight, with performances by all grades. Lauren had a seat right up in front of the band, and I was in the front row of the audience, so it was really awesome to watch her.

Here’s a brief video of Lauren and the rest of her band:

laurenOnFlute

and a couple pictures:

This was the first YMCA winter championship meet in years (maybe ever). The kids had a great time swimming in it:

Shopping in Chicago I discovered a few stores that the kids would like if they could have been here:

** OK, something has gone seriously wrong with flickr, since their pictures are no longer visible. I will work on this for the website, until then, remember that flickr is evil **

Lauren had her first swim meet as swimmer for her middle school. It was pretty cool to watch. They also had a diving competition. Here are a few pictures from the meet.