Be forewarned, there are A LA-AH-AH-AHT of January photos! Here goes.
Amelia brought in the new year with a spend the night party at the D's to celebrate Maggie's 12th birthday.
Leetle fuzzy, but you get the idea.
Julie and I have photographic evidence of bringing the new year in right. On January 1, 2014 we went for an early run, in spite of the cold! I have been beyond blessed to have Julie and the other Woodlands folks to exercise with . It's a heck of a way to start every day, rolling out of bed at 4:45, cold or hot, rainy or dry, to work up a sweat. Julie is a true blessing, and knowing her and my other exercise buds have only made my life better!
The first weekend in January it snow flurried. In Georgia this warrants a photo.
Here is a picture of a first. James is readying our fireplace for its initiation into the reason fireplaces exist in the first place.
On your mark, get set...
Go! The weather forecaster people said it was going to be a really cold week, so we decided a fire would help the heat pump. We lived in our house on Daybreak Road for five years and sold it with a clean, never used fireplace. This was year seven in the current house with no fire, so it was a momentous occasion.
The problem with a lit fireplace is that it has magnetic properties. No one thought they could go more than six feet away from it, including all day during school days. It caused "heated" arguments over who was there first. Large piles of projects, books, and toys collected in careless heaps in front of it, abandoned at bedtime or whenever someone was forced to get up to answer the call of nature.
The fire burned for three days, the firebox insert so tiny that we were forced to feed it every hour to keep it going. It made the house smell like a campfire. The girl who cuts my hair washed it and asked me if I had been camping. It's the last fire we've had.
It definitely got cold that week. James left the outside spigot dripping so it wouldn't freeze up.
It created the Ice Slide of 2014. We dragged out everything we could find to slide on, including a retired cat litter box.
The kids have begged us to do it again when it gets cold enough!
Here it is, the photo record of another milestone. The last kid finished the Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons book! That means I finished the 100 Easy Lessons book for the fourth and final time! Now all five of us can read!
We barely had time to recover from Christmas festivities when we headed off to Orlando for the Disney Marathon. James and his brother Jason and Uncle Dennis had come up with the plan the year before to run the marathon in honor of James' 40th and Uncle Dennis' 60th birthdays. We rode along to enjoy Disney!
Welcome to Florida!
Race packet pick up.
We went to Downtown Disney the first night for dinner.
There's a large Lego store at Downtown Disney.
Lego maxi-figures plus Himstedt children.
We had plans to eat at the Rainforest Cafe while in Orlando.After seeing this one across the lake that evening Shannon said he wasn't so sure he wanted to eat at a restaurant that blows up every few minutes.
The next morning we headed to Aniimal Kingdom.
Creepy kudzoo lady greets the guests.
The Safari ride.
These two were not part of the safari exhibit. But they are more fun than a barrel full of monkeys!! Oh ho ho! Ha ha! Hee! Couldn't resist, sorry.
Street performers.
Peanut butter jelly time! I love that you can pack your own food into Disney parks.
We went to an awesome bird show.
The tree of life...which ironically, isn't alive.
My favorite ride was the Mt. Everest Expedition roller coaster. I decided the reason Disney is truly magical is because I went through two solid days at their parks, rode their rides, and didn't have even a wisp of a headache! That does not happen at Six Flags.
Terror just before the time travel ride.
A nice Brazillian couple took this picture for us. The place was full of Brazillians. Apparently the entire country was on break, and they all came to Orlando. James said it was weird to hear Portugeuese all around him.
And there was a tree with lots of birds in it.
The Rainforest Cafe was both fun and delicious.
The gift shop had some lovely masks.
The next morning, VERY EARLY, the guys got up and headed to the starting line. We came later to see them finish. The race took them through all of the parks. Jason said people kept stopping for Disney character selfies.
Jason snapped one of the castle early that morning.
And here comes James!
He did it!!
Here comes Jason!
Go Uncles Dennis!! Way to go, 60 year old man! :)
Hot tub time is good for tired legs!
Mimi found us a VRBO house with both a hot tub and a pool.
Here's another good post-race activity!
In typical fashion, some of the Himstedt kids ended up sleeping in a closet.
Somebody came by to manage the pool and hot tub for us and when they left the hot tub was full of foam! Not sure what chemical made this happen, but the kids liked it.
The next morning we headed to the Magic Kingdom.
Uncle Dennis joined us for the day.
We rode the boat over from the parking lot.
The girls were chosen to participate in the interactive story at Belle's cottage.
Uncle Dennis is Papa's younger brother who lives in Colorado. It's too bad he's so far away, he's a fun dude. :)
Gah! Trapped with Zurg!
On the morning of the 14th we packed it up, kissed family goodbye, and headed north. We stopped by Marietta on the way home to celebrate Jonathan's 37th birthday.
It's enough to warm your hands!
It's hard to get back into a routine after vacations and fun disruptions to the normal routine. All it takes is a nice weather afternoon to send us to the woods. I took the kids over to Smighgall Woods one afternoon for a hike.
This baffled me so of course I took a picture. This leaf/branch/rock laden trail didn't appear very handicap accessible to me!
At the end of the month we headed to the Knott's lake house on Lake Keowee in SC for a marriage retreat weekend. It was a blast hanging out with friends. We had some time to focus on marriage topics and hang out just ladies and with each other as couples. We also celebrated James' birthday (40!!) and John Winter's birthday while we were there.
The Phillips, Knotts, Winters, Baumgardners, Jennings, and us. We plan to repeat the weekend this Februarly.
We had a Sunday School class gathering at the Yonah Skate and Bowl to end the month. The kids like our parties as much as we do, since all their friends are there.
Here's the, ahem, "end" of January. (Yes, Avery, you were this flexible. I'm sure one day you'll wonder what happened to you and why you can't bend into a pretzel anymore!)
Let's see if I can knock out February before the new year officially rolls in!
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