Bad Beginning

Now it's 2009, and it came, without us (Sam and Holly) hardly noticing. We traveled back on the 31st and left Millie, Sambo, and Wilbur with Holly's parents because we had one more surprise in store for the kids' Christmas/birthdays (Millie and Sam's this month). We tucked Quincy into bed and got to work. We put her in the basement because we anticipated much loudness with hammers, drills, etc.
Their surprise was a new bedroom (Millie), and a renovated bedroom (boys). Millie has mentioned over the past year that she is too grown up for her castle bed. The #1 item on her Santa list was a new bed. We moved her to Quincy's room, and vice versa.
We changed the boys room a little bit so they would feel included, and also because we already had a twin bed available to use, as well as another "buck" deer head from grandpa.
Anyway, we got started at about 10:00 pm and before we knew it, Holly looked at the clock downstairs and said, "Oh it's 12:48, happy new year". And Sam said, "Oh yeah, you too". And that was it. Back to business (not business time).
Holly had a horrible stomach ache and Sam was tired and grumpy. But we carried on, assembling furniture, decorating and such until 3:30 am. We awoke at 8:00, and spent most the day finishing up. To top it off Holly had major anxiety that she would get called into work because she was on-call. We knew the kids were going to be dropped off around 5:00. By 5:00 we were both so tired, grumpy, hungry (we didn't stop to eat) and probably smelly because we hadn't showered in a couple days. I think we were even wearing the same clothes since we had left Island Park! What a bad beginning of a new year.
BUT...
It was all worth it when we saw the looks on the kids faces when they discovered their new bedroom surprise! They were thrilled. Even better, they brought with them fresh strawberry cheesecake from Cheesecake Factory.
Just a sampling of their grins when they crawled into their new beds that night...