New Year's Eve!

I'm a little disturbed by how our New Year's Eve went.  I had such high hopes for it.  This whole Christmas break for that matter.  Felt like we just couldn't catch a break.  But then in the back of my mind I kept having these little thoughts of, "maybe this is for our own good", "maybe we needed some down, family time, where we all just sit around together", "maybe we needed to slow down".  Hard to believe that that would be the case for us- we're very slow people for the most part, but I'm willing to bet that at least one of those thoughts came from the Spirit.  So we at least tried to make the most of it.  I am not sure how well we did.  We had to cancel with the Maughans because of all of our germs.  Looking back, I wish we'd just risked it since nobody else ended up barfing again and I kind of think Bradley just hadn't eaten enough.  That bug left you with a stomach ache and some people in this house think that means starve yourself.  So anyway.  We cancelled our party plans but tried to make up for it on our own.  We played Likewise, then Taboo which actually ends up being pretty fun with our kids now that most of them can read and understand what we're doing.  Jack's the only one just floating around the room enjoying the sounds of family togetherness from various areas of the house.  We had some snacks and our sparkling apple cider, but honestly, it was a little bit of a dull party.  I think the most memorable part was when it took about an hour to choose and then download a movie on our TV and then Charity tripped on the cord stretched from the kitchen to the family room, and it had to start all over again :).  Yes, we're weird, we started over.  The kids all killed the time nicely, and we were all pretty happy for 9 and 10:00 at night.  That kept surprising me.  But eventually we were able to watch the Diary of a Wimpy Kid movie.  We stopped to ring in the new year with our noise makers and pots and pans... that's everyone's favorite.  Kelly tried a new thing, and filled a balloon (I think she ran out of motivation to do any more :) ) with homemade confetti and then popped it at midnight :).  It was really fun to see Erika and Noah's faces as it popped over their heads :).  If only I'd gotten the camera on quick enough to capture it!  That was a lot of fun.  We watched some of the fireworks from up the street for a few minutes, but it was well below freezing so we didn't watch it all.  Jack and Nate watched some from his bedroom while Nate rocked him to sleep (I still can't believe we let him stay up.  We have been paying for it ever since.  That's what happens when I'm lazy.)).  The big kids and I finished their movie and then forced ourselves to go to bed around 1:00.  It was a little nuts.  But really, we had a great evening.  I really was happy with it, it just didn't compare to years past.  I guess there have to be off years to really appreciate the on ones.  I was pretty consumed with Lisa's news that she was going to be getting a new baby the next day!!  Pretty exciting!!  It was all so sudden and so exciting and overwhelming sounding at the same time, so I couldn't turn my brain off it!  I kept feeling so surprised that I wasn't more jealous.  I think it's because I was thinking I was pregnant at the time.  So anyway- Happy New Year!!  Bring on 2015!!  I'm ready!

hex mix makes everything okay-  this is the only thing the round pretzels are for- that and teaching Buddy to catch food in his mouth.