Our New Year's Eve was interesting :). I don't think I'll go into detail about the earlier part of the day, but overall, we decided we needed to be more grateful for the things we have and time we get to spend with each other. Eventually we did put some activities in balloons and got on with our usual New Year's Eve celebrating :). The first thing we popped out of a balloon was playing with Play Doh. This idea was inspired by Jack :). And he sure loved it. He wasn't the only one who loved it though! Charity says that her favorite part of the day was when we played with Play Doh together :). Pretty cool. Who would have thought something this simple could be so much fun and memorable. I was glad I got my camera out.
Still learning the settings and playing around with them, as you can see :). That's half the fun :).
The other half of the fun is ending up with awesome pictures like this one... I might have to fiddle around with it a little, but I love it :)
(I really need ti learn how to re-stain my Nate's table)
Everyone with their hot dogs and hamburgers :).
Our next balloon was "Gingerbread House Baseball" inspired by Meredith Harker :). One good thing about Facebook is I get ideas from other people. This was a fun one!
Rather than just throwing away the Gingerbread houses that have been taking up space on the counter, you smash them all over the street with a bat :).
Kelly was first.
Then Charity, she had to hurry so she could go help out with the Carnival.
Took a few tries, but she eventually hit it :).
And again.
It was a little darker when we were out with everyone else's (I had taken Charity to Davis High in between turns), but notice how well I fixed these and because of my awesome new camera, I was able to catch these in what seems to be good lighting! I'm glad I got this crappier one of Jack because it demonstrates how good I did with the others. But they are slightly blurry in some of them. Like I said, still learning, but how awesome is the low light shot!!! Love it.
Jack took his turn and unfortunately it smashed itself on the road before he could hit it. Very disappointing and he made sure to express that.
Look at this cute big sister! She's so good to her baby sister!
The pep talk :)
I'm absolutely LOVING Kelly's poses in all of these :).
I'm not sure I would have been able to smash all the hard work in this way, look how cuet her little house is still! But we were SO impressed with Erika's batting skills! She's amazing!! This girl really is an athlete for sure.
I think Luke's did kind of what Jack's did and fell apart before he could hit it, but he scooped up the remains and batted at that a few times :).
This was our balloon game. I remember playing this with my family at least one New Year's Eve. It was the same year that I fell asleep at like 11:45!!! UGH!!! Still hurts to think about it. But anyway. You pass the balloon around and say something nice about the person you threw it to. We came up with a different variation, which I am not remembering at the moment. It was extremely short lived, I think we made it around the circle once before it felt like they needed some action :). So then they stood up and played lava, not letting the balloon touch the ground for quite a while. Then moved it downstairs too. Fun kids.
I had really wanted to get a picture of Molly in the Christmas tree lights, all season. I never did get one and I tried this night and it didn't even begin to happen, so I had Kelly do it for me instead :). It's not quite what I was going for- I want Red, Green, White lights or just white for it next year, but Kelly's so adorable I had to post it :)
Again, super low-light- and look how amazing!
So around 6:00 Annie and her girls showed up and we drove over to Davis High together. This was a new one for us and we weren't really sure how it was going to go. Always a little nerve-racking with kids involved. But it ended up being a lot of fun. Note for next year: Just do the carnival. We got their and they told us the food line was going slow so we opted to go to the carnival first. This was a lot of fun for the kids- about 30 different versions of throwing something into something :) and then picking out a prize regardless of whether you made it in or not :). The kids loved it :). Even my big kids. It was so much fun to talk with Annie and watch her cute kids. Kelly buddied up with Erika and Jack and made their night enchanting. Bradley, Luke and Noah sped around hitting all the fun ones and then back around with us a little later. Molly spent most of the time in her stroller, but got out on the ones that had balls- she loved throwing the balls. Funny girl. Charity sat outside the gym applying fake tattoos to all the kids. It was "exhausting"! But I think she had fun :).
After the carnival we made the mistake of getting in line for food. I wish we'd just left and gotten pizza or something though. We stood in line for about 45 minutes. I'm still not sure why the line took so long? Very weird. But free food- can you pass up free food? I don't think Luke would have stood for that :). Annie and I wished we'd gotten up to do the Rubik's cube contest (it was an 80's theme). She would have killed the competition because when we did it at home after, she did it in 1:38!!! She's still got it even after all these years!! Pretty cool. I'm still trying to come to grips with the fact that she's going to be in Houston soon!! And that it was our idea that got her there. Kind of a bummer, but I LOVED hearing her positive attitude about it all. She really is amazing. And Jake is going to be a great controller. I am SO happy for them and that they've had this opportunity. It's crazy that he'll be making more than Nate (someone who's been controlling for almost 10 years and went to school for it and everything :)) in a matter of a few years!! Cool stuff for them. I'm really happy for her! I loved that she talked about how she likes grays and blues- I realized that's how I could describe the color scheme in my mind for our house too! She's so awesome. Did I mention that? After the food we came home. I was so embarrassed because I really didn't prepare for us to be spending a lot of time there. It was fine, but my poor housekeeping skills (or lack thereof) were completely exposed! Good thing Annie is forgiving.
We came home and played with Play Doh some more :). For actually almost 2 hours! I was surprised they all lasted that long! I got to visit with Annie which was priceless. I just love that girl. I'm so grateful for her friendship and example in my life. I know there's a reason she's in my life.
Around 11:00, after ringing in the New Year with Jake over the phone :) so cute- Annie and her kids departed. They were pretty wiped out! We were sad to see them go! But we hunkered down and got geared up for the next hour! The last balloon was "get ready for midnight", so we did that, took about 5 seconds :), then we waited!
She's starting to get sick of this. But I should mention that she is finally starting to just walk! She doesn't resort to crawling almost at all now! Pretty big girl! It's hard to see her grow up, but she's doing it slow enough that it's pretty much a good thing that she is :).
My kids will choose pots and pans and anything in the kitchen drawers over store bought noise makers any day :). That night they had both because Annie was so thoughtful. But they still got out the ol' pans to make their noise at midnight.
Nate called on his way home to ring in the New Year with us--- that was a fun surprise! I hope he gets his hearing back someday :)
Hope the neighbors don't mind- we didn't see anyone else out there, so I'm not sure anyone else was even awake- party-poopers!- but we were :). Loud and clear!
Should have set up the camera before :). But whatever- we get the idea :).
Charity wants this one for later :)
Confetti balloon all over the front porch!
And of course Bro. Christensen's Fireworks!
What a fun night to ring in the New Year!!
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