New Year's Eve

We decided to keep New Year's Eve simple and at home this year.  I felt a little guilty about this for some reason - I think that's because we almost always have friends or family over for all other holidays.  But this year I just didn't want the bother.  Not that friends and family are a bother; but the cleaning and cooking and the clean up after can be!  And some times it's nice to spend time with just your little family.  Your little, loud, crying family.

Okay, I only typed that because Tess is going nut about not being able to play outside in the snow in the sub-zero temps with her brothers.  She's literally screaming and crying and tantruming and clinging to my legs as I type.  But I don't want to spend 20 minutes getting me into my snow gear and then wrangling her into snow pants and a coat and whatnot, only to have her be out there for 3 minutes before she pulls off her mittens and freaks out because it's so dang cold.

Why yes, yes I do speak from experience.

Anways, this year I decided we should have a New Year's tree.  (Oh Pinterest, the things you make me do.)  I had visions of something glamorous, but with my budget and kids, this is what I got.  No matter, the kids loved it.

They especially loved the popper "ornaments".  Josh and Spencer were so excited to do these!

For a couple of years now we have had Chinese take out on Christmas Eve Eve, but since that was on a Sunday this year we didn't do it.  So we had Chinese take out for New Year's Eve.  I also decided to make a couple of desserts.  The first were these personal trifles.

Aren't they so cute?!  And yummy, too.  Dang, I have a great trifle recipe.

I also decided to make cherry cheese sweet bread because it looked impressive and yummy.  And it was.

We got a little camera happy that evening. (Bah!  Curly hair on me!  Who'd a thunk it?  Seriously, all during high school all I wanted was beautiful curly hair.  And now that I can have curly hair?  All I want is beautiful strait hair.  I can't win.)

Josh was being a punk and wouldn't hold still for a picture.  This is the best I got.

This cutie couldn't figure out what was going on.  But she could tell that something was happening.  (This cutie is currently throwing the cold cereal I gave to her as a snack all over the floor.  She is suddenly not quite so cute.)

We played a bunch of games after dinner.  First, Bed Bugs, then Apples to Apples, and then a cute bug counting game Grandpa ElRay gave us for Christmas.  (Of course it had bugs.)

I was playing the bed bug game, but Tess decided she needed to get in on that action.

Cole was actually pretty decent at catching those bed bugs!

 

Josh thought he'd be funny and use his hands.  It was funny the 1st time.  Not so much the 12th.

Poor Cole.  He'd work so very hard to get a bug out.  Then he'd put it on the table...

...where Tess would pick it up...

... and put it back in.  It took Cole a while to figure out what was going on.

We ate our desserts and wrote resolutions and did the poppers.  I totally forgot to take pictures.  Oops.  I have some video, but don't know that they're all that worthy of the effort of uploading. 

Now here's where I feel guilty again - we didn't let the kids stay up late.  Well, I don't feel guilty about Tess and Cole going to bed on time.  There's no way I'd let them stay up because they would be such grouches.  But Josh and Spencer are probably old enough to handle it and they'd probably think it was really fun.  Oh well, next year.

Lance and I rang in the new year watching movies, because we're super exciting like that.  Hey, at least we made it to midnight this year - in the past I've been in bed as early as 10pm!