Out with the Old

It is our custom to spend New Years Eve with my parents.  Way back in 1999, my parents were very concerned about Y2K, and made preparations for the apocalypse.  Mom wanted to have all her chicks around her, so she came up with the idea for a New Years Ever party and it just stuck.   We've spent every New Year's Eve there since 1999.  Our celebrations have gotten a bit quieter and less populated by adults over the years.  Now, the first part of the evening is all about the kids.  We had delicious food and followed it up with sparklers.  Sparklers terrify me.  I remember being incredibly foolish with them as a kid and I have so many visions of how sparklers could go terribly bad.  We basically light a sparkler for our child, spread them out from everything and tell them to stand still.  So, maybe my children never experience the joy of running around with a lit sparkler like I did, but hopefully they'll keep all their eyes!

Deep breath, mom, it will be over soon!  But it wasn't over...the kids lit sparkler after sparkler until the air was so full of sulphur that you could taste it!  The kids loved it.  I just had to keep from hyperventilatating!  I figured out I could take some really cool motion photos of the sparklers, so the kids had fun doing that!

Even the big kids.  Aunt Katie was there, along with her friend
Britta from Chicago.  They're so cute!  Here are some examples of Brent and I running interference with the kids--one kid in each hand!

My Bennett William is a wild man with a firework and I have to be extra careful!  He's just so darn lovable, though!  He required multiple handlers, like Uncle Brad.

We rang in the new year at about 9pm with the kids, complete with noisemakers, poppers and silly string.  The kids, with the exception of Alexandra, loved it.  I think my mom may have loved it even more!

LOVE my girl!  She loved getting decked out in silly string.  She's pretty silly herself!  After our celebration, Katie and Emily took some time to help Maura pick out her dissection specimen.  That's because they bought her a dead animal for Christmas!  Katie called me a few weeks before Christmas to ask if I thought Maura would like to receive a dissection kit and a dissection specimen for Christmas.  My answer was a resounding "YES!"  Rather than order any old animal for her and wrap up a dead animal, they allowed her to pick out what she wanted after Christmas.  She picked a pigeon.  I was less than pleased.  Feathers...yuck!  She was so excited, though!

Emmers and Brad.  Bennett got a horsey ride before we took the kiddos up for bed.  It makes for a full house, but we always just stay over on New Years Eve.  None of us wants to pack up our kids at 12:30am and get out on the roads with the drunks.  Works for us!

Once the kids were tucked safely away, it was time for some fun games that made us adults look like idiots!  No sense having them think we're any crazier than they already do!

I tried to take a photo of Brent acting, but he wouldn't play!  Finally it was time to ring in the New Year.  I'm not sure why I didn't get a photo of Brent and I after the ball dropped.  It's kind of a tradition!

The next day was full of snuggles, cousin time, and games on Grammy's phone.  Fun times.  No New Year's Day would be complete without pork roast and saurkraut, either!

We've been so richly blessed in 2012.  Brent returned from deployment, we had some wonderful family vacations, we made a move to homeschool and we're just loving life.  We're looking forward to the new year and praying that God's blessings extend not only to our family, but to all we know and love!  Happy New Year!