New Year's Eve

This year we hosted the Cornishes at our house, since it was far too cold (and has been since November) to go outside and shoot fireworks.

Grace was extra excited to paint some banners, and use some of the leftover confetti from our Christmas crackers to accentuate it!

The food on offer was pretty standard, but we did break out the punch bowl for some lime sherbert and sprite punch!

The kids entertained themselves, while the adults played some Texas Hold'em.   We changed over to Mario party, but Grace and Emily wanted in, and as I was not enjoying it much, I let them take over my control.

 We celebrated the new year really early, maybe 9:30 with the Super Monster's Countdown on Netflix.

 

It was nice to get together and play a few short, simple games with them, as our games are typically far longer, and much more complex.

Here's to a happy, healthy, and fun new year!

later days

edit 1-19-26: backdated for continuity.

New Year's Eve!!!

We were invited to attend New Year's Eve celebrations with the Cornishes, so on New Year's Eve Eve, we made some foam number decorations!

Unfortunately, the girls went a little heavy on the paint, and so the numbers were still wet when we left for the party!

Each group came out super cute, they just had to hold them slightly away from their clothes, and then they went back into the box!

The girls helped me put glitter on mine!  The blue glitter is my favorite. = )

And my tub was full of all sorts of surprises this year, filled with the things that I'd collected, at yard sales and thrift stores, since last year were just tipped in, so we had plenty of new items to display, including the wall banner! = )

Poor Emily, her old phone died, and so we broke out Alice's old phone for her to use.  Unfortunately, her code was sending to her tablet, which was at home. = (

Steve and Natalie had a new pirate game that we played!  The rules were really long, but the game was fairly straight forward.  If Steve hadn't had bad luck, he wouldn't have had any luck at all, his rolls were awful, and I kept trying to, unsuccessfully, take a piece of land.  So, Either Billy or Natalie won this time!

Hopefully I can find some more plastic flutes this year, we didn't have enough for all of the kids, let alone the adults!

The adults played half of the Route 66 Finders Seekers game that Billy bought me for Christmas, but we were all tired, and so at midnight we headed home, adding our next meeting to the calendar to finish it up!

It was nice to ring in the new year with them again, and I'm sure if I compared this year's picture to last year's, every single one of them would look much older! = ) 

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Grace was disappointed that we hadn't made punch for New Year's Eve, so she made it on New Year's Day.

Sometime between taking a picture of Juliet and taking a picture of Grace, they put up the banner.  I wanted the full set, so Juliet's picture was a remake of sorts.

I was putting the tub away in the basement, and was debating what to do with our homemade number banners.  They were a fun craft, but I didn't want to keep them for the next year.  So, I offered them to the twins' third grade teacher, because she has a senior this year, who will be having a party!  And if she tosses them, it won't bother me at all, because if she'd said no, I would have thrown them away myself.  = )

Looking forward to a great 2025!

later days

edited 2-11-25: backdated for continuity. 

123123: NYE 2022

This year, we were invited to the Cornishes to ring in the new year!  We haven't gone out to celebrate nye in a long time, so we were all very excited!

We spent the day prepping food to bring.  Juliet and Grace helped make orange cookies.  Grace juiced the oranges and Juliet rolled the cookie balls.  They came out soft and sweet and really good!  (Which was a relief, because the oranges themselves had been picked too early and were not very good to eat fresh.)

I also made some chocolate chip banana nut bread and sliced up a bag of apples! 

We arrived sometime between 5pm and 6pm.  We played several rounds of 4 different games: 

• One Night Ultimate Werewolf 
• Forbidden Island
• There's Been a Murder
• Dungeons & Dragons: The Legend of Drizzt

This took us to midnight!

The kids were so excited about the fireworks!  Billy lit one of the roman candles with a sparkler. lol.

I got pictures of some of the crew, but not everyone.  And a few didn't want to participate, so watched from inside the sliding glass door.

Natalie lit the remaining roman candles with the lighter, and then we had to fight to release the fuse of the Tik Tok firework, but it was really cool when it lit up! = )

It was very cold, just above freezing, so once we finished burning things, it was back inside to toast the new year, and then out the door and into the car to go home and get to bed! 

It was really nice to welcome 2024 with friends, but I assure you I am tired today!

For future me: I would rebuy the sparklers (they were huge, and bright!) the roman candles (easy to light and fun to watch.)  And the Tik Tok was really fun too.  I would not spend the money on the poppers again.  They tried to make them too fancy with extra packaging, and they didn't work very well.  The snappers worked fine, but it was too cold, and there were too many other things going on.  So, I guess I'd buy them again, but I'd give them to the kids to go get some of their excitement out while we get the other things ready to go. = )

Happy New Year everyone!!

later days