New Years Eve

New Years Eve has probably always been my least favorite holiday.  For the rest of the year I am perfectly content with my life and the general lack of excitement, but on New Years Even I somehow always end up feeling like I'm missing out on life's party.  Since getting married and having kids, I'm not nearly as concerned about it, but still sometimes find myself wishing I was the type to throw or attend a party.  This year New Years Eve fell on a Sunday which was pretty much perfect...a built in reason so have a low key celebration.  My mom is the best and continues to have us all over for dinner most Sundays.  This week she decided to add to the fun and turn dinner into a New Years Eve party with Mexican fiesta, pinata, and games.  We all picked up some party supplies at the dollar store and the kids were in heaven.  Grandma spent a lot of the time playing games and doing puzzles with the little kids while the big kids (the rest of us) played Werewolf.  I'm not sure that most of us even knew what was going on for most of the game, but Ada was an amazing moderator and did her best to keep us on track.  

For several days Luke had been telling me it was going to be his robot dog's birthday and begged me to make him a cake.  I decided to make a tres leches cake for the fiesta said that it could be for Lightening.  Luke monitored the progress of the cake all day to make sure Lightening would have a great celebration.  We brought the rest of Brycen's birthday cake along, and the tres leches and sang Happy Birthday to both Brycen and Lightening.  Sometimes it makes me laugh at the silly things we do to humor the kids, but when I see how happy it makes them, it is totally worth the extra effort. 

Grandpa worked hard to rig up the taco pinata and the kids were thrilled to work together to try to get to the candy.  There were a lot of wild swings, and a few near misses, but it didn't take too long to break open the taco and race for the candy.  After everything settled down, they decided that they weren't ready to be done yet so grandpa found more candy and fruit snacks and taped up the taco for more hits.  The only pictures I got are really quite terrible, but I love the memories they show.

Shortly before ten we rushed to find a channel that would show the countdown and ball drop in New York.  We almost missed it, but had just enough time to yell Happy New Year and listen to Auld Lang Syne.  It was the perfect ending to a great night and we all headed home tired but happy.