First day of the new year was spent being sick, cleaning the house from the last several months of on-the-run living, and watching movies with my littlies while the two biggest males played Ticket to Ride.
Category: Family Time
We were all a little under the weather for New Years Eve this year. We were tired, the parties we wanted to go to were far off, and to be honest, home sounded really good this year…
Setting off some small fireworks to get the night started.I threw the party together in about 45 minutes. I started with a run to the dollar store for supplies: small little doodads for goodie bags, a fresh glue stick, some ribbon, and some discounted glittery balls for the Photo Booth…
Some of our New Years Eve goodies.I made some treat bags with paper lunch sacks (we have to get a whole bag every year for school and end up using three) clocks downloaded from the internet, and lots of fun!
The garland we made last week at Grandma’s house is now complete!
Opening the first goodie bag of the night.We were going to use some Photo Booth supplies I’d picked up ages ago at Wal-mart, but when I couldn’t find them, Nick reminded me that I’d donated them to a church pre-teen event (I never saw photos from that, btw!)
Our own little Photo Booth.
We loved glittering up these photo booth props. (We found them online and cut them out ourselves.)
David said I couldn’t post this to facebook, but he never said I couldn’t post it on my blog! Bwahaha!
Trying out the photo booth myself.
Nick said he was watching football, butslept through most of the evening.
We loved the sentiment this sign displayed, so we printed one of our own.
All our snacks came from a Christmas present from Grandma
Another hour, another goodie bag.Even with hourly goodie bags, the evening dragged on, so we watched Harry Potter while we waited for the countdown.
Movie watching time!Finally it’s time for the big countdown!
The end of the evening and the last of the mini fireworks.Took the kids to see “Frozen” this afternoon, so all you people I’ve shushed can now talk to me about the movie. It was delightful! So delightful, in fact, that Greg asked to watch it again the minute it was over. Or to go buy it on “cd.” When I said those were not options, he asked if we could at least sing the songs. And he has been. All afternoon and into the night.
I frequently forget to post adorably weird things about Ben. He is fabulously weird. Case in point: I walked into the living room this morning and he was having a conversation with the dog about parrots. “How do people live with them? What if they landed on your head claws out?! There’d be blood everywhere! I should ask Aunt Kay. Oh, wait, she kept her birds in a cage. You should be glad we don’t keep you in a cage, Rose. Or birds. Mama doesn’t like cages OR birds.”
For a lovely, wonderful three-hour block today, my sister and kids and I watched Doctor Who. It was beautiful. Since she left it’s been nothing but soap operas. Apparently my mom only tolerates Doctor Who for my sister.
The phrase of the day is “oddly good.” I used it in reference to a weird apple fritter donut, but my family has taken it up as their own. So MANY things can be oddly good.
Ten minutes ago my kid announced he needed a Christmas shirt for school. Here’s what 10 minutes and some markers gets you. 
We took our fourth ride on the Polar Express. We’re becoming experts at it. 🙂 This year for the first time my sister joined us, so we got to relive the newness of the ride with her. It was lovely. 🙂
After all that, we hit our usual Mexican restaurant for dinner and everyone gorged on burritos and nachos and enchiladas, oh my! We had such a great time!
Lisa Holcomb 