Ringing in the New Year

This year, I was actually awake when the New Year rolled in.  I can't honestly remember the last time I could have said that!  Since I'm just not normally a night owl, plus the 10 1/2 years of accumulated sleep deprivation I live with, well, pushing myself to stay up till midnight just isn't usually on my list of fun things to do!

But this time around, we were invited to hang out with friends on New Years Eve.  Up until this year, we have never even considered the possibility of letting our kids stay up until midnight.  Usually, I'm all for getting them all to bed as soon as possible when the evening rolls around.  But since our friends let their kids stay up until midnight, we thought we might as well let ours have the opportunity as well.

Now, I have plenty of fun memories myself of past New Years Eves, racing around wildly with a pack of friends while our parents.... well, honestly, I can just remember the running around and playing... the parents were probably doing something extremely boring like sitting around and talking or something! =)

So, after dinner we headed out to our friend's house.  We snacked and played Ticket to Ride while the kids raced around playing wildly.  (There were 13 of them altogether, so it was rather wild.... in a fun way!)  Then it was time for PNG fireworks, aka steel wool, soaked in a flammable substance, lit on fire and then spun around and around on a rope.  Unfortunately, I didn't manage to capture any great pictures of this event!  And after the fireworks the kids had a blast as we burnt bamboo which gives off a loud bang as it 'explodes' in the fire. 

Getting ready for fireworks!

These kiddos were beyond excited to be allowed to be up and racing around outdoors at an hour that was well past their usual bedtime!

Then it was time for some Wii dance.  I think I have the "Gummy Bears" song stuck in my head forever now.  It was the kid's favorite and I'm pretty sure they did it in every available language option as well! =) 
It was during this time that we had our first casualties.  Elijah and Julianne both finally fell asleep!  (and good thing too-- it was almost 10:30pm by this point!)  Us adults played a game of Up and Down the River while the kids continued to play Wii and we waited for that midnight hour.

The boys were all into Wii dance!

All worn out!

 I do have to say that I have no pictures of Kaitlyn for this night.  Poor girl, she was miserably sick and drugged with tylenol and sleeping on the Blake's bed.  We did find out later that she was suffering from a kidney infection (which is now being treated with antibiotics and she's much better!).

We finished off the night by going out on the porch to watch the annual motorcyclists ride by.  Then it was time to load up sleeping kiddos and head home.  I think we finally had everyone in bed and crashed by 1am.  I was looking forward to sleeping in some, but well, Elijah was up and ready to play by 7am.  Sigh!  Overall, it was a fun evening, but I'm definitely glad that we have a whole year before we need to stay up that late again! =)