New Years in Pictures

My family is close. Like, ridiculously close. Despite our nearly trying to kill each other on a daily basis all through growing up, my sisters and I grew up to be the best of friends. Cody, even though we live 20+ minutes away now, comes at least once a week to play with Annie (I have the play-doh all over my kitchen floor right now to prove it.) My family also love games; card games, party games, memory games, board games, video games, drinking games (just kidding). And we will find any excuse to get together and play them. Holidays, birthdays, Saturdays, Sundays, days where people got off work a little early. Holidays are some of our favorites. My sisters and I were discussing this around New Years. Did any of us have plans to go hang out with friends? Nope. (Losers.) Sure we all thought about going to a friend's party, but all of us ended up right where we almost always do on holidays, together.
I think I just always assumed that all families got together on all holidays (Fourth of July, Memorial Day, National Aardvark Day), not just the major ones; and had deep seated traditions for each and everyone of those holidays. I was kinda shocked when I got married and had my first holiday freak out of "Which family are we going to get together with?!" and my husband stared at me like I was crazy and was like, "My parents go out with their friends, and I haven't seen my siblings on this holidays since we were 12." Oh. (As I was secretly thinking, "Cool! Now I only have to split up the 'big' holidays!" Then it kinda made me feel like a loser that it had never even crossed my mind to hang out with friends on the holiday, but I got over it, 'cause we had a new Cranium game to break in at my parents house.
All of the above rambling leads to this New Years Eve, where (now that I'm a grown up and all) for the first time I hosted the New Years bash at my own house. It was a success . . . as is measured by the fact we had about 5 times too much food, we were all up at midnight (minus Ellie and Jovanny, but hey, they're 7 months old), and we broke in a new game that involved Greg and Cody throwing small balls at each other from over their shoulders and catching them in tiny cups. And Greg trying to hum, "This is How You Remind Me." And me making the funniest joke in human history ever told about my grandfather. And Star yelling at Cody and Greg for not getting 'Monkey Wrench' from her obviously master sculpted clay. And as an added bonus, my adorable two year old stayed up and ridiculously happy 'til way past midnight. It was even a success after Annie nearly received a concussion from being clocked in the head with a Wii controller by an overly enthusiastic bowler. I'm not saying who. (Dad). I ate, I sang, I played games that are probably best reserved for very drunk people, and in my sober state still laughed until my stomach hurt. Is it any wonder I keep ending up at parties with these people year after year?!

We had to whip out the especially big card table . . .

Jovanny doing what most of us were thinking about doing around 10:45PM, before we got our second wind.

See, who knew playing "Five Crowns" could be so funny. Except for Talina, who apparently takes her discarding VERY seriously.

Annie and Cody in a heated game of "Guess Who?" She seriously kicks our trash. She's good.

Annie setting up for another round . . .

Around 11:30 the party dissolved into a giant pile of people watching the movie "Elf" and waiting for the countdown.

We woke Jovanny up at one point.

Annie and Talina pretending to sleep. This kid was so wired though, there was no chance of her falling asleep with everyone still there.

Annie apparently heard stories about the drunk drivers everyone worries about when they leave a New Years Eve party . . . someone needed to remind Annie we were perfectly safe (as was Baby Bear) since we hosted.
Shortly after this, we had the countdown, Annie ran around the room and kissed pretty much every single person, and then Annie and I went outside where she cried out, "Happy New Years!!" at the top of her little lungs. To which our neighbors waved and responded in kind. There were also more illegal fireworks over our town than I would've ever expected. Annie thought this was possibly even cooler than Santa Claus coming.

The next day, we were able to get together with Greg's brother and sister-in-law, who came into town, as well as their two boys, Connor and Nathan. These are our two girls only cousins. Annie and Connor are about 5 months apart (Annie's older), and Ellie is eight weeks older than Nathan. We don't get to see them all that often, since Chris is half way through law school at Notre Dame, and Indiana isn't anywhere near close enough for them to come for Sunday dinners.

Here's Annie showing off her new kitchen to Connor. What you don't see here are the several meltdowns my very tired two year old had during this exchange. Poor Connor couldn't do anything right, and kept just staring at Annie like, "What is wrong with her, she keeps spontaneously bursting into tears anytime I touch anything!"

Here's Ellie with her cousin counterpart. I love how Nathan is like, "Look at me, I'm the happy baby who loves, loves, loves being on my tummy, more than anything else in the entire world!" (his Mom informed me that isn't usually the case), and Ellie looks like she's pretty convinced she's the most picked on baby ever.

"Here Mom, the phone's for you."

Once off her stomach, and happily chewing stuff, Ellie was cool. Plus, she found a shared passion with her cousin, sticking stuff in their mouths.

"Look, we have the exact same hair style!"

They kinda look alike, don't they? You don't even really notice the 5 lb. weight difference between the two.

And lastly, I had to throw in this picture . . . this is my family watching Utah play in the bowl game tonight. Go Utes! Annie marched around the house singing, "Go Utah! Go Utes! Go you guys!" (And, see how thrilled Ellie is by the first quarter! She really seems to 'get' football. She's probably a prodigy.)