Happy New Year!

Here we are 10 days into the new year and I'm finally blogging about New Year's Eve... That's cool, better late than never!

So I pulled out my bags of fun this New Year's Eve, a tradition I started years ago but stopped doing for one reason or another. I was pleasantly surprised when I pulled them out of storage and the boys both remembered them and were totally excited about them. Each bag has a clock face on the front specifying a time, and in each bag is an item and a message telling what activity we're going to do that hour as we wait up til midnight.

The first bag told had an apron in it and a message that we were going to start the night by making home-made pizzas. We invited Will's "Bestest" friend Mason to join us for our little party. He's a great kid and very funny! It was fun having a third boy there.

The second bag had an orange in it and a recipe for making cool bird feeders. We sliced oranges and added cranberries and birdseed to pie tins and filled them with water to freeze all together. After they freeze, they can be hung outside on the tree branches. (Note: We didn't have room in our freezer for all the pie tins so we set them on our picnic table in the backyard and I'm not gonna lie... they're still sitting there! We need to get them hung!!)

Anyway, the third bag had a giant chocolate bar and a message that it was time to break out the chocolate fountain! (My cute niece gave me one for Christmas and Will couldn't wait to break it out!)

It was definitely the highlight of the evening! We dipped everything we could think of in it! Jeff even tried summer sausage, celery and carrots! The carrots were actually pretty good!

The fourth bag had the DVD I made of our 2009 year in review. After we watched it, we made up charade cards with memories from 2009 and played charades. Mason didn't know many of the activities that we did, so when it was his turn he just acted out a memory from something that happened in his family during 2009. It was too cute!

The fifth bag had a small game in it and a message that we were going to play each of our favorite board games now. We played Hullabaloo, Clue Jr., and Jumpin' Monkey's. Fun, fun, fun!

The last bag had noise-makers and hats and fun things to dress up in to go outside and welcome in the new year (even though it was only 10:00 p.m.).

I just love this pic... check out Will's outfit! Not everyone can pull that off:)

And that was the end of our New Year's Eve bash! What a great way to start a new year!

Oh, one last thing though... earlier in the day we all filled out a questionnaire and found a personal treasure to add to our family time capsule that we put together. We plan on opening it in 2020 so we each wrote a letter to our 10-years-older-selves telling us what we hope we've accomplished by this point, and reminding ourselves that loving and spending time with your family should still be a priority in our lives (Drew will be almost 19 and a senior in high school, and Will will be 16 and wanting to drive, so this was mainly propaganda to remind them what they were like at 8 and 6... I hope it helps keep them close... only time will tell.).

Happy New Year to you and yours! May all your resolutions and goals be realized!