New Year's Eve

Did you know New Year's is the hardest holiday for me to be away from family?

Its true. Its a big holiday for my family.  Everyone, that can, comes to the house and parties for two days straight.  Yummy (mostly fried) food and appetizers and all the games you can play.  Then midnight rolls around and we head outside with our pots and pans to make as much noise as possible - sometimes letting fireworks off.  Laughing and having a good ol' time.  Then we wake the next morning: rinse. repeat.

Like I said, its hard for me to be away.

To make things a little easier, we host a party to ensure I'm busy enough to not think about what I'm missing.  Let me tell you: It works :)

We stocked up a bit of fireworks to put on a show:

I have a hard time leaving people out (I've been the one that didn't have a party to go to on New Year's Eve before and I was sad. . . .) though we couldn't feasibly invite the whole ward (aka our friends) we had a pretty great turn out.  At most we had 20 adults and 29 kids in or around our house. That's right, nearly 50 humans in our little home.  It was a little bit crazy but the house is still standing with few casualties. We had baby carrier (there were 6ish) parking and everything.  One friend commented how she couldn't believe how calm I was with that many kids in my house.  Well I did have a *minor* freak out earlier in the day (mostly because it was rainy and yucky weather which made me extremely nervous - and Michael was gone) but then I thought, "who would I NOT want to come?" since the answer to that question was no one I decided to pack up my favorite (breakable) Christmas items and get baking!!

The start of the party was a little chaotic but once people got more settled with a plate of food it was better. We ended up with perfect weather.  A little humid from all the rain but it was good to have wet grass on a firework night (not that one of our fireworks fell over and went off into a neighbors yard . . . . . . or a parked car).

Since the grass was damp we set up on the cement.  Our annoying driveway made for perfect stadium seating.

We had a great spread:

New Year's was the last of the "first" holiday's for Kelsey.  It wouldn't be a new years party if I didn't make my children hold a sparkler while I jump up and down yelling "Happy New Year!!" in their ears.

Rylee wanted nothing to do with the show.  I'm not going to lie, it makes me die a little inside.

Most of the guests left after fireworks to put their own children to bed, but for the first time we actually had some families (four actually) stay and ring in the new year with us!! yay!!  We had so much fun laughing, playing games and of course eating.

I was shocked Rylee stayed up til midnight too!  At about 10:30 she asked to go to bed but immediately changed her mind when we got to her room and she realized her friends were still here. Who could blame her?  As midnight approached we took the party (and our noise makers) back outside.  Our neighbors (in all directions) put on a pretty great show.  Its so fun.

The video is a shot of some of the crowd and then the a 30 shot firework Michael lit to close the show.  (I kind of want to get one for my birthday since I'm turning 30 and all . . . .we'll see if they're on coupon again in July).  I can't believe its 2013 already (and a month in at that).  We're hoping 2013 is a rather uneventful year :)