New Year's Eve at Our House

This year, I kicked New Year's Eve off right by sleeping in, and was it ever nice.  

While I was sleeping Shawn got up and took Jarom to the church at 9 a.m. so he clean the building with the other young men in the ward.   Isn't Shawn the sweetest for letting me sleep in.  He is always doing wonderful things like that for me.  

For breakfast, I made the most wonderful egg sandwiches on whole grain english muffins with homemade guacamole.  MMMMMmmmm!  If I do say so myself.

At 5:30 we went to our friends house to celebrate the New Year with fireworks and hot chocolate.

We now interrupt this blog post for an Alaska Living Lesson

Alaska Living Lesson:  In Alaska we don't really do fireworks on the 4th of July because it is broad daylight all night, and so... it really isn't that much fun.  Because of that, New Year's Eve is the big night for fireworks around here.   The good thing about doing fireworks in the winter is that by 3:30 in the afternoon it's dark so you don't have to wait until 10 p.m. to light them off.  The bad thing is, however, that it is cold on New Year's Eve, really cold.  And when I say really cold I mean like -32 degrees cold., because that's how cold  it really was last night.   We were dressed head to toe in our winter gear with only our eyes poking out, and even then we were shivering after 5 minutes.   So, while the children did enjoy lighting sparklers,  most of them didn't last very long outside and opted to enjoy the majority of the fireworks from inside.  

After the fireworks, we said good-bye to our wonderful friends and headed home.  Shawn took Tabetha into town to the youth church dance and then stopped off at the store for chips and dip, because, as Logan informed me, chips and dip is now a New Year's Eve tradition at our house because that's what we ate last New Year's Eve.  Our favorite dip is a block of cream cheese with salsa poured over it.  Really healthy... NOT, but it tastes really good.
We spent the rest of the evening playing games.   Apples to Apples, and Pitt were the starting attractions, because they can be enjoyed by all.   At 11:30 we sent the little girls off to bed and then the big kids (Shawn and I included) played cards.  Our card game of choice, back alley.  Shawn and Jarom won, but Logan and I put up a good fight, especially since it was Logan's first time playing.
After our card game was over things got  really silly.  We started  making jokes and saying things like, "I'm going to bed, I haven't slept a wink since last year," and, "are you going to eat that.  It's so old it's from last year," or, "the little girls have been asleep since last year."  The one that really got me laughing was, "Wow, we started this card game last year, and we just finished."

Fact:  There is a genetic defect in the female line of my family that makes everything said seem 10 times funnier if it is said after 12:00 at night.  This defect partially explains the extreme amount of laughing that was done by me on New Year's Eve.  

Happy New Year everyone!

P.S.  This year I'm not making New Year's resolutions I'm doing this instead.