Happy New Year

HAPPY 2010 EVERYONE!!! We had a really fun New Years Eve at my parents' home with the entire Sharp family. (In case I haven't mentioned it in the past 5 minutes....I LOVE having our whole family closeby and that we love each other and doing things together. We are totally blessed to have each other!) Anyways, we had a super delicious turkey dinner. I love turkey dinner! Then we got busy with our traditional night of game playing! We had a table of "grownup games" and a table of "kid games". Two adults at a time would sit at the kid table and play preschool games like CandyLand Castle and Memory. The adults rotated through so no one felt stuck and the kids had a blast playing with all of the grownups! The kid game I most enjoyed was CandyLand Castle. I enjoyed all of the adult games I got to play. I played Bananagrams for the first time and totally loved it. It is like a speed individual scrabble. I also liked Settlers of Catan and Ticket to Ride (which I ALMOST won once except that I didn't realize I wasn't connected to my destination city....missed it by 1 train!). At 8:30 ish we took the kids outside and did a few little fireworks and let them do some sparklers. My kids LOVED the sparklers and it was the first year I let them do it. It has been a VERY wet fall here so that wasn't really a concern. I was more worried about the fact that they kept swinging sparklers around and almost sticking anyone in arms reach (including themselves) with the fire. At one point, I told Kate to put hers out....so she stuck the flame IN HER MOUTH!!! Fortunately, it was pretty much out and I think my yelp scared her more than it hurt her. She didn't miss a second of the fun with crying. Kate really enjoyed doing hers in circles (lately EVERYTHING she does is in circles...dancing drawing....if it can be done in a circle...it is so!) No one got hurt or caught on fire and they spent A LOT of time oooohh and ahhhhing so I think it was a raging success. At 9pm, we got out pots and pans and let the littles bring in the New Year. They really loved banging on all the pots and pans and yelling "Happy New Year" It was really adorable (and hey...it was late to them...they can't tell time). We also toasted the New Year with sparkling grape juice. My kids managed a sip this time, but still don't like it. I really wish I could have captured Madison's first sip on camera. She looked so shocked...like her mouth was on fire! So funny! Then we put all the kids down at Nana and Papa's and got back to playing games. Some of the adults would play video games and some would play board games. It was sooo fun. Close to midnight we thought about our New Years goals and shared some of them. I had been thinking about mine for some time as there is quite a bit that I have wanted to improve/start fresh with. A few of my biggies are
1. Attend the temple
2. Lose 30 pounds
3. Blog every day
There are others, but these are probably the bigger/more notable ones. At midnight, we counted down and quietly said "Happy New Year!" Shortly after Christopher and I packed up the kiddos and headed home for the night. The next morning though we all met together again and had a super yummy breakfast (my dad even made buttermilk syrup for the waffles) and played played played through lunch. It was a really fun New Years celebration. Here's to a successful, happy, and healthy 2010!!!!