What a Year It's Been

We had some close friends and family over to end this year with us. We had a buffet of soups and rolls along with snacks to feed the entire block. The "older" kids had so much fun playing poker and the card game Bang. While the little ones basically did their own thing playing XBOX.

Daesha and Desirae watching TV in their jammies on our bed....

The "older" kids playing Bang.
The girls pretty much killed the guys at poker. Our friend Kaisa ended up winning it all after the last 2 put in all their chips and she won with a straight! Funny thing is she was a bit apprehensive playing poker but because we convinced her that it wasn't actual money we were playing with she decided to play. By her smile and the celebration dance that followed her winnings I think she enjoyed it :)

At 11:30 everyone headed outside for the first annual Christmas tree burning. We have an artificial tree (which I love) but this year we went with our home teachers to a Methodist church and got trees for 30 bucks! Ours was completely dead after 2 weeks. My husband is somewhat of a pyromaniac and was eager to burn the tree. It was engulfed with only one match and took 56 seconds to burn completely. We sang a round of "O Christmas Tree" while it burned. We are sick I know....


The trunk of the tree with it's own natural glowing star at the top....

With 2 minutes to midnight we passed out glow sticks, blow whistles, confetti poppers, and SILLY STRING! We all went in to watch the ball drop in New York City and count down the last 10 seconds.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!!

It was very noisy and completely out of control for several seconds. Daesha plugged her ears and became the sitting duck...

Keegan cried because he couldn't spray his silly string. He ended up throwing it behind him and shouting "I hate silly string!"

I helped him spray his bottle and let him pull a couple string confetti poppers. He was much happier after that.

We had some mini disco balls to add to the celebration. I thought it was funny that some silly string had wrapped around the base of the spinning ball.

Lizzy was not happy about the noise and commotion. But she stayed right in the room with us.

Because Daesha plugged her ears at the beginning she was the only one at the end to have silly string left. So she went around getting each person and then she would apologize. The girl to the left of the photo just got soaked with the kitchen sink spray nozzle. Some adolescent adult taped the trigger down!

The adolescent adult had to do the clean up as punishment...


It was a great night spent with friends!