New Year's Eve

It's been a whole week since Christmas, seems more like a blink of an eye! It's time to say goodbye to 2016 and welcome in the new year. Billy smoked some chicken legs, I made a couple dips, the kids requested fried cheese sticks and of course, it all added up to too much food again.

 Last year, I made up little lunch bags with times written on them, for the kids to open each hour. They had little activities inside and it helped to pass the hours down til midnight. Well, Taylor really enjoyed it and insisted on doing something similar this year! Honestly, while I thought it was a fun thing to do, after the advent calendar all month long, I was a bit tired of planning activities. So...she decided to do it herself. She wrote a cute note, then placed it in our advent calendar. At 7PM she placed a note in the #7 spot that said: TIME FOR DINNER. YUMMY! I can tell I'm rubbing off on her because that is exactly what I would have written. lol! That's my girl!

8PM spot was to play a board game. We played a LONG game of Aggravation and Billy won...grrr! Then, without even prompting, Blake decided to take a turn and write one for the 9 o'clock spot, his was very thoughtful, it read: WRITE DOWN THE BEST MEMORIES YOU HAD IN 2016. (plus the little Stinker wrote: *AND CELEBRATE BLAKE WINNING EVERY BOARD GAME! hahaha)

 Taylor was a real hoot, she was adamant about us all being excited and truly celebrating with vigor! When the ball dropped in NYC, she was yelling at the top of her lungs, "HAPPY NEW YEAR, HEY YOU GUYS!!! SAY HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!" She totally cracked me up, I think she actually got angry when she saw Blake not chiming in! The kids and I started to get tired and thought of giving up and going to bed, but I decided that we had made it too long to give up now...I made the kids to jumping jacks, toe touched, and spins to help them stay awake. It worked! We made it to midnight and watched the ball drop on tv with Snoop Dog as the host. We all blew our little horns and then Tay insisted on grabbing a pot and wooden spoon to "wake the neighborhood"! She went crazy out front! It was a great way to bring in 2017. It's going to be a blessed year ahead!