Skip to main content

Happy New Year

We have a tradition of hosting a family friendly party each year.  We used to be really lame and celebrate New York time and send my siblings home so we could put our little ones down and go to bed ourselves.  Now, we stay up until midnight and the kids do too!  It is really one of my favorite nights of the year.  This year started off with a yummy dinner of sweet and sour chicken, egg rolls and ham fried rice.  BYO snacks made sure we were more than sick before the midnight hour!There were meatballs, 7 layer dip, chips, pork rinds (who brought those?), caramel popcorn, chocolate and candy galore.  The boys/men watched football, the ladies played Dominoes and the cousins played for hours downstairs.  Douglas went to a party at a friend's house where there were females present.  I knew that day was coming but I hoped it would be when he was 21!  Despite that fact, it really was a great night!

You can always count on Uncle Dallas and Aunt Riza to bring something super fun for the festivities.  They are about 30 going on 12!  This year they brought 2-foot long party poppers.  I warned Dallas that he would be cleaning up the mess when it came time.  We thought it might be better to skip that activity but in the end we all couldn't help ourselves.  What is so fun about a bunch of confetti flying around the room?  I can't really describe it but it seemed the PERFECT way to ring in the new year!


Top left:  Ben, Cameron, Dallas
Middle:  Kelly, Elyse, Me, Riza
Bottom:  Wilson, Stockton, Jordan
Not Pictured:  Aunt Dena (holding baby Sarah upstairs, Russell(taking the picture), Mason (zonked out an hour prior) Douglas (hopefully not participating in a New Year's kiss!) and Grandma and Grandpa Sproul who came for a few hours but went home for a few minutes of peace and quiet!

So, now the holidays are over but I still have a reminder of them in my living room!  I took all of my decorations down a few days before the new year but just couldn't bear to take down my tree.  It really is the prettiest thing in my house and I thought it would be okay if I left it up until New Year's day...which has now turned into January 5th and I know I am not getting to it today.

It is not in my way, Mason is not touching it and it goes so well with my red dining room!
Maybe I could say it is my Valentine tree?  Is that too much of a stretch?
Labels:

Comments

Meredith said…
I still have all of my decorations up and can't see that I'll even start taking them down before the weekend. By the way, one year I did have my tree up until Valentine's Day. Not intentionally, I just needed to leave it up for a bit so I could retake some Christmas pictures and then I got so used to having it in the family room I just kind of forgot about it until one of my friends said, "Ummm, do you need some help taking your tree down??" It happened to be February 14 and I had finally had the kids haul out their Christmas gifts and snapped that "Christmas morning" shot that I missed Christmas day and the tree came down:)
January 5, 2011 at 9:06 PM
Kim said…
It looks like you had a great New Year party! I'll bet it wasn't too fun cleaning it the next day. Did Dallas really help? Love your tree too. It's beautiful!
January 6, 2011 at 2:45 PM
Patti said…
How nice that you let Dallas blow up his cannons in your basement. Great shot on that one explosion! So was Stockton in a grumpy mood or is that just the look on his face for the pictures?
As far as the tree is concerned, just add some conversation hearts here and there and call it good. That way it will be March 1 before you need to worry about it and even then you can just take the red stuff off, leave the green, add some shamrocks and go for another 30 days. Works for me. Oh wait, I'm the one that didn't decorate at all this year! Maybe my advice is worthless.
January 6, 2011 at 2:51 PM
wylie said…
I was sure hoping you would post pictures of the confetti shooters! Great pic. Your tree is beautiful I agree and I too have noticed how it goes with the red dining room. I am amazed that Mason isn't touching it either.
January 6, 2011 at 7:06 PM
Kimberly said…
What great pictures!! Love the party poppers, looks like fun.
January 12, 2011 at 10:05 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

On Top of the World

I have never been a runner. I have grown up around runners. My dad has run 7 or 8 marathons. My mom has run 2. My husband ran one 7 years ago. I have always cheered from the sidelines and wondered why in the world anyone would EVER do something like that. It is just plain ridiculous. In my quest to get rid of the after math of 2 pregnancies in a years time I decided to step my workouts up a bit. I am a really good walker. I would much rather walk 4 miles than run 1 but I needed to burn more calories. So, running it was. I decided if I mostly walked with some intermittent running that would help. I started out running the downhill portions of my 2 mile loop. Pretty soon I would walk my 2 miles, put Mason down for a nap and run a few loops in the park. About a month ago, Russell challenged me to run the full 2 miles. He pushed the baby stroller while we ran. I was not very conversational , but I did it! I was so proud of myself. I incorporated that 2 mile run into my wor...
11 comments
Read more

Old Enough For the Temple!

Mason and I have been looking forward to going to the temple for a long time.  It is one of my favorite places and there is nothing better than going with your kids.  Mason was ordained a Deacon on January 5th and received his temple recommend  so he could do baptisms and confirmations. We checked Mason out of school a little early on January 9th and went before lunch. We wanted to be together as a family so we invited Douglas and Daisha, Amelia and Grandma Orchard.  That made it special.  It was snowing when we came out so Grandma insisted on staying under the awning.  She didn't even know she was photo bombing! 😂 And to make it even more special, we took family names.  A temple sealer told me to think about families and bringing families to the temple.  I had never thought of that.  I always just grabbed whatever names were next in my card file but we purposefully put together 2 different families to baptize that da...
Post a Comment
Read more

Arizona

Our love of baseball has taken us on some of our coolest family vacations.  Last week, Douglas' team played in the Triple Crown Spring Training tournament.  We decided to cash in our sky miles so all of us could go cheer him on.  A toddler on my lap for a 2 hour flight was a little more enticing than enduring a 12 hour roadtrip, each way.  Douglas wasn't too sad that he missed the team travel in a 16 passenger van.  Can you imagine it?  8 teenage boys...together...lauging....texting...stinking.  No thanks!  His coaches are saints! As seems to always be the case, travel day was hectic.  Watching our family go through airport security must be somewhat entertaining.  There are the Ipods, the belts, the shoes, the stroller, the laptop, the portable DVD player, the camera, the sippy cup, the blanket....followed by the howls of a little boy who got his fingers pinched when the stroller collapsed on him as we tried to contain him to...
10 comments
Read more