New Year's 2015!

We spent New Year's in Austin this year.  J and V had the whole week off so we decided to invade their home (after having just seen them for Christmas!)!

On New Year's Eve we just lounged at home and played board games all day.  We brought a whole bunch of games and we actually played ALL of them!  There was Qbitz, Monopoly Jr. (our current family fave), Guess Who, Surprise Slides, Perfection, Doc McStuffins Spot It Jr., Pictionary Jr., Scattergories, and Hedbandz Act It Out.  Phew!  That's a lot of games!

The new Hedbandz game was super fun because it was similar to charades.  It definitely had us laughing!  (I was sad this picture below came out blurry...so funny!)

We set off a whole bunch of fireworks in the backyard that night, even though it was freezing out.  The kids have always had a fear of them but this was our best year yet!  Evie and Eli were even brave enough to help light a few of them.  That's a big milestone! (Although I'm not sure who Evie is standing with in the pic below...strange Asian fellows...)

When Eli and Elina were younger we had set off these cute ladybug fireworks.  They spin around fast and then make a high shrill and fly up into the air.  Both of them burst into tears after that one went off and we called it a night.  So we always remember "those ladybugs."

This year we pulled them out again and Eli said, "Oh, no.  It's those ladybugs."  We lit one and it was loud...but the kids were into it!  So that's another big moment for our scaredy-cat kids.  =)
Sparklers were a big hit this time around.

The neat thing we did was long exposure shots of us dancing around with sparklers.  At first we were just doing squiggles and basic shapes..

...but then the adults decided to do letters and numbers.  Wellllllllllll, first you have to figure out how to write things backwards...J!!!!  She was trying to make an "L" and kept making a "J" instead.  Boo!

Then we had this awesome idea to use our last 4 sparklers for the 4 adults to write out "2015."  Cool idea, right?   Welllllllllllllll, V had the "0" and his sparkler ran out faster than the rest of us....so...the picture wasn't quite as amazing as we had imagined.  But it'll suffice AND it makes for great memories!

 J and V went to their own adult-only New Year's Eve Party while we held down the fort.  We did our annual confetti shower.  This is the 3rd year in a row that we've done this.  The kids LOVE it...and we HATE finding it everywhere for the remainder of the year.  But it's lots of fun, so we'll keep doing it!  I mean look at these faces!

Elina and Eli were also allowed to stay up until midnight for the first time EVER!  We played Monopoly Jr. and Pictionary Jr. until 11:52pm.  Then we watched the "ball drop" and called it a night.  The kids were so excited to tell everyone they stayed up late! I even took a picture with them holding B's phone as proof that they stayed up past midnight!

Our New Year's Day was spent doing lots of fun things with J and V.  We went bowling and then roller skating.  It was a jam-packed day!

Then the afternoon that we returned home from Austin, AM and his family came over and we had our own New Years party with all the new Christmas gifts!  We made cotton candy (with AM's machine), played games, and had a karaoke party!

But what's New Year's without some resolutions?  We decided to list things we wanted to learn or get better at, but we also had to list one aspect of our character that we need to work on...
ELINA--draw better, spin on roller skates, cheer people on more
ELI--blow bubbles with bubblegum, whistle, bowl over 100, ask "do you need any help?" every day, do chores more automatically
EVIE--see a shooting star, sew "with my hands," listen the first time right away
ME--learn new cake decorating skills, see an optometrist (my eyes are terrible now), take more car trips (now that Eulee is older), toss useless things, wear my hair down more often, react more calmly the first time (I tend to overreact...so they say...)
B--finish tons of house projects...and he hasn't really had time to sit down and think about what he wants to improve on about his character...he claims there's really nothing to be fixed...hmmmm....reeeeeeeallllllly?

Elina and I made a deal that we would use a code word if one of us wasn't doing our character resolution.  So if I'm overreacting for no reason or if Elina isn't cheering on a sibling or a friend, then one of us will say "Eggplant!" and the other person will know something's not right.  This is in the testing phase.  Maybe I won't even hear her say "Eggplant" while I'm shouting....

Our New Year was definitely filled with family, friends, and fun this year!  What a blast!

We hope everyone has a HAPPY 2_15!!