Happy New Year (belatedly)

I totally forgot to post our New Year's festivities!

The truth is, New Year's Eve was never really a big deal to me. As a child, my family occasionally got together with family and had a little celebration, but usually we were home. As I got a little older, I had great expectations for New Year's Eve but was usually disappointed.

When Todd and I were dating, he took me to the big party downtown. It really was a good time and I'm glad I had a chance to go once. Since Kristen always spent New Year's Eve with her dad, what else were we going to do? By the next year, we were married and spent the evening with some dear friends. We did go out at the last minute; I suppose we felt we "should" ring in the New Year with a bang, but honestly I just wanted to be home. We had a tragic pregnancy that ended a few weeks before and we were still licking our wounds.

The next year, we had Brandon and we never went out for New Year's Eve again :) It didn't feel right to spend it anywhere else but home as a family. Most years we were asleep as the year changed over ;)

I'm not exactly sure when it happened, but Todd started asking things like, "So what are you making tonight?" and dropping little hints that maybe New Years could be a bigger deal than what we were making of it. So last year, I decided to actually plan something for us :) Todd's family has paella (a delicious Spanish dish) on New Year's Eve, so I started with that, then planned yummy snacks, games, and movies and let the kids stay up as late as they could. We had a ball!

And so this year, our new tradition continued....

My dad came over earlier in the day to exchange our Christmas gifts:
After we had our paella that Todd made (which I forgot to photograph, but it looked great and tasted as good as it looked!), we moved to the family room for some fun and movies. Here's our chocolate dipped yummies:
I'm not brave enough to serve it fondue-style, so I do the dipping then serve it on trays ;) Kristen is missing from this photo for a reason...she was at her first New Year's Eve party! You're shocked that I would agree to this, I know, but the party was at the home of some good friends of ours from church which is only a few minutes from our house ;) (It's actually a huge party with many people from our church in attendance)

Mom came over New Year's Day for the traditional pork and sauerkraut and some fun games!
Nicky looks so tired! He almost made it to midnight the night before!

Finally, New Year's Eve feels right! These last two of my life have been my best ever!