Happy New Year!

The holidays have been so busy around here and I don't think it's quite ready to let up. Most of my free time I manage to fill with primary things to do. I've enjoyed having the girls home from school and the few days that Shawn has been able to take off during the holdiays. It was nice to stay here in town and do things together as a family.

Christmas Eve we saw Tale of Despereaux (quite different than the book) and went out to a fancy dinner at a restaurant/Sushi place that our hometeacher owns. We made a ham dinner Christmas Day and enjoyed all our new toys. We went over to the church so Felicity could ride her new scooter and Evelyn could try out her new bike. Lydia got a DS and likes picto-chatting with Felicity. I took Shawn shopping for a new suit and Shawn got me a laptop. I love having a computer upstairs now and I will be able to keep all my digiscrapbooking stuff on it this year. A couple days after Christmas I talked Shawn out of sledding and into bowling (I really don't like being cold and wet). The two younger girls had never gone bowling before (we deprive them, I know), so it was pretty exciting. With the bumpers up we all did fabulously and we had so many problems with our lanes (they even switched us over to another lane) that the very nice manager didn't charge us.

New Year's Eve we threw our own little party here. We made all our favorite snack foods - cheeseball, Chex mix, Muddy Buddies, Grandpa Paul's Perfect Party Punch - and just hung out and relaxed. We played some U-No attack, had top spinning competitions, pulled some old-fashioned party crackers, watched the Dog Whisperer and America's Funniest Videos. Evelyn fell asleep sometime just after 11 p.m., but after the ball dropped in Time Square we woke her up to go outside and blow our noisemakers, do poppers and yell "Happy New Year." New Year's Day we made a turkey dinner and went and saw Bolt at the dollar theatre while the turkey cooked.

I haven't made any resolutions yet - I must choose them very carefully if I have any hope of keeping them you know. We have a primary activity tomorrow and the whole New Year part of primary organization that has been taking a lot of my brain power. I will try to get some pictures posted and some of the recipes from our festivities up on our Recipe Blog.