2011 New Year's Eve

This I think has been the first New Years Eve in about 3 years that Nick wasn't on call. However, I think I'd rather him be on call for that holiday than Christmas or Thanksgiving any year. So we were able to get together with the Walkers to celebrate. Michelle and I had debated constantly about if we keep our kids up to midnight or celebrate early. My girls love to watch the ball drop on TV, so we decided to celebrate at 11pm with the East Coast. Either way, the kids had a blast! We tried to incorporate every single tradition we could think of it seemed! Growing up I used to stay up till midnight and then go outside and bang pots and pans. I never watched the ball drop until I think I was in High School, but we do that tradition now with our kids. The other tradition that I've started with my kids is to drink the sparkling grape juice on new years. I wish I could drink that every day I love it so much and now Cora is the same as me! Michelle and Kendall bought a bunch of noise makers for the kids to use at midnight. And then Michelle and Nick growing up would blow up balloons and then their Aunt Lorraine would tie this special tie putting the balloons in a sheet and at midnight she would pull the string and the balloons would go flying to the ground and the tradition is that the kids pop the balloons....so can you see that our kids were a bit confused as to what tradition to do first because they all have to be done at midnight!! :) It was pretty comical watching us adults throw pots and pans to them, tell them to sound their noise makers, give them their special drinks, and then tell them to pop their balloons all at once! Then we blew the balloons up too small that they couldn't even pop them! In fact, I'm typing this post up at the end of January and two of our balloons are still blown up and laying around a house! Oh and did I also mention that this is all at 11pm so when they were banging pots and pans on the front porch yelling Happy New Years, Michelle's neighbors probably thought we were insane! It was lots of fun to be had for all!

Here are some pictures of them waiting to do all their traditions! Kayley wanted a picture of her throwing a balloon into the air!! She's so funny!

Oh...and did I mention I love these boys!?!?! I was able to get some cute pictures of the two of them! 2011 was a great year and brought lots of great things and new beginnings for us with our family, but we are very excited for 2012 and the other new things we get to experience together as a family!