New Year's Eve 2015

By the end of the year, I was starting to feel better - not fabulous, but better.  The week between Christmas and the new year was catch-up week.  I bought groceries, did laundry, tried to do fun things with the kids, and let them play with their friends as much as possible.

Oh look!  I can get dressed and do my hair!  This is the first time I had gotten ready in about 10 days.  And I felt super sick afterwards!  The good thing about being so miserable for so long was that it was the only holiday I can remember when I actually lost weight.

On New Year's Eve, the minute David walked in the door from work, I said, "Load up the van!  It's time to go!" and we went out for Chinese food.  Our regular neighborhood restaurant looked really busy, so we tried a new place.  It ended up being really good!

Ha ha!  Nice picture Ali! 

Love these ragamuffin boys!  Bronson doesn't actually have a 5 o'clock shadow.   Nicki and her friend had dressed him up as a pirate earlier that day and the marker facial hair/earring only semi-washed off.

This might be my only photo of Quin after I cut his curls off, but before David got to him with the clippers.  

Dave looks like a ghost, and the girls both crack me up.

We came home from dinner around 7:30 pm.  Thank heaven for Netflix.  They have a few little 3-minute New Year's Count Down videos that you can play any time you want.  So we rang in the new year at about 7:45 pm!  We blew our noisemakers, popped some confetti poppers, toasted the upcoming year with sparkling apple juice, and sent the boys to bed!  That's my kind of party!

Look at Quinton's cheeks!!!

David knew he would be driving to Idaho the next day, so he went to bed before midnight.  The girls and I stayed up. I REALLY didn't want to.  I was still semi-sick, remember?  But I felt too guilty to leave the girls alone.  So we played a game or two, watched a movie, and ate left over treats from Christmas.  We paused our movie long enough to watch the ball drop on TV.  That's about it for our New Year party.  Pretty pathetic, even by my standards!

What a year 2015 was!  We had some really great memories made this year, as well as a couple of really rotten ones.  The best part of the year for me was watching each of my children grow, learn, try hard things, think more deeply, work hard at things, and love each other.  In that regard, I'm really looking forward to 2016!