Happy New Year!

Is it twenty-eleven or two-thousand eleven? Regardless, hooray for both of them.
Aside from the fact that I will turn a year older and my husband will turn 'yet another' year older I'm all for bringing in the new.

We welcomed the new year with a very kid-fun New Year's Eve (NYE) party with good friends.
The Dads (lots of Dad's at this party) were on swing duty for part of the night.

After looking at the above picture I just thought of two ideas for my next Valentines/Easter/Birthday/10th!Anniversary OR Christmas list. Grab a pencil and write these down!
#1 a new fancy schmancy camera so I can take better pictures. (I promise not to drop it in a toilet at Six Flags...pinky swear.
#2 a slab of concrete out the basement door. I just now decided to drop the requirement that it be stamped and stained and aesthetically pleasing. It's been five years now and I will be happy with just a plain gray chunk of concrete out there. (love you, babe!)

And now let's return to the kid-fun NYE party.
Even though it snowed just 7 days ago, this NYE we enjoyed mid-60 temps...all night long!
Warm winter weather calls for short sleeved shirts and some after dark lawn sledding.

For you Northerners cringing at our dead yellow grass please know it is just dormant. Come Spring it will turn green and stay green all Summer long whether we water it or not.

Tera has a bit of sledding swagger, I think.

After annoying the neighbors with the lawn sledding we brought out the big guns....
Sparklers left over from who knows when.
Sparklers were a HUGE hit at our kid-fun NYE party!!


(Tyler is in this photo but Lauren is not...can you spot my Mr. T?)

After the sparklers, we brought the gang back inside to wait for the NYE ball to drop.
I'm not sure what Tera was doing but Lauren looks quite tiredly alert.

After the ball dropped on Times Square, we kissed (cheek kissed because germs are gross) everyone a Happy New Year and at 12:01 we sent the kids to bed. Since Matt and I are total rockstars we made it until 12:31 before we said good-bye to /politely kicked out our guests. At 12:45 us rockstars were in bed dreaming of all good things to come in the New Year.

Happy New Year Y'all