New Year's Eve

The Annual Ball Family New Year's Eve Party was another success.  This year was a much smaller crowd because many families were out of town and our friend group keeps shrinking as people move away.  But don't worry, the giant newspaper ball was bigger than ever.  Randy still doesn't know how to level down on anything.  There are two rules in this game and the first is no crying allowed.  I can't remember the other rule.  Rule #1 got broken several times over so I decided we are done with the future newspaper balls.  

Seriously I was so annoyed at kids crying because they didn't get as many prizes as they wanted or didn't get a chance to rip apart the ball because they didn't roll doubles with the dice.  I thought long and hard about it.  Do the kids (mine included) really have no emotional resilience?  Sure seems like it.  Are the kids really that spoiled that they don't know how to respond when they don't get what they want?  Possibly.  But the newspaper ball is a crowd favorite.  Randy says we can just cancel it.  I think we will give it another go but with much fewer prizes and see if that helps.  Some kids walked away with their arms full of gifts (mostly junk but a few gift cards) and others hardly got anything.  I think we will do it next year and see if doing less prizes actually helps.  We used to do less and no one lost their minds or shed tears.  I'm writing all this down so I remember.  It's my own little social experiment to see if our kids really are as bad off as they seem! 

I escaped upstairs for a minutes to see what was going on.  I never know what I'm going to find and was pleasantly surprised to see things weren't being destroyed.

Ethan and his girlfriend Halle

Randy and Barb came back to visit and it was so fun to see them!  My favorite part of the whole night was watching each of my boys walk into the kitchen and when they saw Barb, their faces just lit up.  They all went over and gave her a hug (except Henry of course).  It made me so happy.  They really are like adopted grandparents.  Cedar City is lucky to have them. 

I didn't get any pictures of the fireworks and ball drop.  I was too busy helping people light their lanterns.  But there were fireworks and a ball drop and it was amazing like it is every year.  

We got the Christmas cards hung on December 30th this year so I didn't feel bad about keeping them up until Valentine's Day.  I'm actually surprised by how much my boys love looking at them.  Henry doesn't know most of the people so he'd take one card down at a time, bring it to me, and ask me how we knew that family.  So tender, right?  And surprising.  We love our friends and family!

This is a terrible picture of the annual polar bear plunge that our friends host each year.  The video of people jumping in, practically on top of each other was pretty epic.  There were soooo many people there.  I think Landon won $20 for jumping in and staying in the longest.  

You couldn't pay me to sit in that crowded hot tub!

Henry begged to go to an indoor trampoline place during the break.  Man, I hate those places.  It was pure chaos and they were struggling to have enough employees there so Marcus finally organized a dodgeball game and everyone thought he worked there.  I also removed the sign that said the drop slide was closed so my kids could use it.  They had a great time and we didn't get in trouble for breaking unnecessary rules. Win!

Landon had his last Stars lacrosse tournament in San Diego.  Randy has had fun taking him to his tournaments and it's a win.  When I go on these things it's never a great experience returning home to the chaos my absence caused.  Landon is taking a break from the Stars team for a bit and focusing on his high school team.  He's also training to be a ref so he can make some good money on the weekends.  Gotta love that!

New Year's Eve

We had another epic New Year's Eve Party.  We invited a lot of new friends who have never experienced our party before so that made it extra fun. 

We did another newspaper ball.  We really need to rename it since we use wrapping paper, not newspaper, but you get the idea.  The ball was too big with too much stuff (Randy was behind this of course).  There were kids quitting halfway through because they already had enough and then there were Karens moms who took things into their own hands when they saw some of their kids didn't have enough.  (insert a huge eye roll from me here.) So next year we will do less and remind them of the two rules.  1-no crying and 2-no complaining if you don't roll doubles.

We had so much food!  I took this picture after we were a couple hours into the party and there was still a ton of food left.  My new island worked perfect for this.  One end had the savory items and the other end had the sweets.  The counter behind it had the drink station.  The biggest hit was Randy's 8 dozen Krispy Kreme donuts.  We had four dozen left over #donutsfordays 

We played some fun games.  Randy made up a new one we will call karaoke Jenga. You had 30 seconds to pull a block out and whatever block you touched was the one you had to remove, no trying to find a loose block.  If you knocked down the tower you had to perform a karaoke song.  The pressure was on and the game was intense but fun.  Definitely a new tradition.

The thing I will always remember from this night was the floating lanterns.  Most of them didn't float!  But we sure had fun trying and then once we got a few in the air we are cheering and filming and it was hilarious.  The secret was to light them inside the garage and once they completely filled with air, then we took them out and released them.  It looked so cool!  

The lanterns that failed :)

Watch the ball drop HERE

Happy New Year!

I'm so excited for 2018 because that means 2017 is OVER!  My top three worst years were 2008 (Lindsey died), 2010 (Mom died) and 2017 (we built/opened a practice, had a baby, had skin cancer/radiation all at the same time).  I have a feeling 2018 is going to be a good year but still hard as we work our tails off getting the practice running at a pace where we actually make money off of it.  But that's a post for another day.  I was all about celebrating our survival of 2017 so this was our biggest New Year's Eve party to date.  Plus, I'm a sucker for tradition so I had to throw this party even though I really just wanted to skip it and go to bed.

We invited a bunch of families over and I figured some of them would have other plans but everyone ended up coming.  Plus, they brought all their kids.  Usually the teenagers are off doing their own thing but since it was a Sunday this party became a family party.  I did a headcount and we had 60 people at our house.  A new record!

Randy made two, yes two, newspaper balls full of candy and toys.  One ball was for the younger kids to rip into and the other was for the older kids.  No one got hurt and only a few kids cried.  The cleanup of all the paper filled seven garbage bags.  That's a lot of wrapping paper (Randy doesn't use newspaper so I guess I should call it wrapping paper balls instead).

Bean (with the help of Marcus) ripped that thing to shreds.  I was a little embarrassed by their ferociousness.

The cute little kids ready to go crazy on that ball

Parker went CRAZY!!  He got more loot than anyone.  I was surprised.  He usually holds back or lets his brothers fight for him.

 We played Kahoot.  It's an online quiz game that you use your phone to lock in your answers which meant all the teenagers thought it was fun.

Marcus's team won but I'm not sure how since they didn't get as many questions right.

The teenagers playing Bang.  ( a Mafia type card game)

Then we kicked all the kids out and the adults played our 80's Trivia Game.  We had some good laughs and I impressed everyone with my impeccable knowledge of 1980's television sitcoms.  Apparently my mom let us watch a lot more TV than everyone else.  Bless her.  Or maybe I just have a good memory but that's doubtful.

Randy decided we needed a bigger ball to drop so he wrapped a sled in lights and rigged it up for the midnight ball drop.  It was hilarious and very Clark W. Griswald.

Our driveway full of people, cars, confetti, and noise.   And the sled of lights on the flagpole turned sideways so it looked even more pathetic.

Here's our final countdown and I'm the worst because I turned my camera sideways so you'll have to turn your head.  Oh well.

Happy New Year!  It's going to be a good one.  I can feel it!

Ringing in the New Year

Before it's too late to post this, I figure it's time to get the pics up from our second annual New Year's Eve party.  I love holiday parties and I love to invite friends over on any holiday because celebrating by ourselves feels lonely.  One of our RI friends hosted a New Year's party every year and we loved it so we picked up the tradition from them. 
I planned ahead this year {very unlike me} and had the boys help me get the house clean a couple days prior, knowing that my nausea would keep me from running around like a headless chicken like I typically do the day of a party.  We invited a ton of people and most ended up coming.  Chaos, good food, and games reigned supreme!
But before all that went down, our friends invited a few families over to their house on the lake for a polar bear swim.  My boys had no clue what that meant and when I told them they'd be jumping off a dock into freezing cold water they thought I was lying.  I had to explain how manly they would feel and lucky for them, there would be a hot tub to sit in afterwards. 

The plunge took place after dark {not hard to do since it's dark at 4:30pm} on their icy dock.  We made all the kids wear life jackets and it was hilarious to watch from afar as they dropped in and came up gasping, screaming, and shivering.  Marcus won the prize for swimming the farthest which wasn't far at all but he felt like he swam halfway across the lake, and Ethan won for jumping in the most.  He was crazy and kept going back for more.  It was a great way to start off the night.  

Now back to the party...

Randy kept saying, "Mel, if we're going to throw a party let's throw a party!"  I think what he meant was provide more food than could be eaten and make the biggest newspaper ball full of candy and prizes you could possibly imagine.  The kids ripped into that newspaper ball with some serious aggression and I'm still finding little pieces of wrapping paper floating around.  After that, the adults played games and visited and the kids hung out in the bonus room for the most part.  As midnight drew near everyone gathered outside, supplied with plastic champagne cups full of sparkling cider, to watch the ball of lights drop from our flag pole as Randy set off fireworks.  It was both hilarious and fun.  At midnight, the adults kissed, all the kids blew horns and threw confetti, and within twenty minutes the house was empty and my head hit the pillow.  

Happy New Year's! {Ten Days Ago}

Our Canadian friends host an annual New Year's Eve Party and basically everyone from church is invited who isn't out of town.  I could never do something like that for fear my entire house would be destroyed but the chaos sure is fun!  Unlike most New Year's Eve parties, we were having such a good time we had to scramble to gather everyone for the final countdown.  Typically I can barely stay awake until midnight and if I do I'm anxiously waiting for midnight to finally roll around.  Even Parker managed to stay up until midnight and was quite the party animal.  If this party is any indication of what 2015 has in store then it's going to be a great year. 

An intense game of Blurt

A lot of food and a lot of eating

another intense game

bringing in the New Year with Martinelli's

The boys minus a few kids

 

The girls minus a few kids