Almost 2012 already

I can't believe how fast time goes. Today we had a lot of fun celebrating the beginning of 2012. We had a lot of fun games for the kids. I took all the Christmas decorations off the tree and replaced them with New Year decor. The lights were left up along with kazoo's, beads, bubble gum, popcorn, a fun child's apron, bubbles, coloring book, a bag of chips and a few more items and ofcourse and large party hat for the tree topper. SO CUTE. That is our new tradtion.

We played some fun games for the kids.....New Year Bingo, a dice game, a card game and a smelling game. I had some bags full of different items and went around the room letting each kid smell what was in the bag. The person with the most answers right got to pick an item off the tree. It was fun to watch each try and guess what was in the bag. Items in the bags were a banana, boiled egg, pepper, powder from jello, vanilla flavoring, almond flavoring and peanut butter.

With each game the winner got to choose a fun item off the tree. The kids had a blast. Another idea would be to put money in balloons and have a child choose a balloon and pop it to see what was inside. Maybe next year.

We had some super yummy punch, nachos, veggie topped cold pizza (YUM), meatballs, bacon water chesnut wraps, homemade pretzels......and spam sushi...yeah I know...but you have to know my brother Ron. They weren't too bad. Not my first pick of a food but I can say I've tried them.

Then my sister in law made a really cute castle cake for her daughters 2nd birthday which is on Jan. 1st. We got to celebrate a birthday and New Years Eve. So much fun.

We were all tired out at about 8ish so we decided to have a small New Years for the younger kids. I'm not the cool parent that lets my younger ones stay up until midnight. The older two boys can. My parents always let us no matter how young we were. I don't like dealing with cranky kids the next day and we had all our fun early on so it was the same to me. BUT FUN FUN it was.

I am excited for a new year. The year 2011 was a bit hard and brought alot of hard times. But I'm excited for a fresh start and hopefully I can look forward to some new things.

Happy New Year everyone. We love you and miss you if you can't be near.