New Year's Eve

New Year's Eve certainly has changed for me. I was sure it was the ultimate "date" night, but none really sticks out! And none were as much fun as they are now.

Nowadays it means running to get your discount on gas before your "rewards" ends and getting your prescriptions filled one more time before you start over again with your deductibles!

After I got those important things handled, then we started our "party"! Annabel was not sure what the party was for and when it began and ended. I don't think we quite do up New Year's like they celebrate in China for New Year's.

Our first stop was for the get together at church. I am so proud to take these four beautiful girls anywhere. They always are so sweet and well behaved. But they were also wound up and excited about the "party" and staying up late. And hungry, so even though we had just eaten, we stopped at KFC on our way home to "round" out our meal.

It's funny to get a bucket of chicken here. It's not something we eat often here either, but it certainly was nice to have in China! Both trips saw us buying buckets of chicken with the bonus Pepsi. I hadn't thought about that in a while.

Even though Christmas was just a week ago we seemed to be at a loss on what to do. How do you fill 5 hours to ensure you can be awake at midnight? My first thought was we scap the idea and go to bed. But that wasn't quite what they had in mind.

Thank goodness I had a secret box of fun!

When my friend Lori had given us all those clothes and toys recently, one box was full of craft kits, spa kits, and other goodies to make and play with. The girls had so much fun with all of these things. I snuck in a quick nap knowing there was NO way I could stay awake until midnight.

Mom and Dad went off to bed after the news, so we turned to the Dick Clark New Year's Eve show since our favorite group, Jonas Brothers were performing. These girls are just at the really cute stage, where they recognize that boys are cute, but really don't know what to do with it, so they just giggle! There was lots of giggling last night.

Somehow we stayed busy and awake and right before midnight we ran outside with our horns, confetti, and streamers and greeted the new year. Grace kept asking if we were waking everyone up. The only ones we woke up were Mom and Dad! They had also asked how we would know when it was midnight. I knew we would know, there is just too much noise in our neighborhood at midnight to miss it!

Today these sweethearts helped me get all of our Christmas decorations down, packed, and into the garage.

From there we went to Walgreens. A very sweet lady at church had bought the girls four different games. Unfortunately she bought the Spanish version of most of them, so we had to return them. They didn't have English, so the girls got the cash. In the last week they have had access to so much more money than they have ever had in their entire lives. Usually they are really careful in their spending, but today they were just sure they had to spend their money quickly. I wouldn't let them buy another Webkinz or any other stuffed animal, which was their first choice. We finally ended up with the school/office/art supplies. There they found bargains on mechanical pencils and sketch books.

We still had to go to Wal Mart, but I had promised everyone ice cream for all their help. So we stopped at Sonic for treats first. It is easy to treat everyone if you make it between 2-4 since the really good treats are half price!

We made a speedy trip through Wal Mart, but that didn't stop me from spending a LOT of money. Length of time does not seem to affect the amount of money you can spend at Wal Mart!

Tonight we celebrated my brother's birthday, even though his birthday was Monday. 50 years! Hard to believe. Mom cooked a delicious dinner and the girls made him a cake.

There were no arguments on going to bed early tonight!