Happy 2012!!!

Welcome to the New Year!  I'm a little late getting this posted.  There just seems to always be one more thing that needs to be done, and blogging is not near the top of the list in importance.

This New Year's Eve was spent with the same family as last year's, but we had it at our house.  Brian & Michelle Ricks and their 5 kids came over around 6:30.  They wanted to be sure to see their favorite person, Anna, before she went to bed.  Anna is just adored by the entire family and she soaks up all the attention.

Soon after Anna went to bed, we broke up into smaller groups to play games.  Steve headed off with Brian, Talmage, and Angela to play Risk.  Michelle and I played The Amazing Labyrinth, Zeus on the Loose, and other easier games with the younger kids.  After games, we watched The Incredibles and played the candybar game.

If you're not familiar with the candybar game, you're not alone.  I never heard of it until New Year's.  What you need: a pair of dice, two oven mitts, two table spoons, 1 candybar wrapped in multiple layers of paper.  The point is to unwrap the candybar with the spoons while wearing oven mitts.  Everyone sits in a circle and you take turns rolling the dice.  When a person rolls doubles, he gets to work on the candybar until the next person rolls doubles.  We had a lot of fun.


At midnight, we broke out the sparkling cider and rootbeer floats (the floats are a Ricks tradition).  We also blew our noise makers outside and yelled, "Happy New Year!" while our neighbors were banging pots.  Finally, we each popped a fortune balloon.  Each balloon had some candy and a slip of paper with a fortune on it.  It was the first time we'd done the balloons and it was fun.  Maybe it will be a new tradition.