Insta-Friday New Year's Edition

This year we decided to hold a family talent show two days before the new year.

A few of our girls danced but asked me not to take photos {divas}.

Grandpa played Christmas carols on his violin and we all sang along.

Mike and Bri were awesome sports.

{by the looks of this pic, the BIG BROTHER won for best gangham style...yes?}

There was a big untangle the knot game

We played some Ticket To Ride Europe, among other things.

I hope this will become a tradition!

Every year I give the kids lots of scraps of wrapping paper and other papers and they snip it all up into confetti during the day on New Year's Eve...

Watch the ball drop in Times Square, toast "Happy New Year"...

And then throw the confetti everywhere like crazy!!!

This year we celebrated with the Mendes family.

It was a blast!

Games

Fun!

The moms getting buried while trying to get a cool shot of the confetti throwing extravaganza.

Cheers!

Mikayla and Makenna have been dance and school friends since grade 1.

They did a bit of dancing to pass the time leading up to New Years.

So fun to watch!

This is Mikayla, Makenna, and Mak's little sister Teghan performing the dance from the Christmas Eve service.  So cute.  It was "a brand new baby" to the tune of "call me maybe", sung by a shepherd with dancing sheep all around.  

This cute guy made it to about 12:30 and then tucked himself into bed.

These cute girls were put to bed at 9 and got to throw confetti the next day.

They were just fine with that:)

We celebrated my niece Jenaya's birthday on Jan 3.

Visitis with the Stangs are less frequent since they moved to Armstrong.

We love them:)

Skating with the birthday girl!

More braids...

{this beautiful hair is on my new sister in law Meghan's head. Brian and Meghan live in California now, he is going to chiropractic school.  We loved having them up for a visit!}

We've gotten in lots of game time.

Our new family game this year was Catan Junior.

It's a great family game for kids 5 and up.

It feels great to start to catch the blog up with what we've been doing!!