New Year’s Traditions

For as many years as I can remember with kids we’ve gotten together with the Tilley family at New Year’s and had steak and fondue. Since moving to Pittsburgh, we travel to be at one house or the other. This year we were at our house.

Ainsley reading to the younger boys.

Our families were together for two half-days and a whole day. After much playing, we let them watch a movie on New Year’s eve….

The adults pretty much played games the whole visit. This is what we do each New Year’s. We engage our kids 99.9% of the rest of the year. New Year’s they are expected to play with each other and let us play. Carston is the only one who sat and played with us for the duration of several games. Natalie came and went but didn’t have the perseverance to get through.

Piper hung out with us most the time, either being held/fed or sleeping in her swing.

I got to hang out with this guy… which was awesome.

And these two..

Around 6 pm on New Year’s eve, we broke out the fondue pot and started the par-tay. First up was a cheese course with apples and bread cubes along with steak and asparagus. We followed it up with chocolate fondue with so many fun things to dip it was insane. Because I’m a bit obsessive about sprinkles I thought it’d be fun to let the kids use some of my stash on their goodies.

They didn’t complain.

Until they ate through all their chocolate with fruit and pretzels and came to try and eat ours. We shooed them away!  This boy told me he needed “more chocolate.”  I suggested he lick some off his face.

In addition to fruit, we also had pound cake cubes, pretzels, and cheesecake pieces to dip. Whut? Whut?

Henry got in some Piper-time in between games and the countdown to midnight.

True story: We have almost missed ringing in the new year on several occasions because we are so distracted. I believe we totally missed it last year. So this year, we set a timer and watched the ball fall on the big screen.

Good-bye 2013 and Happy 2014. I’m looking forward to a great New Year.