New Year's Eve

We celebrated New Years Eve with my family eating appetizers and playing games. I made a cheese fondue with bread, veggies and apple slices for dipping, Hariz made bruschetta with sun dried tomatoes and brie on toasted baguette slices, my sister made punch and my brother made a jello-dessert with a pretzel crumb crust. Everything was sooooo yummy!! We put Maddie to bed on time and let Sydney stay up as long as she could. While we made appetizers Sydney watched "Despicable Me" with Andrew. She was getting hungry so I gave her cookies and apples slices and then we all sat at the table and ate appetizers together. She was loving this extra time up...watching TV and eating yummy treats beats bedtime any day!! But by then it was 10:30 and she was fading fast so we did a pretend New Year's Countdown and wished each other a Happy New Year. She loved it and was excited to welcome in 2011. We then put her to bed and she was asleep almost instantly. This was the first year she stayed up with us and I loved sharing it with her.
We also celebrated my Mom's 60th birthday since we didn't get a chance to celebrate together with her in September. We all pitched in for a GPS and placed it, wrapped with a card, on her chair. When we gathered to eat, she came over and saw it and had a confused look on her face. We sang Happy Birthday and I chimed in "belated and 60th" and she understood. She was thrilled to have a GPS! We had wanted to plan a family trip over the summer to celebrate but everyone's schedules conflicted and nothing was planned. I was glad to make up for it tonight (not as cool as a trip) but still something special for her. We love you Mom!!

After Sydney went to bed we played Balderdash, a super fun game of bluffs and trivia. I was crying I was laughing so hard. It's definitely one of my favorite games to play. When it was time to countdown for the New Year for real we gathered around the TV and counted with Dick Clark's countdown on TV. Then we finished our game and headed to bed an hour later. I knew I would be so tired the day but it was so worth it!!