New Year's Eve

For the last few years, our family has gone to an awesome New Year's Eve dance. There is a family here that hosts a big dance every December 31st, and we love to go. It is a family dance, so we dress up the kids and ourselves, and all go together. It is big enough that they have it in a church gym, and they go all out with a DJ, decorations, even balloons to fall from the ceiling at midnight.

Here is Luke ready to celebrate in his party hat.

Jessica is too cool to spend New Year's with just the family, so she invited her friend Braedyn to join us at the dance and then sleep over.

Jessica caught this moment with the camera - aaaawwwww...

Braedyn and Jessica trying out their 12-year-old flirting skills. I think they could learn a few lessons from suave Kyle there.

Pepper boogies (dance boogies, not nose boogies).

There were video games set up in one of the classrooms. You can see that Adam preferred this to dancing. We didn't see him for more than about 5 minutes all night.

It's almost midnight, and Jess and Braedyn are in full swing.

Happy New Year!

After the balloons fell, we all joined in a toast with sparkling cider. One of the hosts, our friend Dean, asked me what we are going to do next year when we are in Germany. I told him we will probably be sitting around our house, feeling sorry for ourselves that we can't be here at the dance. This has been a great tradition for our family, because it gives us something fun to do on New Year's Eve. New Year's is like Valentine's Day - you always think everyone else is doing something fabulous and exciting while you sit home watching the ball drop. We love going to this party because the whole family gets to go, and it feels like a real event. Plus, I get to dance with my dreamy husband, which is major for me. The DJ usually plays some old-school dance music, so I dust off my old social dancing skills and back-lead Brad through a few 180 moves. He is a very good sport.

Our family has a lot of changes coming this year, but we are excited to see what is in store for us.

I hope everyone has a wonderful 2009!