Welcome 2014!

Tempe and Helena (and Juno, I guess) have been looking forward to celebrating New Year's Eve for weeks!

Staying up til midnight is a big deal when you're a kid.

We started off the day by making a special afternoon snack--snowflake chips! I've seen this a couple times on Pinterest, but the first place I ever saw it was on Our Best Bites. We cut tortillas like snowflakes, brushed them with melted butter, and sprinkled cinnamon sugar all over, then baked them for 10 minutes at 400 degrees. Yum!

Then we got to work on our special New Year's Eve dinner. In the past we've had homemade Chinese food (egg rolls and coconut shrimp), and cheese and mustard fondue. This year we decided on latkes, spinach dip and veggies, and egg rolls (from Costco this time). I don't think I'll ever make latkes again! We had them for an FHE treat a few weeks ago and they were so good, but I only made a few. For NYE we made 10 potatoes worth of latkes and it was a lot of work and they weren't that great. BUT the girls had fun helping me peel and grate the potatoes!

I came up with different activities for every half hour or so and put them in golden balloons. We started off with our special dinner, then moved on to....

...making paper plate noisemakers for midnight!

After our noisemakers, we played Apples to Apples, then started "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" (don't judge us for letting them watch it, Mom and Dad were the ones who really wanted to!) Halfway through the movie we made ice cream sundaes!

After the movie, we played Monopoly until 10:00, when we watched the ball drop live online.

The girls were so excited to shake their noisemakers and yell "Happy New Year!" (even Juno!) After that, Helena, Juno, and I went to bed, but Tempe stayed up til midnight with Daddy playing Wii games. She came in at midnight to tell me that she stayed up!

Happy 2014! We're excited for another great year as a family and wish you all the best year, too!