Another Year Bites the Dust

Happy New Year to all of our friends & family! We entered the new year the same way we have for the past 14 years... together. "Together" has changed through time, starting at 2 and ending at 5; but it's together all the same and we wouldn't have it any other way. This year I wanted to start some new traditions but just like most things I do, I waited until the last minute (; I made a quick Dollar General run after work and found some birthday hats with balloons on them and some party noisemakers. I also grabbed a few white balloons to start a New Year's countdown. I had Josh grab 5 helium filled balloons at Giant Eagle earlier in the day... Here is how our night played out:

We wrote in sharpie on each white balloon the upcoming hour, starting at 6pm, & popped them accordingly. We all took turns doing the ceremonial stabbing (except me, I'm a picture taker, not a picture giver)...

- Six o'clock -

- Seven o'clock -

- Eight o'clock -

- Nine o'clock -

- Ten o'clock -

- Eleven o'clock -

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Dad got to pop the last balloon since he has a height advantage (;

During dinner, we went through our Memory Jar that holds all the things we wrote down during the year that we didn't want to forget. LOTS OF LAUGHS! Those slips of paper get labeled by year and stored away & we get to start all over again (:

I also baked a Lucky Penny cake. I made sure to make a separate small cake that actually held the penny inside so that one of us would guarantee the find. I would hate to have to eat 3 pieces to find the coin & I surely would hate to see my kids' behavior after they ate their three pieces! So I served up the 5 potentially luck filled slices and we all dug in!

Benjamin found 2013's Lucky Penny! We all decided that he deserved it the most since he used his bare hands to tear his cake to pieces as opposed to using the fork like the rest of us normal folk.

Well done Ben, well done.

We played a few games of Crazy Eight & Headbandz (totally recommend this game to any family with kids, SO FUN!) to use up some more time before we moved on to the next tradition...

Our prayer balloons! This was something I saw on Pinterest but they were called wish balloons. We changed it up to better suit our family. We all scribbled our prayers for the year on the balloons then released them up to the heavens (: Caroline had lots of good ones, including letting the animals in shelters find homes & kids in adoption to find families. Carmen wants to have more patience and kindness, while Benjamin wants to see Guggies again and be a better athlete. Daddy had some surprising ones, including being a more romantic husband (hope God reads that one first!). I added my favorite prayers that I'll reveal in a different post, but one of them was for the Steelers to have a better season! (;

Hey, we're Pittsburgh'ers, what do yinz expect?!

When the final hour came, we made as much noise as we could with pots & wooden spoons... we actually lost a spoon on that fateful day thanks to Ben's enthusiasm (:

Even the furry Lang had some fun! He was a regular party animal!

It was one of the best New Years that I can remember so I'm

hoping it's a hint of things to come in 2013!

-A