A New Year

New Year's Eve provided us with the perfect opportunity to host friends who have hosted us a'plenty throughout the year, which we have greatly appreciated. I decided to start the festivities early so everyone could get the kids to bed at a decent hour, yet still feel they'd had their money's worth.

What was I thinking?

Good friends, good food, good drinks...nobody was going anywhere. Except for me, that is. Too little sleep, too little food, and too many cocktails and I had to settle in for a long winter's nap. I woke up with a start at five minutes to midnight and was pleased to find the party still in full swing. I joined in admiring the fireworks, but I did skip the champagne toast.

(Shaun beat me to posting this time, so most of these pictures will be familiar.)

The Mullins family evaluates the self-portrait they had just taken. This may have been what prompted us to take a picture of the whole group. I'm not really sure, since I had just woken up.

Places, everyone, places!

Cheese.

The valiant Ezra finally conks out at about 12:30.

We totally wrecked our kids by letting them stay up so late. But it was really fun.

One couldn't ask for a more beautiful morning on the first day of the new year:

Alas, it poured for the rest of the day. But we had our fifteen minutes of sun and it was glorious. I washed up the dishes from the night before and Shaun went to the grocery store. Between Christmas and New Year's Eve I was all cooked out. So Shaun took over and fixed us some balsamic chicken wings to eat while we watched the Rose Bowl with his cousin Jason and family.

The next day we made some spur-of-the moment plans with the Olympia Shackelfords who came and spent the night; we spent Sunday sledding in the mountains together. Again, we had a lot of fun. But, verily, I say unto you, it took an entire week for our kids to stop being total basket cases after all the excitement and lack of sleep. As I mentioned on Facebook, at one point Nels was so tired of being bad and out of control that he wailed, "I'm such a FOOL! I'm nothing but a fool!" It was sad.

But now the boys have a whole week of school and a nice restful weekend under their belts, and they are starting to resemble human children again. They had fun watching Shaun design and build a garage workbench in one day. They pounded nails into their stumps alongside him and also did some sawing. Yep. With a saw.

Nels came home from school today SO EXCITED to tell me he'd gotten to use a microscope. This has always been one of his fondest dreams. So 2010 is looking pretty good so far. As long as we remember to get the kids to bed on time.