The New Year

We spent New Year's not quite sure we were going to stay up. We were all pretty tired. I even put a movie in for the kids at 9:30 thinking they would go to sleep watching it. They didn't. So we put Zachary to bed at about 10:30, he was getting too cranky. Then there were a few fireworks going off here and there in our town, so I would yell "fireworks" and Thomas and Cassidy would race to the window, usually missing them. Our downstairs neighbor had a few set out on his back porch, so we would watch for him to come outside, then we would watch his fireworks. When midnight came they started going off everywhere. We soon realized there must be no firework laws here. There were some really big fireworks going off. We sat in our living room and looked out our big window watching the fireworks from the warmth of our house. We are up on a hill that overlooks a little valley. We looked across to the other side of the valley and the whole side was lit up by fireworks. It looked like every house was setting them off. We opened the window a few times. Thomas didn't like the noise, and none of us liked the smell. After about 20 minutes of this, we cold no longer see the valley or the fireworks going off on the other side. The valley was filled with smoke. The kids had fun, but were asking to go to bed a 12:30.

The kids enjoyed their time off school. We played the Wii. We got Wii Fit, Outdoor Challange, Eye Spy and Diego Wii games for Christmas. Cassidy and Thomas also got new games for their Leapster. So we played and played. The kids were ready to go back to school though. Cassidy was getting too bored at home. Well she is not bored now. She started piano lessons. Santa brought us an electric piano for Christmas and he arranged for Cassidy to take a few lessons from a friend of ours. So she has been busy practicing. Her favorite song to play is Jolly Old St. Nikolas. Her class at school sang it at a Christmas festival.