Happy New Year!

New Year's Eve means yummy eats! I made two kinds of chocolates.


Cheese fondue is a must at New Year's and we also have a chocolate fountain. The chocolate fountain isn't actually Travis or my favorite, but I do think the best way to eat a strawberry is with chocolate!


Emmett didn't need chocolate, he was stealing strawberries all night! I kept having to snag the stems from him before he could eat them.


Avery and Carson had fun playing with a bucket full of cars that were their Daddy's and Uncle Kevin's when they were little.


My Dad had to come back down for just a one night stop-over and he couldn't stay up all night. It worked out great for us because that meant I could take Carson and Emmett home for a decent bedtime and let Grandpa stay with them. Avery we let stay up but with the warning that it would be really late and we didn't want to hear any whining about it. Of course he got tired, but he didn't whine. About 11:45 he came to me and in a tired voice that was full of 'wow, this is hard, I'm not sure I can do it' tone started with "Mom..." and since I could tell where he was going I interrupted him.
"It's tough staying up late, huh?"
"Yeah." feeble chuckle
"Well, I know you're tired, but it's almost done."
"Okay"
Since it was too wet, we couldn't really do any fireworks like in past years, but some guns were shot and the cannon was lit once. With such a short end, I can see why Avery thought it was rather anti-climactic.
"That's it!?"
You could tell he was wondering why a New Year merited staying up so long just to do that.


The funny thing is, Avery's always saying "I'm gonna stay up all night long" or if the boys are up late and we tell them it's really late he always wants to know "is it the middle of the night!?" There's something mythical about the "middle of the night" for him. So when we got home and got Avery ready for bed, when Travis suddenly said, "Avery! Guess what? It's the middle of the night!" Avery's face lit up like that was the coolest thing ever. He did it. He finally made it to the middle of the night. Who cares about New Years next to that?