Happy New Year!

 

It was a VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR'S CELEBRATION for the J-Ms this year! We made the quick 2.5 hour road trip to Connecticut to spend New Year's Eve with the Slavins (see post from August by clicking here). Something about having been college roommates seems to make time spent as families now that much sweeter. I don't know why, exactly, but it is just really really really special. And fun!!!!!!!!!!!!! I especially love to see our kids play together! Imogen and K & O get along together (and fight too!) like 3-little-wild-peas-in-a-pod. And Audrey and Meera are really just too cute (even when they fight!) as "the babies" twosome. I love it that our kids fight and play together-- more like healthy cousins or siblings than as friends who hardly ever see each other. To me, that is really great and I take it to mean that we're in it with these kids for the long haul. I have high hopes that our kids will know each other well their whole lives. There is no family on the planet that we'd rather spend New Year's with. We plan on making it a tradition. Highlights included seeing, and spending time in, the Slavin's new house (they relocated to CT from CA this summer); sledding on their perfect front-yard sledding hill (what K & O wouldn't give to have this hill in their own front yard!!!); hot chocolate and marshmallows; the Keurig coffee (ahhhhhh!!!!); indoctrinating the children to New Year's Eve party trinkets and noisemakers; lots-o-margs (of course!!!); an amazing sweet-potato-black-bean-burrito dinner; the kids curled up on the couch with their loveys watching Tinkerbell; champagne and bbq chips; chocolate fondue at midnight; super-duper french toast and Canadian bacon on New Year's Morning; and... the biggest highlight of all... The New Year's Day SHOW (this was a show, in five acts, put on by the five kiddos ~~ and what a show it was!... they are already planning for the 2011 New Year's Day SHOW); many laughs and lots of good time. Meera was fast asleep within 5 minutes of pulling out of the Slavin's driveway, and K & O were in bed asleep by 6:30 p.m. that night. Four days later, we're all still recovering. But it was OH-SO-WORTH-EVERY-SECOND-OF-IT!!!!!!!! :)