We celebrated New Year’s Eve at Joel and Kristin’s this year. Last year we started the party a little earlier and most of the kids fell asleep by midnight. This year we started at 7, did a “kid celebration” at 10 and hoped for the best. The best was that a handful of the kids actually fell asleep in the basement watching movies. Among those were Aiden and Brady (score!) The rest of the kiddo crew kept sneaking upstairs to spy on the adults (and were caught red-handed….then invited to join the count down at midnight). Logan, for some reason, sat on his sleeping bag neither falling asleep nor joining the spy-kids. I went and got him around 11:55 and told him to get his booty upstairs. And that, my friends, is how I got 2 super sweet guys to kiss me at midnight!

For most of the night, Brian had everyone pick songs by either genre, decade or some other category. He played them over Joel and Kristin’s sonos speaker via Spotify (get both of these if you do not have them….Sonos = electronic equipment available at Target, Best Buy etc etc. Spotify = iphone, ipad, smart phone ap that lets you play virtually any song at any time….and can be played through Sonos). Annnnyway, it was pretty much a dance party before and DEFINITELY after midnight. So fun!!!!

Brady and Logan model some of the party decorations – giant hats!

Someone was sleepy….no wonder he was one of the few who dozed off!

Dang paparazzi!!

The kid’s celebration: they sat in a circle, said what the liked best about 2011 and what they were looking forward to in 2012. Bad mom me didn’t hear any of it except Logan wasn’t sure what he should look forward to.

Look who got ahold of the camera after midnight (not Brian…pictured here with Logan and the whole crew party-rockin’ it out!). The spot on Brian’s shirt is champagne from Anne’s “happy new year’s” hug…just in case you were wondering :) Logan is in the blue tee shirt and shark pj bottoms (not that you can see the sharks)

I count 8 kids in this picture….total in attendance: 15