Happy New Year 2009!

Happy New Year to everyone who reads this blog - all half dozen of you probably! :-)

We had a fun New Years, and Bill and I have declared last night to be our new wildest New Years party!  It surpassed the party we had New Years 2002 when we spent the holiday with my grandparents at the Woodlands, their trailer park down in Florida.  That year was a surprise to us at how well those old folks could party!  They totally went nuts at midnight will silly string and poppers and all sorts of stuff... and then the party died about 10 minutes later.

Last night we had our friends Jeff and Keli (and their 3 kids), Brandon and Debbie, and Matt over to our place.  We had quite a spread of food to snack on so none of us went hungry!  Since Bill and I are not drinkers and the other guys can be at times, we had asked Brandon what his alcohol preference was, and we got him a bottle of rum.  He drank quite a bit of it, which made him quite silly and rather entertaining!  Jeff and Matt preferred to have a few beers, but Matt had to quit fairly early because he still had to drive himself home to Perrysburg last night.  Keli and Debbie couldn't drink anyway because they're both pregnant so they served as Jeff's and Brandon's designated drivers.

The three kids had a ton of fun with our video games all evening.  We started out playing some Wii Sports, which they did fairly decent at.  But then the "big kids" wanted to use the Wii to play Guitar Hero, so the kids just hung out for a while since Keli and Debbie were playing Super Mario Bros. 3 on the regular (vintage!) Nintendo.  Kyra ended up on Bill's computer playing Webkinz, and eventually we got Kyle and Ethan playing Duck Hunt and they totally loved it!  Originally the kids were going to get sent upstairs to bed (they brought sleeping bags) sometime during the evening, but Jeff and Keli decided to let them stay up until it was time to go home after midnight.  They did surprisingly well being up so late, but after midnight they were definitely ready to go home and sleep!

A bunch of us spent most of the evening playing Guitar Hero.  We have 2 guitars and the drum set so we took turns.  I found it entirely amusing that I am way better on the drums than both Brandon and Jeff, who both play real drums!  Althouth later in the evening that may have had something to do with the fact that they were a little tipsy and I wasn't... :-)

We even stayed awake until midnight this year too - last year I was sick and in bed by 10pm and Bill made it til 11pm or so before sleep was essential.  Our guests left a little before 1am, at which time Bill and I threw dishes and cups and such in the sink to soak overnight and headed to bed.  We got up around 11am this morning and got the house a little more orderly, and now we're probably going to hang out at home all day today.

All in all, we had an awesome time and we're glad we got to spend New Years with a few friends!  Maybe next year we'll do this again and be able to get more friends to come party with us... :-)