The Illinois May Family Adventure: New Year's Eve

So to celebrate almost all of our family being together... and because we couldn't think of anywhere to go, we decided to have a New Year's Eve party. And, as usual, we started off inviting a small handful of people and ended up with about 50 guests.

It was great fun! The teenagers ended up in the basement with the Wii and the games. The younger kids found the Nerf guns and ran through the house shooting each other... and a few adults who got caught in the crossfire.

We made homemade eggnog, the base of which had been sitting in the basement since Thanksgiving. It was VERY smooth. The recipe, in case you are interested, is called Dad's EggNog. I quadrupled the recipe, which allowed all the adults to have a taste... or two... or five...

Here is the invitation we sent out:

Here is a glimpse of our family and friends:

And then we have the basement dwellers:

Now that you have a general idea of how it all went down, let me give you some specifics and a bit of a running commentary.

This is Linda. She is the accompanist for our church and is married to our choir director, Randy. She is a lovely woman, has raised a terrific family, but I would just like to point out what is in her hands: No, those are not giant crayons. They are some sort of utensil for knitting. Because she is doing yarnwork in my living room. Apparently she was hedging her bets as to whether our get-together would be fun or not. I am still not sure what her vote ended up being.

My mom. What a jewel. She worked tirelessly to get the house clean and ready for company. She also took the assignment of coat-checker and greeted everyone as they came in the door. And she sure is cute.

It's not easy being green.

Or purple.

Justin really enjoyed playing with my camera... and his food:

And when I asked him and Jaime to pose for the camera so I could get a nice couple's shot, initially I got this:

But then I got this:

Jake joined in the sunglass fun too.

A Wii, PlayStation 2, a wall full of board games - and what do the kids end up playing with?

Wrapping paper tubes.

Here is Emma, kicking Justin's butt:

And Nolan, kicking a very tolerant Reggie's butt (no dogs were harmed in the making of this picture):

Beating up a Saint Bernard must be very exhausting:

More candid shots:

(I really did move around, I promise, even though all pictures of me occur in the same place)

A few guests left early, but the majority stayed until the ball dropped and we welcomed in the New Year together. And because we had promised the kids on the invitation that they would get rides from Reggie, we hooked him up at 1am to drag kids around the snow for awhile.

Reggie truly does enjoy pulling. Whenever we pull out his harness, he gets super-excited and he looks like he is smiling. However, his stamina at one o'clock in the morning is not quite at its peak. So after a few pulls, either he gave up or the ropes did. Not to let any child leave our home disappointed, Adam stepped in to lend a land: