Happy New Year!

For Christmas we received a bunch of games (like card games or board games, the old fashioned kind) which lend themselves perfectly to our tradition of playing games all night on New Year’s Eve.  (We also took our kids downtown for the Salt Lake City’s EVE)  So far we still have all the pieces, which is more than I can say for any games that we had previously.  It’s a great beginning to the year!

After we walked around down town, nearly lost Lily in the Bouncetown, decided that the idea of “art” really is subject to interpretation that may or may not be appropriate for children, and complained about it being too loud (imagine that, we complain about noise? Ha!) we found ourselves in the famed “Ball Room”.  This is a giant room filled with 2012 beach balls of varying sizes.  No, I did not count them, nor did my children.  They just advertized it that way.

Last year the giant balls, about 8 feet in diameter, were silver and the person rolling the ball had no idea what was on the other side.  Brenden was rolled over several times.  We expected the kids to be bigger enough to move out of the way this year.  However, the big balls were clear this time.  Apparently that makes them less intimidating and we still got plowed.  Even Stephen was complaining about the big teenager kids rolling him over! 

So, while I had one kid crying and another was approaching with tears down their cheeks I decided it was time to enforce a rule.  Stay near the edges of the room!  The center near the DJ is full of older folks, most of the balls, and throbbing darkness.  (Yes, Lily almost got lost there too.)  The new rule only took the edge off the pain.  We took it for an hour or two and found ourselves home before 10:00.  That was perfect timing to get the tired ones to bed and the others could move on to playing our games.

One of the games is called “Would You Rather”.  It gives you questions that each player votes on and if the votes match, it determines how many moves you get to take on the board.  When Steve read this question, he showed it to me to prove that he was not making it up, “Would you rather have the power to fly or poop rose petals?”  Of course since it has the “p” word in the question, we all knew what Dallas would choose.  But he is smart enough to know that we all knew what his answer would be.  He tricked us and won the game!

Although I was struggling to stay awake, these questions had us laughing loud enough to keep me awake. Questions like: Would you rather hear every cell phone ring in your neighborhood, or smell every fart in the neighbor hood?  Would you rather have a car that runs on happy thoughts but leaves poop, or have a car that runs on poop and leaves negative thoughts?  How about having your face on the ten dollar bill or your butt on the one dollar bill?  My personal favorite; Would you rather belch green mist or fart confetti?  Fart confetti please.

I thought this would be an interesting game but I had no idea it was so kid friendly!  All the things I keep trying to get them to stop talking about… sigh. I can kiss all those “manners” I’ve been nagging them about goodbye.  This was a great game, but I know MY mother would never approve of it.

So far all my resolutions are working out.  Day one (officially since there was no school before).  It would be better if I would write them down, so here they are.  Of course number one for most of the USA is to get in better shape.  I would like to be early to everything and beat all deadlines.  I want to blog more and to be more reliable.  Spend more time with the kids and family, and get the house organized.  (As my husband says, make every room in the house “usable”)  That’s about it for now. Let’s make it a great year!