Happy New Year

We celebrated the new year as we've done for practically the last 18 years - with some of our closest friends! It is pretty amazing since Shawn and I just celebrated our 19th wedding anniversary. 

Our group is really spread across the Salt Lake Valley now that we've all finally moved out of the University of Utah Married Student Housing - where we all met. We typically alternate sites to meet and since we hosted last year's party we held this year's party down on the south end of the valley. We had a somewhat smaller group this year and one of the couples who lives near the party house offered to let all of the kids hand out there - so they had quite a house full, of course they start with more than six kids of their own. 

As usual there was no shortage of food and snacks. We've elected to have pots of soups, stews, and chowders brewing on the stove for people to eat along with breads and rolls and then vegetables and assorted appetizers. It makes it nice especially when the evening rolls into the early morning and you start to get hungry again!

We're also usually playing games that someone has learned or received for Christmas that year  and this year was no exception. Except this year's game was a little more complex and took us 3 1/2 hours for 12 people to play one hand! But perhaps it's really old age creeping in. Maybe we should stick with the junior version of these games. You can see those of us on the north end of the table waiting, and waiting for the group on the other end of the table to make their very strategic play ........

Luckily Ron got help from his wife and Bonnie otherwise who knows how long it would have taken us to finish the round.

 

Once we made it through one round we decided to get really wild and try and trick we'd seen on the internet - popping popcorn with our cell phones.

Here's the original clip in case you've been living under a rock

@ Yahoo! Video

So you absolutely have to give it a try ... here's our third attempt (I won't overwhelm you with the other two tries) - you'll have to watch the video - I don't want to spoil it. 

Ok - so after some minor modifications, we figured out and corrected the problem and see - wa la - magic cell phones working again!!

I can't believe we stayed until the kids came home (look how surprised SHE looks), I can't believe it gets later each year and I can't believe we probably could have continued to sit there and keep talking and laughing... of course we wouldn't have been able to drive home.

Thanks everyone, but especially Brent & Bonnie for putting up with the mess and noise. Can't wait until next year!