It's a New Year!

Last night we celebrated our first New Year's Eve in Germany. Dave and I stayed home with the kids, as usual. We celebrated the end of the year and the repair of the TV by watching Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. The kids all enjoyed it and spent today reenacting the fight scenes with the cardboard shields we made for Halloween and swords made out of K'nex. David is really looking forward to listening to the rest of the Narnia stories. Santa brought him the entire series of books on CD. He will be loading them to his ipod soon.

When the movie ended it almost eleven. After some serious begging we decided to let the kids stay up until midnight. This is the first time we have let the little ones stay up to ring in the New Year. I am so glad we did. From our apartment we can see downtown where the professional fireworks were launched. The best view is from the upstairs bathroom window, so we all crowded in and watched the fun. The trees blocked much of the view of the professional show but there were so many people popping fireworks all over town we had a great show anyway. The kids ended up racing from window to window trying to see it all.


After the fireworks started to slow down we toasted the 2009 with some fake champagne, no alcohol because of the children.


Then we took our first family portrait of 2009 and sent everyone to bed. The kids decided they were having a sleep over in Cody's room.


As I drifted off to sleep I could hear the kids giggling in Cody's bedroom and firecrackers still popping from every direction. It was very good night!