Thursday, December 31, 2009

2009 Vacation: Day 4.5

At the aquarium, the kids got a bunch of books. If you know Gabe, you know that his favorite type of book, oddly enough, is identification books. Trees, birds, North American mammals... and now after visiting the aquarium-- Atlantic Shell Identification book. Within a half an hour of getting home, he was outside identifying the shells we found the other day:



After defending my title as Lost Worlds champion (we have a new system, if you want to challenge the title holder, you pick two characters and give one to the title holder and use the other. If you win, you switch characters. If you win both- you're the new title holder), I walked down to the beach to watch the younger ones throw shells into the waves.


Max just loves running around in the sand. It was in the high 50s today, so he could actually run around in bare feet without freezing his toes off. He was in heaven.



But every time they go down to the shore, they end up playing their favorite game-- Get as Close to the Waves Without Getting Wet. They love this game.



This game terrifies Max, but he loves it.



Oh crap! That was a close one!



As we were getting the New Years feast together, Jen noticed that the clouds had parted just enough to show the blue moon. This was lucky because it's been completely overcast all day, and the clouds only broke for a minute, but the moon was in the exact right position that it had a beautiful reflection over the ocean. I got a great picture of it:



In my first attempt at getting the picture, I accidentally left the flash on. It was incredibly muggy and getting ready to rain again. I guess there was so much moisture in the air, that the humidity actually reflected back on the flash, giving me this weird picture:



Finally it was time for the feast! The feast included: Summer sausage with two kinds of cheese (swiss and cheddar) and wheat thins; chicken nuggets stuffed with cheese and pepperoni; jalapeno poppers; shrimp; honey barbecue chicken strips; chips and dip; and fried cheese sticks.



Jen even bought me some dairy free tofutti sour cream with some dried ranch mix. I mixed the two together for my own dairy-free ranch dip. It was delicious!



The kids weren't sure they liked shrimp before. But after tonight, they discovered that they loved it.



Everyone got a little bit of everything.



Did I forget the l'il smokies? Yeah we had those too.



Oh my! With so many choices, how do you decide what to put on your plate?



Some people were impatient to get their plates filled.



Even Jack pigged out on the feast!



Everyone settled around the coffee table to eat and discuss our resolutions. We reviewed how everyone did with last year's resolutions and then committed to our resolutions for 2010.



After the feast, we put Jack to bed and played a bunch of games. First we played Uno Attack, and Marney won after a very long, back and forth game (you know how Uno is). Then we played Scattergories-- Kiki and I won! We then played Apples to Apples Jr. and Kiki and I won that too! Finally we played In a Pickle and Jen beat all our butts at that.

At around 9:00 pm it was time for chocolate fondue. Jen loves me so much that she melted the chocolate with soy milk, and everyone reported that it was just as good as when it's made with real milk. We had bananas, strawberries, pretzels and marshmallows to dip in it. It was decadent.



Finally, at 10 pm it was time to get in the hot tub again.



Nothing like a late-night dip to finish off the night.



A problem arose that all the kids started getting light-headed and stomach aches while sitting in the hot tub. It's crazy how eating a ton of junk food and chocolate, and then soaking in a 103 degree hot tub will do that to you.

So now it's 11 pm and we're only an hour away from the new year. Amazingly, everyone's still awake.

1 comments:

Nana

It sounds like a most wonderful time...Happy New Year Children.

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