S&S INC. + B.: New Year's Eve..

It's hard to believe New Year's was already nearly 2 months ago!!! Poor Bentley, who has NO understanding of days, dates or holidays, still believes it is New Year's Eve! Just last week he was riding around in the shopping cart at Costco, wishing every passer by a "Happy New Year!" It was cute the first couple of times he shouted it, but after about 20 minutes of it, I wanted to muzzle him.

I'll keep this post about our New Year celebration pretty short... we had a great time celebrating it... we celebrated it alone, with just our boys--- this is a change from recent years where we usually get together with ALL of my family to celebrate, but since none of my family were here visiting, we celebrated alone.

Remember these pictures (you'll have to scroll a ways down on the link) I took, from when I drove our 5 boys up to Herriman to see the Up house??? Spencer hadn't gone with us during that visit; he wanted to see it for himself, so we piled the kids in the car New Year's Eve and visited the home again (coincidentally it was the last day the house was open to the public; a couple from California purchased the house and moved into it later that week)

Sorry the picture's a little grainy...

I forgot to bring my camera so Spencer snapped this picture using the camera on his phone.

LOOK!

They had balloons outside the house for kids to take!!!

Following our drive to and from Herriman to visit the Up house, we stopped off at the gas station so our boys could choose some juices and candy for our movie'thon later that evening.

I don't recall all that we did New Year's Eve... can you blame me?! It was SO long ago, but something fun we did DO before playing a lot of Mario Kart and starting our movie marathon {we stayed up late watching movies with our boys and everyone slept downstairs on the floor or on the couches in the family room}, we launched two floating Chinese wish lanterns into the starry night sky and made wishes for the New Year.

We launched two Chinese wish lanterns because the first was just a practice launch... the 2ND was the real thing where we told our boys to make a wish before it disappeared into the heavens and we couldn't see it any longer {what we actually told them was that once they could no longer see the lantern, that meant it had reached heaven and Heavenly Father received our wishes--- they totally bought it!}... I'd purchased a pack of 10 wish lanterns on line thru Amazon and I fully expected to use 7 of the 10 lanterns New Year's Eve, but the floating mass of fire made me slightly nervous; I couldn't shake the fear that a strong gust of wind would sweep past the lantern and make it plummet onto a neighbors rooftop, so we stuck to just launching one for the evening that the entire family could wish upon {we'll use the rest of the lanterns later in the year for birthday celebrations}... The sight was really quite breathtaking {again, perhaps that's because I was holding my breath as it ascended into the night sky, praying it wouldn't land on any rooftops and start a 5 alarm fire}--- I can only imagine what a couple dozen of these lanterns all lit off at the same time might look like {picture now the scene from Disney's movie Tangled. Actually, I bet you didn't know that a city in Portugal does this annually during the summer--- launching hundreds off the coast in celebration of Sao Joao; other places around the world do it as well- here's a link- click here- to see images from a lantern festival in Poznan, Poland... you must click on it to see the video- it's absolutely breathtaking!!!}.