Leslie's life: New Year's Eve

One of our favorite and longest running traditions is that of New Year's with the Cooks. Back in 1996, when we moved back to Utah after a 9 month trial run in Connecticut which didn't work out, we lived with Tricia and Craig for a couple months until we found a house to rent. We had the greatest time living all together and decided to do an overnighter for the whole family on New Year's Eve, ringing in 1997. I believe we have been together every New Year since then. In fact, when we built this house it wasn't quite done on New Year's Eve of 1999 (we officially moved in in January) so we made sure we had flooring in and at least one toilet and rang in the new century in our new, almost finished, house. Since we have had this house we have alternated in which home the New Year's festivities would take place. Thanks to the calendar, the last few years' New Year's Eves have fallen around a weekend and we have had several days of game-playing. Along with the game playing is the eating of more food than a human should conceivably eat in a 24+ hour period, which does lead to some odiferous consequences. This is how we end up playing quite often . . .

This year was no different. This year New Year's Eve was a Friday night so we played until late Saturday evening, went home to sleep, went to church and got back together again. Yes, we are die-hard gamers. It has been nice to see the kids getting involved as well, playing games together or playing with us at times. Maddie and Cameron are big-time gamers like their parents, but Peter and Markee aren't so much. Peter has some favorites that he will play, but Markee is content to just watch movies or read while listening to our banter. Erik likes to play, but Marin and Kate will usually have other things to do and don't often play with us. Nicolas does, well, Nicolas things. For the record, the favorite games of this New Year's Eve were Dominion, Qwirkle, Small World and Who?What?Where? and it was the first time we did NOT get Risk out. Sorry, Craig.

The games are always put on "pause" just before midnight while Craig gets out his arsenal and he and the kids set off fireworks long enough to wake up everyone in the neighborhood before we all trundle back inside, freezing, to get back to the games.

It was so cold this year that when the girls came in their glasses immediately fogged up and we caught this great photo!

We can tell that age is starting to factor in as the last few years each of us has had to have a little power nap sometime between 4am and 7am before getting back to it. We can't just play straight for 24-30 hours any more, unfortunately. :-)