Happy New Year!

Rather than try to coordinate schedules between various families for Christmas, our family has chosen to get together for a family Christmas celebration at New Years. This year we got to host the party at our house for us and 3 of our 5 children and their families. The only thing which would have made it better would have been the 2 missing children, but they also live further away. It was great to see the ones who could make it. This year's theme was 'pajama party'.

As in many family gatherings, the first order of business was food. It is always interesting to see what happens with a potluck! This year there were a spiral sliced ham and ever so many interesting dipping things. We had a delicious lemon flavored fruit dip and plenty of fruit to dip in it, hot spinach artichoke dip, 7 layer dip, a meat and cheese tray, and from our daughter who loves to explore cooking history, a fondue, complete with 1970s era fondue pot!

As it was so soon after Christmas, some of the gifts between family members were saved to open that night, so the Christmas tree was still up. All 16 of us gathered while the youngest boy there had the job of getting gifts from under the tree and delivering each gift to the correct person. He even found out his feet fit just right in the wooden shoes.







Later we adjourned to the garage to do a piñata. Those kids were vicious with that thing!



Later we all watched 'Despicable Me' and then played games until time to celebrate with sparkling cider at midnight.

When we finally woke up on New Years Day, we fixed brunch with 2 different breakfast casseroles and about anything else you could want for breakfast.

Hope everyone has a great 2011!