A fun vacation!

We have had a very nice vacation from school--so nice that I'm sorry the kids have to go back to school tomorrow. Here are the kids enjoying a "movie" the boys starred in and L "filmed" during the vacation.

Chocolate dipping, anyone?

I'm soliciting recipes or ideas for EASY chocolate dipping (recipes for the stuff to dip IN the chocolate)--I have a couple (thanks QV and Studio 5) but I am always open to more. We're thinking of dipping chocolates for L's birthday party. (Nothing like trying it out for the first time, all the while trying to teach others how to do it--that's me. Well, actually, we'll try it out a bit before then but we don't have long until the big day).

New Year's Eve . . .

What a great crew to ring in the new year! We had our family New Year's Eve party last night and had a nice time! The kids decorated wish bags (and then later received gifts, hats, plastic leis, noisemakers and poppers in them). We had a nice meal (for B, that is the whole point of celebrating something!). B made french fried potatoes, sweet potatoes and chicken and we had other yummy stuff, including two different homemade cheese balls (we were evidently in the mood for cheese balls). We played games like Granny Apples, the States game, and Apples to Apples. We celebrated the new year at about 10 p.m. with noise making, hats, leis, and poppers. We went outside and let off some poppers to ring in the new year! We started this whole party tradition when the kids were a lot younger--maybe when J was a toddler, so they could see what people did on New Year's Eve. The early-evening celebrating is a hold-over from those days--plus that is about my late-night limit! We used to have a pinata when the basement was not finished. We also had tricycle races and different competitions. Some years, we have had fireworks but the poppers sufficed this year.