Happy New Year!

Who says you have to be up til midnight to have a good time on New Year's?! We decided to have some neighbors over and make it a family event with lots of food, fun and kids. Everyone had a really good time until the party had to break up around 8 pm. (That's bedtime for about 50% of the guest list.) Olivia loves playing with her neighborhood friends so I really wanted to capture the moment so that when they all graduate from high school, they can look back at these photos of themselves "partying" at age 1 and laugh. (The youngest friend is 6 months and the oldest is 4, by the way.) And laugh they will because all of the photos were so bad that it was comical. YOU try to get 6 kids on a couch together to pose for a picture. The picture to the left doesn't do the detail justice so I've attached a bigger version to the bottom of this blog for awhile. Max, in the back, didn't even want to sit with the others so his Mom is holding him up from behind the couch. No one is smiling, or even looking at the camera really. And Olivia is saying, "Forget this, I'm sliding off and getting back to the dance floor." In the 2nd shot,which I didn't post, she is out of the picture all together because she had fallen off the couch. It really was a good time for all though. It was the 2nd year in a row that Mike and I weren't awake to ring in the New Year. Oh well, it was there when we got up the next morning.

Generally speaking, Olivia continues to amaze us every day. She currently loves to climb things and sit on things, even if they aren't meant to be seats. She LOVES to read, which makes us very happy. Her favorite place is sitting in her new bean bag (that Santa brought her) where she just picks book after book off of the bookshelf that Pop Pop built her. I"m going to add a list of books to the blog so that everyone knows what she already has. I can't figure out how to make it something that you just click on to see so it will take up a bit of space. Everyone looks at Olivia and comments on how much she looks like me. They ask what she got from Mike and we definitely have an answer to that....her culinary tastes. She has currently enjoyed italian sausage and sauerkraut, turkey chili, prime rib and sour pickels. Getting her to eat is not an issue in this house.

Happy New Year's everyone!