2008 is here.......

Happy New Year!!!!!

All is quiet in the house this morning. I think my family is officially wiped out. We have spent much of the weekend celebrating the holidays with hubby's siblings and their families. Many hands of euchre were played. This family is serious about their euchre and at one point 3 tables were running at the same time. In addition there was time to play Uno, Phase 10, the Farming Game, Monopoly and Shanghai....all with the TV on the latest football game. They also are pretty serious about keeping up with sports.

Of course, we stuffed ourselves full of great homemade food.....and then came back just a few short hours later to stuff ourselves again. Aunt Becky's homemade rolls are hard to leave alone.

At the time we opened gifts, there were 30 people in Grandma's house. A house that I am sure seemed a lot bigger to her when she was raising 6 children. But as the kids have grown up, had families of their own and now those kids are having kids, it seems pretty tiny around the holidays. There has been talk of moving it to our house, which has more room, but nobody really wants to end the tradition of being in moms house.

The family members had dwindled by New Years Eve, and it was down to a couple of hubby's sisters with their families. We toasted the New Year at midnight with sparkling grape juice. Then the kids realized that it had been snowing.....not a gentle snowfall, but another dumping, this time of perfect packing snow. Grandma scrounged around for gloves and mittens and they were out the door. It was boys against girls and we could hear them laughing and hollering at each other. They had a great time ganging up on each other and seeing who could get close enough to really plaster someone with snow. I am sure they won't soon forget welcoming in the new year that way.

I think we all have certain memories of times when we were kids that stick out when we reminisce. I can see all our kids coming back to celebrate the holidays when they have kids of their own. They will all be remembering the euchre, the wrapping paper battles and the fun time they had at the beginning of 2008 when they had that massive snowball fight.