Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! Guess what? I didn't take ANY pictures! That's probably because we didn't do much though. We sat at my mom's house and talked and played games most of the day. I'm amazed at how much time I can spend just sitting around talking when I'm here, at my mom's house. Honestly, you'd think we would run out of things to say, but I have a hard time doing anything else when we are here.
What are some of your favorite family games?

This year, the adults around here have been playing: Ticket to Ride, Ticket to Ride Europe, Apples to Apples, and 10 Days in Europe.
The kids (and some adults) have been playing: Whoonu, Battleship, puzzles, play-dough, hide and seek, and sliding down the stairs on top of mattresses.

My brother took these pictures of Bazinks and his cousin playing

Hide-and-Seek with my mom:

In the evening, we put the kids to bed and my parents stayed home to watch all of them while my brothers, their wives or girlfriends, and Rock and I went to a New Year's Eve celebration at a local mall. There were performers and booths with different activities. At the end, there were fireworks. My favorite parts were:

-Talking to my family (I just can't get enough!)
-Watching a really, really old couple dance to a live band. It got me thinking of all of the things they must have experienced together and how much in love they must have been. (For all I know, they may have just met, but it was good to think about it. I even teared up. Granted, I haven't had a lot of sleep lately.)
-Sitting across Rock at the eatery as he talked to my brother about football, and realizing, once again, how much in love I am with him!
-Watching the fireworks in the parking lot with the beautiful mountains in the background and thinking of how blessed our life is and of all the adventures we have had that have brought us to where we are. It made me think about resolutions:

I wasn't really into making resolutions this year since I have plenty I'm already working on, but there is something to be said about thinking of New Year’s resolutions right after Christmas. For one thing, hopefully we've been thinking about the Savior and His gift to us, so we are more ready to think of ways we can improve to better serve Him. Also, we've been able to spend more time than usual with family. This helps me prioritize my goals to make sure that I'm actually working on the ones that matter most (like the ones towards my husband!) Another reason is that I haven't been working much on anything for like 2 weeks - like I said, I've been sitting around talking and playing games, the kids have been having way more screen time (Wii games and movies - although I did try to make some of them educational!) than they would ever normally be allowed, and we've pretty much thrown any normal schedule out the window. I'm not saying this is a good thing (although Rock does!), but it does get me excited to get back on track with our goals.

I was going to just make one resolution so that I could actually focus on accomplishing it, but I guess it's not possible for me, so I narrowed it down to 3. One, that is not too personal to post, is to speak Spanish to the kids for at least one hour every day. I needed to put this one high on the priority list because it's very important to me and I never, ever do it. It's so hard to remember!

Anyone else have resolutions that are not too personal to share?