December Recap, Part III: New Year's and Stuff

After Christmas we had an entire glorious week to do whatever we wanted to do.  So, naturally, Craig buckled down and did some really great work and I sat around worrying about the New Year's Eve party we'd decided to throw.

In my defense, when you invite eight families and only TWO of them bother to RSVP, (and one family asks if they can bring friends, but never confirms that they're actually coming, with or without said friends) it's really hard to know how much food to buy.  But even if that weren't the case, the fact is that I really suck at knowing how much food to prepare for large groups of people, so I probably would have been stressing out even if I'd had an accurate guest list.  (But seriously-- what's up with people not bothering to tell you if they're coming???  One woman very helpfully put her answer down as, "Maybe."  Why is that even an option????)  I sent a couple reminders through evite, and when that didn't work I finally just texted people.  And they all made it easy by saying they couldn't come but that next time they would!  Ha!  Like I'll be inviting them to anything ever again!

Anyway, let's switch the narrative to Craig for a bit.  He's less bitter...

Craig had gotten a couple tools for Christmas that he was excited to use.  He'd drawn up plans to build himself a workbench and it was finished before I'd hardly even realized he'd begun.  Turns out he works fast with a nail gun!  And then he went to work organizing his workshop, which is now a total man-cave, much to his delight.

This is what his workshop has looked like for the past year or two...

Same room, opposite angle; as you can see, it sort of turned into a dumping ground for cardboard boxes...

Here's his workbench!

Nothing like a pegboard for getting organized!

Sparkling clean!

I was super impressed with how quickly he pulled that entire room together!  I think I spent more time trying to pick out a new rug for our family room than it took him to do all that...

Anyway, suddenly it was New Year's Eve and time for our party!  In spite of all my agonizing, it all turned out really well and we had a great time.  The two families who'd said they were coming did in fact show up, with their combined 7 children, plus two of our neighborhood kids, so we had a decent number of people.  (I would have invited some neighbors, but since they're all very big fans of all the local breweries, I was quite certain they wouldn't be too thrilled to attend a non-alcoholic NYE party-- I explained this to one of them and he laughed and agreed).  We had TONS of food (SUCCESS!) and played games: Code Names, Apples to Apples, and Telestrations.  The upstairs was for sleeping children and quiet play.  The main floor was for games.  And in the basement the kids could be as loud as they wanted, which worked great!  We pulled out our crystal goblets and filled them with various sparkling ciders for the countdown.  And we let the kids have noisemakers and silly string (and I was very glad I'd kept the new rug hidden until after the party!)

And now I'm never doing that again! 

Or if I do, I'll only invite the people who actually come!