New Year's Eve

We had Mom and Dad over to our house for New Year's Eve.

(The boys and T had other plans) 

While prepping some veggies I cut into a pepper and found this cutie!

I took it as a good omen for the year to come :)

We ate and then played games. (Matt left for another party after eating)

Dad even joined us for one of our new games, Chameleon, and actually seemed to really enjoy it.  He kept pushing for extra rounds.

When 10 o'clock rolled around we celebrated with New York and Mom and Dad and then they went home.  We used Mom's cool, new streamer confetti...

Notice Ben in the background peeking over the couch ;)

Then, those of us that remained filled our time with finishing our Lord of the Rings marathon and trying to make each other laugh by telling Dad jokes...

And then another countdown and celebration...

Happy 2026!

Day After Christmas

I guess I didn't get pictures but that morning the gang gathered at our house again and did D&D.  It lasted several hours but I think fun was had by all that participated.  I grabbed Chick fil a for everyone as they were finishing up and then we split, only to regroup again a very short time later with Mom and Dad joining us this time.

 With the new Institute building being available, the guys wanted to go utilize it so we started in the rec area... (James was here too...I think he was just looking around at this point since it was his first time in the building)

I was pretty low that night...not sure why but I had a super hard time trying to be chipper :(

Then Andy and the younger set went to the gym for some more rambunctious games.

I stayed back with Ben and Mom and Dad. 

Mom and I played "Whoa There Cowboy" before they had to leave and then I started teaching myself one of our many new games, Clever Cubed, while the gang played Hide and Seek.

At the very end, they got me to participate once and hide while Andy put Ben in his chair and walked around with him as the seeker.  Matt found me in Room 222 hiding behind a post.  I had not been able to figure out how to turn the motion sensor lights off so I positioned myself and just sat extremely still for about 10 minutes hoping they would eventually turn off but they never did...so it gave me away :(