Happy 2009!

This year, Matt and Tricia volunteered to head up the New Year's festivities for our family. Our main event was a three-event Family New Year Olympics. The opening ceremonies were highlighted by Tim whistling the olympic theme. I'll upload a video of that when I'm able to get it off my camera. Then the three events were Paper Airplane racing, Marbles, and Four-Square Ping-Pong.

Paper Airplane Racing was a nostalgia event. Fifteen years ago, every Sunday, my brothers would gather together and fold paper airplanes. Then they would go down to the basement, stand on the fireplace and see whose plane would go the farthest. That's what we all did last night, and everyone from my six-year-old cousin David to my grandma participated. This was not my strongest event, so I made sure that my planes at least had cool names. They were christened the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria.

After all the events were completed (with Grandma doing remarkably well at marbles), we played family Jeapordy via video skype with my sister Becca and her family in California.

New Year's morning at my parents' house. Michael wanted to make waffles for breakfast. Of course, as soon as Uncle Curtis, the family gourmet chef, caught wind of this, he enthusiastically found his favorite waffle recipe and offered to help out. So we had waffles for breakfast, along with lots of random and silly conversation.

Curtis' son, my cousin David, loves waffles. We don't have a little syrup container right now, so we were pouring our syrup out of a gallon container. This worked pretty well for most of us, but then David decided he wanted to pour his own syrup and he got a little lake on his plate. He decided he was really full after that.

Laura had some interesting conversations with David, too. Some of them went like this:

Laura: David, I'm going to eat you!
David: How do you know?
Laura: (ponders thoughtfully) Good question

Laura: David, it's too bad you're not a girl
David: [Grins shyly]
Karla: What? Why do you say that?
Laura: Because I work at a store here we sell cute things for little girls
Maria: Really it's because she still thinks boys have cooties so she can't be friends with them


Angi: Hey! Give me the syrup back, you hillbilly!
Maria: I think you're misusing that word. Everyone in this room is too educated to be a hillbilly
Curtis: I think it's more a state of mind than a level of education
Michael: I'm a housebilly