New Year's Eve and Day and Family Fun

We had a wonderful end to 2016 and beginning to 2017. 

Our celebration of the end of 2016 kind of started on Friday afternoon, when I took advantage of my sister being home from college and surprised Bill and took him to see "Star Wars: Rogue One." He is a huge Star Wars fan, and since Benjamin has become obsessed with the series, I have caught up on the story line. (I have seen the original 3 (episodes 4, 5, and 6) and "The Force Awakens." I have only seen bits and pieces of Episodes 1, 2 and 3. I am old school like that.) My official review is: WOW! It really reminded me of the original 3. It was REALLY, REALLY good! (You should go see it!). After the movie, we stopped at Subway for a late lunch, early dinner. 

Bill had Saturday, Sunday and yesterday off of work. On Saturday, we de-Christmased the house. (Is de-Christmas even a word?) We got everything taken down and the kids' toys and books put back into place. All of this while there was "Mythbusters" and football on TV. We got the kids McDonald's for lunch, as we are giving up fast food as a family goal for January. I also worked on laundry all day so that we could start the new year with no dirty clothes. 

New Year's Eve night, I made a "fancy dinner" as Ben calls it. Really it was appetizer like food served on our wedding china and we all had beverages served in wine glasses. I also had candles lit on the table. I served pizza sticks (made myself and so good), little smokies in barbeque sauce (not a huge hit), spicy Aldi's chicken wings, mozzarella sticks, jalapeno poppers, canned mandarin oranges, and carrots and baby tomatoes with ranch. It was a very yummy dinner and I will definitely be adding the pizza sticks to our regular Friday night pizza rotation.

We sent the boys to bed at normal time. Since Rebecca is 10, we told her that she could stay up if she wanted to, which of course she did. 

We taught Rebecca how to play Scrabble and she did really well for her first time playing. Bill beat me by 1 point and Rebecca by only 20 points or so. It was a really close game. 

We turned on the Ryan Seacrest show at 11:55 to watch the ball drop in New York and Bill opened champagne for him and I. Bill and I kissed at midnight to welcome in 2017 and we shared the tradition of opening the doors to allow the old year out and the new year in with Rebecca. We were all in bed around 12:30 or so. 

New Year's Day we just hung around the house in the morning. I started my goal of doing some form of exercise every day by taking a 2.75 mile walk. It felt really good as the sun was shining. 

Then we headed to my mom's for dinner. She again cooked a yummy dinner of bbq ribs, mashed potatoes, stuffing, sauerkraut, rolls, strawberries and blueberries. We had a wonderful evening with my siblings and parents. It was a good way to start 2017.

Yesterday morning I really didn't feel well, so my day got thrown off by a couple of hours. After I started feeling a little better, I got dinner started in the crockpot (chicken and noodles) and headed out to Aldi's for grocery shopping. I was able to get everything on my list there! I am going to try to do 95% of our shopping at Aldi's this month to see if that will save us some money in our grocery bill. (I say 95% as there are some things that I have to get elsewhere, for example Bill's Slimfast powder.) 

Yesterday afternoon, we took advantage of the mild temperatures (in the 40's) and took the kids for a short walk. We only walked a little over a mile as I still wasn't feeling 100%. 

Dinner yesterday was a success. The kids all LOVED the chicken and noodles and even Bill went back for seconds, which he never does whenever I make a dish like this. 

So overall, it has been a wonderful start to 2017-- the year to get my health and weight in order and to focus on the happy moments.