New Year's Eve 2022

 We love our tradition of hosting a New Year's Eve party for family! This year all of the Houston family was in town, so we had a nice large celebration. Keeping with tradition, Jason helped me assemble our special balloon drop prior to the party-- no Schleicher New Year's Eve party can be complete without one!

After having dinner together, each family group took turns opening up a bag that listed an activity for us to do.

First, Jason led the family in a Kids vs. Adults game called "Two Guesses," similar to Game of Things.

Here, the kids are trying to hide their expressions so that the adults can't determine which one of them wrote the clue!

Because the game was a little complex, some of the younger (or young-at-heart) family members chose instead to decorate a New Year's Eve party hat.

Adley and Noah had the great idea to add decoration to the tops of their party hats. The hats turned out so cute!

Then, Chelsea led us in a game called Tic-Tac-Toe Relay. The kids got a bit competitive on this game, but they still seemed to enjoy it. The idea was such a fun one!

Back inside, we watched a video slideshow which was a compilation of everyone's favorite memories from 2022. Ian spent a lot of time creating this slideshow and did a fantastic job. It was so fun seeing a little recap of everyone's year-- so many shared memories too!

Uncle Jon led the whole group in a fun dance party, but I missed getting photos of the whole group! We were all having too much fun dancing, apparently! I did capture this cute shot of Ian helping Selah participate in the dance.

One of our final activities was having small groups complete and present Mad Libs stories. Uncle Jon's story was about pirates, and he gave an especially dramatic reading of his story!

Finally, we met in the kitchen for a prayer, recognizing our Heavenly Father's presence and good gifts throughout the year, and a sparkling cider toast.

What beautiful people to celebrate the New Year with!

At our arbitrary "New Year's Eve" time (something like 7:30 or 8:00), we started a youtube video countdown clock and eagerly counted down the seconds to the New Year. This is quite likely everyone's favorite part of the entire evening. Ben was the lucky cousin elected to pull the balloon drop zip cord this year.

All eyes riveted on the countdown...

And 10...9...8...7...6...5

4...3...2...1....

Happy New Year!!

Can you just hear the noise and celebration through these photos?!

Here's a video so you CAN actually hear the real excitement and celebration. :) I love how the kids start counting faster than the video. You can definitely sense their eagerness!

These cousins loved helping me "clean up" all of the balloons after the balloon drop!

What a wonderful evening, as we praised God together for a great 2022 and looked ahead to a year of His grace and love in 2023!