Expensive Chinese Food

For the first time in... four years? Yeah, I think it's been four years.... we were not losers from the street on New Year's Eve this year. We actually had a party to go to! It was at Nat's place. We decided we wanted to eat, but we didn't want to cook. So we came up with the idea of getting Chinese takeout. Ben and I were in charge of ordering it and picking it up.

Mama mia. Sticker shock. Chinese food doesn't seem that expensive when you get a meal for two or whatever. But when you're feeding 13 people, yikes. Bikes. Maybe next year we'll save some moola and cook ourselves, eh, Nat? I make a pretty mean fried rice.

Here are the kiddos, enjoying their Chinese food:

Except for Jake. He didn't want Chinese food, so he was experiencing an Emo moment:

Ben really wanted to try to get a luminaire thingey to float this year (he hadn't ever succeeded in this before), so he worked really hard and did all of this experimenting with different wire, different tissue paper, etc. He was convinced it would launch this year. I was skeptical.

He had each guest at the party to draw a picture on a piece of tissue paper, and then he glued them all on the lantern. We all just drew pictures of stuff we like to do or whatever. Here are Sadie, Lex, Ivy, and Chris, drawing:

I drew a picture of a runner's legs. I didn't know what to draw.

Then it was launching time. The lantern was enormous:

And she flew!!!:

I love this pic of Nat:

It really went quite high. Then the wind tipped it a bit, and it caught on fire and landed, we think, in Nat's backyard neighbor's yard. Oops. Oh well. Ben was quite pleased with himself:

Nat had a good idea for next year's luminaire - she thought that we could each write down a bad habit or something that we wanted to get rid of as a resolution, and glue those habits onto the luminaire. That way, when it catches fire, it's symbolic of the burning up of old habits. I thought that was a good plan.

Then we adults played Catch Phrase. Good times:

And Micah cuddled with my mom: