Ringing it in

Happy New Years to All!
 I hope everyone had a blast celebrating. Weather you fell asleep at 10 with your love, stayed up until 5am rocking and rolling it or pushed yourself to watch the ball drop then said peace out 2013 .

We rung in the new year in a small but fun little get-together at our casa with all the Haltermanns. C had some cousins in town from Germany, so we wanted to show them some Texas fun. Sadly I have very few pics to show  : ( But I do want to share some of our fun, so I'll just use the links from the ideas I used or pics that do justice :)

Portioning is not my strong suite when it comes to planning food for groups of people. I ALWAYS make too much food..... Including too many appetizers. Oh well the boys always eat it late at night.
The boys wanted to fry some chickens and have french fries, so I had to balance it out with grilled veggies.
They use a big ass pot and heat it up over the propane burner. It makes the BEST chicken! We had 8 individual small chickens, we ate 5. (See I told you too much food)

photo credit;  http://x111.com/blog/commsie/page/5/

It's not breaded or anything. We just season it and cook it, and it comes out so nice and juicy! 

Fries are done the same way except we like to eat them with fondor,  curry ketchup and mayo. (yes it's a German thing) 

Next time you come over we will share this awesome-ness with you! You must try it at least once :) 

PS Only C and I ate the veggies.. waaa waaa

http://www.gimmesomeoven.com/easy-grilled-vegetables/

After dinner we played Pictionary. I printed words from The Game Gal  just to make my life a little easier :) 

I printed the New Years Eve list, and a list from Easy, Medium, Hard and Movies as back up. I loved that I didn't have to spend brain power on thinking of words bc the Baby is stealing all my brain power .

 Thanks Game Gal! And because I'm so awesome, I translated the New Years words in German too. 

I was really proud of everyone wanting to play and having AND keeping a good attitude! If you have ever played games with us you know how competitive C and I can be with each other, so it's best if we are on the same team. 

During the game I served Champagne Jello shots and I got the recipe here from That's So Michelle. 

They were a huge hit! Even with the guys! 

I didn't cut them into hearts, I just did squares and sparkle sugar on top. 

After a long stint of game playing, the boys were itching to blow stuff up so we moved outside. 

While the girls stood at what we though was a safe distance (soon to be proven wrong), the boys decided to forget any common sense they had - as well as any knowledge on safety- and held the bottle rockets in their hands to shoot off.  Two out of three of them burned their hands!! One of which was big papa bear and he actually burned through the gloves he was wearing!! (but that's what saved his hand from being much worse) Needless the one German boy didn't even want to try to shoot anything off.... 

They redeemed them selves when it was time for the big artillery shells. By the time midnight rolled around it was time for the big finale and they had it down! 

After I served champagne and everyone said their wish and got their kiss we watched at they shot 6 artillery at a time up into the perfect cloudless sky! It was awesome. 

While we were outside, Abby was inside eating the remaining 3 chickens.. SIGH. She was fine, luckily! 

No Haltermann night/party would be complete with out S'MORES! 

So to wrap up the evening we stood around the bon fire and taught the Germans how to roast S'mores. 

(my image) 

C and I aren't big on making resolutions. 

BUT I do want to become better at taking pictures! Remembering to take them as well as the quality of image I can create. I've been working on it this past year, and esp with the baby coming I need to get better about remembering to actually take pictures! :) 

Tschüss