A New Year’s Party

A New Year’s Party

By Allan Olson

We had a marathon of a party over the New Year’s weekend this year – at least it seemed like it at the time.

This year’s party was all about playing games and having a good time, like every party should be.

The favorite this year was Euchre, a game played at nearly every family function on my wife’s side.

Throughout the weekend, all of the adults and one kid took turns playing the game. One person would vacate their seat, sometimes in the middle of the game, and another person would quickly fill in. A winner or winning team would be near impossible to determine, due to the many partner changes throughout the course of the next two days.

Of course, we also spent those days indulging ourselves in all manner of food. It seemed like from Saturday through all day Sunday, we were always eating something.

This year I can honestly say that I made it to midnight without even taking a nap first, compared to other years where I’ve hit the sack sometimes long before the new year arrived, or seconds after. The games continued well into the morning hours of New Year’s Day before we all hit the hay.

The kids tried to make it to New Year’s Day, but surprisingly, they all fell asleep sometime after 10:30 p.m. Alivia, the youngest of all the “younger” kids present, made it the latest, falling asleep sometime after 11:30 p.m.

This was the first New Year’s party in our house, and it was the best! The kids all had their own areas to play in. They took turns playing computer games, Wii games, and watching TV.

Other games played over the course of the weekend included Clue, Scattergories (and the Jr. version), Skip Bo and a small game of War that the kids played.

It was a great weekend, with lots of fun had by everyone.

On New Year’s Eve, I also went with Nikolai and his cousin Michael (who spent the week with us) to a friend’s house to check out a beaver lodge on their property. The boys both got an opportunity to explore the long abandoned lodge, both inside and out. As much as I wanted to explore the inside of the lodge myself, I was informed it would be impossible for me to crawl into it. I was informed that entrance was too small, and the rooms and tunnels too small for me to navigate through.

Even though I knew this, I’m a little jealous of the kids. That is something I’ve never been able to do, and even though I talked them into taking pictures for me, it still isn’t the same.

This past weekend, we focused on getting our home back in order after the holidays. That included getting the kids to clean their rooms.

After some arguing and fighting between them, the boys managed to get their room clean, at least a considerable improvement from before I gave them my blessing on a job complete. The girls were a different story. Their room wasn’t clean when they went to bed Saturday night, and they spent most of Sunday working in their room, too. At one point they were making progress, then at another it looked worse than when they started. I’ve also lost count of how many times they tattled on each other about someone not helping.

This last week wasn’t all fun and games, though. We learned on Friday about the passing of a good family friend. Nikolai will miss him the most of our kids, as they spent many hours together doing horse chores, riding or just plain goofing off. He could always be talked into saddling the horses to give the kids a ride around his arena. Our friend will be missed, but his memories will live on.

This weekend, I’m looking forward to a fishing trip – as long as the ice holds out. It remains to be seen if we will take the kids.