The Hiding, Firing, Popcorn eating Wards at Midnight

New Years!! We love any excuse to buy fireworks, be silly, have a party, and celebrate!  So party we did,  the Ward family had several fun festivities while we waited for the clock to tick to midnight.  We started the evening off with a trip up the road to buy fireworks.  Everyone got to pick out one item.  They ranged from Sparklers (Mom), to Roman Candles ( CJ), a panda firework (Aparri), little bombs (Preston), and of course the "in air" explosion types (Dad).  After our selection were complete, we picked up dinner (no cookin' for Mom tonight!) - McDonalds for the kiddos and Taco Box for the adults!  After out scrumptious meal at home, we had our first activity....hide and go seek in the dark with head lamps!  Actually it was sardines...a flip version of hide and seek...but the same idea.  "Someone hides, and we all SEEK"  Hide and seek....see.  It was so much fun!!  It was hilarious trying to fit 6 people in some of those hiding spots!  We were cramped in the bathtub with a blanket over our heads, tucked under the kitchen table with all the chairs still pushed in, snuggled up under the crib, stashed behind the rocking chair, and stuffed in a bed under all the pillows!  The kids still talk about our "hide and seek" adventures on new years!  Next, we lit off a few tame fireworks...namely sparklers and a few roman candles.  We wanted the littlest Wards to still see some fireworks, but figured they probably wouldn't last until midnight and the loud noise of the bigger fireworks would scare them.  (We still had some crying with some of the tame ones...so it was a good idea)   After were sufficiently frozen (wind!) from watching the fireworks,  we went inside for a little something to warm us up.  We made chocolate milk shakes (so much for being warmed up right?) and marsh-mello popcorn.  Now that we were all sufficiently sugared up, we turned on the radio and had a kitchen dance party!  Oh....we had such good moves!  (NOT, but we sure had fun trying!) At this point, we were starting to loose some of the younger children....so we put Detric to bed and put in a movie for the rest of the gang to enjoy while we waited for the appointed hour!  Aparri tried hard to make it to the final celebrations, but fell asleep with Mom on the couch. Laura, eventually woke up and rejoined the party, but Aparri never reawakened....she was out for the count.  And as for the rest of the gang...Clayboy, CJ, and Preston, Yep....they made it to the nice golden hour of midnight!  At the lucky hour, we all bundled back up and headed outside to light off the rest of the fireworks to celebrate.  The boys had a ball!  They would have been happy to play with fire all night long!  We were so caught up with the fun, we forgot to drink our special bubbly we had bought for the occasion....and we had it the next day instead!  Happy New Year from the Hiding, Firing, Popcorn eating Wards!