Hello, 2013!

LIGHT UP THE NIGHT:  The kids did manage to make it until midnight last night - and we didn't even have to pump them full of Mountain Dew!

Instead, they had dessert a little later than normal and then starting about 10 p.m. I had them get up and move around every 15 minutes. More specifically, I had them do 15 'crappy jacks,' which is what we'll forever call jumping jacks in our household. It stems from when CJ was a few years younger, and we'd try to get him to do jumping jacks and he was TERRIBLE at it. Just couldn't get the right parts moving the right ways at the right time. Thankfully, he's moved past that - but we still call 'em crappy jacks.

We loaded into the cold car at about 11:40 for the 12 p.m. fireworks. We drove first to tiny Ursula Judkins park, out on the southeast point of Magnolia overlooking the bay and offering a full view of the Space Needle, but the place was full already. So, we continued across the Magnolia (Garfield) Bridge, flipped a U-turn and went under the bridge, to Terminal 91, where cruise, fishing and cargo ships park. There were only two other cars there. Not a great view of the entire Needle, but we could see the top half of it, and that's where nearly all of the fireworks would be visible.

The show started at the stroke of midnight and lasted about 10 minutes. It was a nice way to ring in the new year.

Much to my surprise, during the show, as the fireworks were exploding, CJ and Annabelle started listing what ingredients were used to produce the different colors in the flares. For instance, copper is used to make blue, calcium is orange and lithium is used to produce red. Sweet! They DID learn something from the BrainPOP video about fireworks!

PONY PROGRESS: Lots of work going on in Annabelle's room over the last couple of days. It's finally starting to look like a My Little Pony-ville. Annabelle is helping me keep track of the umpteen different colors of paint I have to mix to get the Just Right colors for the job at hand.

DINO-MITE: Today, CJ broke out a educational packet all about dinosaurs  We've been sitting on the thing for months. He went through the whole thing himself, only asking for help when it came to some analogies comparing dino body parts with everyday modern day objects (the sheet on the left). It was a bit of an odd exercise.