Wii Wish You a Happy New Year

Last year and the year before Meghan put together an elaborate set of activities for us to do with the kids. This year, we scaled it back a bit. We still had our traditional fondue, though, which is something I always look forward to. As an activity, we thought it would be fun to break out the Nintendo Wii. I’ve had the Wii for years (maybe seven?) and I used to play it occasionally before we had kids. But when you have kids, your free time diminishes, and that was one of the casualties. But I’ve kept it around hoping that some day the kids would be ready for it. This also gives me a free opportunity to play it, so everyone wins! Joshua previously had a brief experience with real video games, and he likes playing the little kid games on his Kindle Fire, but this was really the first significant exposure he’s had to a video game. Wii Sports is the game that comes bundled with the Wii, and it has bowling, golf, tennis, baseball, and boxing, and we chose to go with bowling. I made a Mii for each kid and helped them bowl. They had fun, especially Joshua. It was a little hard for them to learn the motions and the buttons you have to press and release, but Joshua and Clara mostly got it. We then also played MarioKart, which is one of my all-time favorite games. They all liked it quite a bit, though they really struggled to not only stay on the track, but to go the right direction. When initially choosing characters, Joshua recognized Mario but couldn’t quite remember his name, and called him Remargo, which was really cute. After I later told him it was Mario, I guess he didn’t quite hear me right, because Joshua liked to be “Baby Marro” (there’s Mario and Baby Mario in the game) until he discovered Bowser, which was then a way cooler option, apparently. Hannah liked to be “the one with the bow” (Baby Peach), and Clara liked to choose various different characters without really having a favorite. Meghan and I helped coach them (which mostly consisted or repeatedly telling them they were going the wrong way and that they should turn around), so we didn’t play much, but it was still a lot of fun for everyone.

For dinner we had appetizers, and then we had the New Year’s Eve event for the kids, since they weren't going to be staying up till midnight.  We put on hats and I distributed noisemakers.  I used the small, cheap, plastic disco ball that I have for solely this reason, and played some music off a party-themed CD we have, and the kids had a “dance party”. They loved it and were really disappointed when it was over.  The above pictures were actually taken in near darkness with only the light of the disco ball until the bright flash of the camera illuminated everything.  But check out their dance moves!

              Without the flash, things were a little different.  I have no idea what's happening here, but I love it.

                                                      Here the kids are entranced by the disco ball.

I then pulled up some random countdown video from YouTube on my phone and we did a countdown and then blew our noisemakers, and then it was midnight, at least as far as they were concerned. We weren’t tricking them, because they don’t even know that’s a thing.

Then they went to bed, and Meghan and I had a couple hours to kill before the actual midnight (we’re so old).  And yes, this was my outfit.  We had plenty of theme parties when I was in college, so I had a handful of crazy shirts which worked in various situations.  And I kept them, because I thought you'd never know when you'll need a crazy shirt.  Well, it turns out you do know, and the answer is that I don't really need crazy shirts at this point in my life, as I think they've all gone unused since college.  So I decided to break out one of them for our New Year's Eve party, so here I am in my sweet blue lamé shirt. And notice that was lamé, like the fabric, not lame, thank you very much. Anyway, we drank champagne and watched some of the specials on TV.  Like last year, Pitbull had the best show (what is this world coming to?) as he had fun and energetic music acts, as opposed to the lame acts and horrible “comedic” banter from comedians trying too hard (but still failing) to be funny. Shortly before midnight Pitbull himself performed (and continued until the end of the show), and I realized there’s a surprising amount of Pitbull songs that I like. For some reason Ke$ha didn’t show up to sing her part of “Timber”. I can’t imagine she had something more important to do, but whatever. Anyway, we had a really fun evening, and it’s been a great 2015 for us, and we’re looking forward to 2016.