Happy New Year!!!!

Well - it's here!!  2012!!  I'm pretty excited for the coming year....but I'll let you in on a little secret.....I have a thing for even numbers.  Especially the number 12.  So I'm even a little more excited about the coming year!

New Year's Eve was pretty low key for us.  The girls are still sick with their coughs/colds and now mommy and daddy have it too.  So we pretty much stayed home.

For our New Year's Eve dinner, I made a batch of Raspberry-Balsamic Meatballs in the crockpot.  It's pretty easy to make and very, very yummy!  Here's my recipe:

About 2 lbs. of meatballs (or less depending on your family) thawed to room temperature.**
1 C raspberry preserves*
3 Tbps. worchestershire sauce
3 Tbps. balsamic vinegar
3 Tbps. sugar

Place meatballs in crockpot.  Mix all ingredients in a microwave safe bowl and microwave on high for about a minute.  This is mostly to melt the preserves a little.  The sauce will be a little lumpy.  Pour over meatballs and stir.  Cook on low for about 2-2.5 hours. 

You can serve them as cocktail meatballs or serve them over rice as a meal with a vegetable on the side.

**I put mine in frozen and they took twice as long to cook on high.
*  I like my meatballs a little "saucier" so I added another cup of raspberry preserves and increased the rest of the ingredients to 4 Tbsp.

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While the meatballs were cooking, I made up a batch of my garlic-herb dip and cut up some fresh veggies.  I also got a batch of chicken fingers ready for the girls and made up some cheese sticks as well.

As we ate dinner, we watched Mr. Popper's Penguins.  We LOVED it!  Such a cute family movie and the girls laughed from beginning to end.  I highly recommend it as a good family movie!  (We loved it even more when we saw Jim Carrey wearing a Penguins hockey jersey part way through the movie!)

After dinner, we took an evening walk around our neighborhood with our dog Zoja.  Then came home to make our New Year's Eve crowns.

I had some poster-sized grey glitter paper, so we cut those in half for the crowns.  That morning I got an email from Activity Village and they had some great New Year's printables which the girls colored, cut out and glued to their crowns.

After finishing our crowns, it was time for jammies and hot chocolate.  I curled up on the couch with the girls to read them some of the books Santa brought for Christmas.  My Marine and I decided that we would let the girls try to stay up until midnight.  Poor Nudgie made it until 8:30. 

We rang in the New Year at 10pm for all our East Coast family and friends and then again at midnight Colorado time.  It was fun getting to say Happy New Year twice.

And Nani made it (but barely)!

Happy New Year - East Coast time!

As another surprise for Nani, we pulled out the couch downstairs and her and daddy slept downstairs under the Christmas tree lights.  (Mommy stayed upstairs with Nudgie because of her bad cough).

I hope you all had a wonderfully blessed New Year's Eve with your families!!  I wish all my readers the very best for 2012.  God bless!!