Redwoods and New Year's

More catch-up from winter vacation...I promise this is the last one though.

This one features our day trip to Big Basin in the Redwoods and our New Year's Eve/Day celebration. Lots of fun. Lots of pictures. Enjoy :)

This was our New Year's Eve celebration, complete with extreme games and prizes, Chinese food, and the annual Dr. Pepper (and other soda) belching contest at midnight.

Poor Dad got this fortune at about 10:00 p.m. on the last day of the year. He did have "much happiness" for those last two hours of the year. 

Baby Michael really wanted to participate in the soda drinking. 

Precious.

James and Jess picked out the prizes for our extreme games...James was super excited for his Spiderman hand sanitizer. He picked it out, especially for...him.

The prize bag...featuring lots of snap bracelets and fake locks of hair.

Dad rocking  a new pink lock of hair.

Bananagrams...my new favorite game.

How clever is this? Someone spelled "winner" and I think they won. Wasn't me, that's for sure. 

Things got a little loopier as the night went on.

Mom threatened to fall asleep. She didn't stay like this for long.

Dad's game face.

Mr. Tumnus's game face.

After the midnight celebrations and our belching contest (which Jess won, of course, though her performance last year was far superior), we headed out to Chubby's to prepare the pork for Lisa's wedding reception the next day. Mind you, this was about 2:00 in the morning and we were dealing with half a dozen pork butts...the jokes ran wild. I'll let your imagination take it from here. But seriously, who needs alcohol when you have my very overtired family+half a dozen pork butts+2 AM. Hilarity. Nothing could beat that.

 The next day...I just couldn't get enough of this baby. He is such a goof!

 And right before we left Utah, we had a lovely visit with one of my very favorite people, Karuna. I love this girl so much and wish we lived in the same country or state or city or something. Australia is WAY too far away.