........ and then it was New Year's Eve!

As if we hadn't eaten enough food with 2 weeks away and 2 Christmases, we still had New Year's Eve to go to add a few kilos to the scales.  Every New Year's for the past 6 or 7 years, we have celebrated with some friends of ours, at either their place or ours. The number of children seems to be going up each year (we are up to 5 between us now, with 2 added this year), so the nights get louder but earlier each year.

It was hard to believe it had already gotten to the last day of the year....... especially since our second Christmas was only the day before. That time at the end of the year really does fly!

NYE was another warm day so we spent the morning taking the alpacas for a walk to the paddock near our house. Soren likes his rides in the pram. Even though Astrid has to walk these days, which makes her slightly less impressed!

It was a nice day to have a rest under the tree in the paddock while the alpacas munched on the very dry grass!

I had mostly taken my camera to the paddock to play with my new lens I had received from Anto for a Christmas present the day before.  The alpacas played model for me, showing off their new short hairstyles.  Yeah I am liking the lens lots...... it can stay :)

In the paddock we take the alpacas too for their run around, we let them off their leads and when they have their leads put back on they get a peppermint as a reward. Yes, alpacas love peppermints!  Astrid thinks it's her job to hand out the mints and Chimu is quite happy to receive them from her.

Late Afternoon we headed over to Amy and Rob's for our NYE dinner.  Of course it was at a kid friendly time. Such party animals we are!  The kids hung out eating their BBQ at their own table and the adults got to eat in relative peace.  Soren napped on me, not wanting to miss out.

For the kid's dessert we decided to crack open Astrid's gingerbread house.  Sugary biscuit stuck together with sugar and coated in sugary lollies.  What could go wrong just before bed time?  The kids enjoyed it at any rate............

After the gingerbread house demolition they jumped off some energy on the trampoline while both the babies were supposed to be sleeping. I think the trampolining was ended prematurely by a puddle of pee that ended up on the trampoline. The supervising adult happened to be one of our childless friends.  Come out to dinner with a bunch of kids we said......... it will be fun, we said......... find yourself jumping in a puddle of pee... left that bit out of the sales pitch!

Once all the kids had been banished to their beds or the couch for sleep we tucked into dessert.  I had made a white chocolate and raspberry trifle for our eating pleasure.  It tasted pretty darn good. We also had some home made chocolate delicacies to accompany dessert. Anto had injected alcohol infused chocolate ganache into some glace figs and coated them in dark chocolate.  Just because you can never have enough chocolate!  It's a terrible photo of them but they were pretty good.  Soren just had to sleep through the whole thing. On me of course!

Astrid did eventually go to sleep on the couch and Soren napped on and off on me...... but full of good food we headed home by 11pm and didn't quite see in the new year.  Not a bad effort though.