New Year's Eve and Day

Anita treated us to another Dutch tradition on New Year's Eve by making us oliebollens (translated oil balls). She fried them out back on our grill which I'm quite sure they don't do in the Netherlands. The sticky dough is filled with currents and after they are fried you sprinkle them with powdered sugar. Their name is misleading because they are very good. We enjoyed sharing this New Year's tradition with them.

The rest of the day was spent playing games and eating; every one's favorite pastimes. That night all the kids went ice skating with our ward and the adults went out to eat at P.F. Chang's.

None of us are great party people, so we watched the New Year come in on the TV with all those in Time Square and then headed to bed.

New Year's Day we planned a barbecue and invited Garth's Uncle Paul and his wife, Judy and Mrs. Cooper, Judy's mother. We started early in the all day getting the baby back ribs and pulled pork roasting. Lonica made some great green chili cornbread and Judy brought coleslaw and Paul's famous salsa. Needless to say, we had plenty of food! I appreciated all the help I got from everyone and especially from Scott. I really miss having him around when we barbecue.

We also planned to have a white elephant exchange and I'd told Anita to have everyone in her family bring something for it. They were intrigued by a game where everyone brought something they wanted to get rid of and wrapped it up nice. During the day everyone had snuck into the office to wrap their "gift".

Here are pictures of our group while instructions and rules are given. You can see the excitement building in their faces.

Wouter and Garth look as though they can hardly control themselves. We actually had a really good time opening the wonderful white elephant gifts and "stealing" them from each other.

We were blessed with things like stuffed bears, really small sunglasses, pictures of Lonica, bobble heads, Corvette pins, world maps. But I ended up with the most coveted gift - gloves that could peel a potato in 8 seconds! After the game, Preston had to run get a potato so we could try them out.

As everyone gave it a shot, none of us able to peel the potato, let alone do it in 8 seconds. So if you see the infomercial for these gloves, resist the temptation and don't buy them. As amazing as they sound you WILL be disappointed.