First Day of the New Year

 January 1st, 2024. Crazy how quickly the last year flew by and now a new one starts. Since I hadn't posted yesterday I got that blog post done then took the golf cart over to mom's house. Karin was giving Nancy a bath when I arrived. I brought some eggnog for mom as she didn't get any last night and in our family it is tradition to drink eggnog for the first of the year. Each New Year's Eve mom would make 3 or 4 gallons of the delicious drink for the party and then for the annual football game played the next day. That was named the Carnation bowl and was played no matter what the weather. You see when dad owned Baer greenhouse he grew carnations and the first day of the year all the guys came to Pleasant Home to play football in the fields. This year the game was played indoors but more on that later. Karin had a new drawing finished and this one was of Rachel's dog.  Those Sauders sure  have the scowl down pat.

When Karin got home I was going to drive to Rhoda's house to pick up a bouncy house we found for sale in Bloomington, IL but Rhoda called just as I was getting ready to leave to say she was bringing the house. All of the kids except Lee, Iris and Zeke met here at the barn at 2:00 pm

Ruth stopped by to drop off a scooter for River and she was thrilled with that. It was just her size.

The first game on the agenda was the family whiffle ball game so the kids got busy, cleaned up the gym and had that set up by the time the last family arrived.

Below are a few pictures of the game.

Eden and Elisabet didn't want to play in the gym, they chose to play in the living room.

Rhoda arrived with the bouncy house but that wasn't blown up until the whiffle ball game was over.

That house was well used the rest of the day. They loved playing in it. It only came with one blower and really needs two if all of the kids want to be in at the same time so we will probably just order another blower on amazon as they aren't that expensive. The next game played was dodge ball.

and then came the football game. This game lasted until suppertime.

They had trick plays, touchdowns, interceptions, great passes and lots of fun.

Below is a video of the games and the bouncy house fun.

When the gym games were finished we all came inside to watch football and eat leftovers. Mark left earlier but I was able to stay until almost 7:00pm before leaving the barn. I'm exhausted and will be heading to bed as soon as this is posted. What a great 1st day of a new year.