We don’t usually do anything special for New Year’s Eve, but this year, some friends with kids invited us over for an afternoon/evening get together at their place. We had AMAZING weather for Dec. 31st here in Atlanta, so when we saw they had a nice flat yard and culdesac, Paul went back home to get Andrea’s Jeep and the kids spent some time playing outside even.
Santa brought our friends’ son a drum set for Christmas, so their boys were going to town on the drums when we got there. Andrea was really cautious about them at first, and wouldn’t go near them. But after a while, when everyone else was out of the room, we heard someone playing the drums and realized it must be Andrea! Paul snuck in and got these pictures of our little drummer girl!
I snuck in later and got some video of Andrea playing the drums. She’s not bad! 🙂
Then she went out and rode her Jeep. This is our friends’ backyard. How cool is that?!?
Doesn’t this picture make it seem like she’s actually out off-roading with her Jeep somewhere in the wilderness? 🙂
Even though she’s not smiling, there’s something I really like about this close-up of her driving…
Later, she had fun jumping on the stepping stones from the driveway to the back patio. I really should have moved the trash can to take pictures, but I thought that might be a little weird. Plus, I didn’t realize how adorable the pictures were going to be. If it weren’t for the trash can, I might have submitted them to Land’s End, where the dress is from.
Then our friends broke out some sparklers for the kids to use in the driveway. Andrea loved that!
When they were done doing sparklers, Andrea started running through their leave piles in the yard. I snapped this in complete darkness, so she wasn’t posing and I had no idea she had such a huge grin on her face until I saw the picture. She seriously loves playing in leaves – even by herself, in the cold and darkness.
She ran back and forth in those leaves for a long time, just laughing and cheering and having the best time. Until she face-planted on their driveway, that is. Fortunately, she managed to get her hands out in front of her and her nose stopped millimeters from the driveway, I swear. We all thought she was going to be swollen/bloody mess when I picked her up, but shockingly there wasn’t a mark on her. She was shrieking in pain, but it was all just from her palms hitting the concrete it seems. An ice pack for her hands and an episode of Curious George later, and she was all better. What a relief! But then, it wouldn’t be a NYE party if there wasn’t SOME excitement, would it?