At Home On The Rock: Celebrations

Showing posts with label Celebrations. Show all posts

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Happy Birthday, Jake!

A little late...but some pictures from Jake's 13th birthday. He's usually a high-energy guy, so I was a bit surprised that he wanted a low-key day. He opted for having one friend over and they spent the day hanging out.

Family celebration at Montana's. He knew about this 'hat'....which is one reason he wanted to go there. He told me, "I want to wear the hat, I want you to take pictures and I want you to put them on Facebook." Oh my....

Opening Ben's present...

The cake...

That makes THREE teenagers in the house now...oh my!

Saturday, January 1, 2011

New Year's Eve, 2010

Hard to believe another year has passed by already!

It's become a bit of a tradition for us to head into 'town' (not sure I'll ever get used of calling St. John's 'town') and spend New Year's Eve at a local hotel. We've spent the last couple of years at one particular hotel and were always happy with it, but this time....not so much.

I guess we were a bit later booking this year and had to take a 'suite'. The suite was disappointing (very small compared to other hotel suites we've stayed in). Also, the room was short on pillows and towels .... not even enough for us to each have one. Tyler ended up using the couch cushion as his pillow and the towels...well....we won't go there. The front desk said they were out of both. Hmmm....

Then, a sign on the front desk indicated they participated in a local savings program (of which we are a part). However, when we tried to show our card...we were informed they accept it every day except NYE. Hmmm...that's not what the sign said. We've always recommended this hotel, but not so sure we will anymore.

Despite that...we had a fantastic New Year's Eve. The kids and Larry enjoyed the pool for the afternoon (I was feeling a bit crashed from our busy week, so I opted to stay in the room and rest). Later in the evening, friends of ours dropped by the hotel room for a bit. We ended up back at their house though, where there were lots of games (pool, ping pong, video games, darts, chess etc.). There was lots to eat and no shortage of noise lol.

At midnight....there was the usual countdown ..... complete with noise horns (which all the kids seemed to know how to use!)

Oh my....

After the count down, we headed outside to see if there were any fireworks. They continued on with the noise horns and the noise.

Oh my.....

We saw a few local fireworks but eventually headed back inside...where the kids wanted to continue on with the games (and the music and the noise horns lol).

The 'old people' though decided after one more game of pool, it was time to wind the party down. We took one of the party goers home...and it was no problem getting him there....but getting out was another story. Now, these people didn't live too far from the hotel....but somehow we ended up downtown St. John's .... George Street and Water Street of all places....on New Year's Eve!!! not where we wanted to be. Larry claims we must have taken a wrong turn....but I maintain he just wanted to be able to say he was downtown on NYE (*wink*) lol.

Eventually, we found our way back to the hotel.

A few pics...none of the adults made it into the pics (well...except for Larry...but as you'll see...he was acting like one of the kids lol)

Happy New Year!!!

Saturday, January 2, 2010

Twice the fun on New Year's Eve

We spent New Year's Eve with family friends. We have many interspersed connections to this family....we're both 'Mainlanders' from Ontario, all of us growing up in fairly close proximity to each other. The town they are from was named after a distant relative of mine and her parents now live in the same town as my Dad and step-mom .... (practically across the street from each other). How cool is that? We didn't know them before coming to Newfoundland and only met up with them while visiting churches upon our arrival here. It's such a small world!

We decided awhile ago we'd spend the night in St. John's. We selected a hotel (Super 8...we stayed there last New Years's Eve), with a pool, a huge water slide and hot tub. We booked early and asked for adjoining rooms on the top floor with a view overlooking the ocean/city. We wanted to have a great view of the fireworks display put on by the city at midnight.

We hung out in the room, eating junk food as well as some healthy food (and I know there are lots of chip bags in the following pics....but we also had a fruit tray and a vegetable tray....we really did!)

We hung out by the pool.

We swam.

We enjoyed the hot tub.

Some of us enjoyed the water slide (and some of us chose not to go down..betcha can't guess who that was lol).

We hung out some more in the room....the kids played various games (video games and hide 'n seek...who would have thought that could be played in a hotel room?....but they did it) while the adults took a breather.

We had pizza for supper (larry's fave!).

We swam some more and enjoyed the hot tub.

We played Pictionary ..... girls against the guys and I won't mention the girls WON WON WON...even though there was one more of them *and* even after we gave them a huge head start by letting them win the first few rounds (well...ok....we didn't really let them win those first few rounds...but it makes for a better story ;))

And at midnight.....we were not disappointed by the fireworks. Not only did we see the city's display, but many other private homes were setting off their own. It was so beautiful to watch all of them at the same time....the whole sky over St. John's seemed to be lit with various displays of fireworks. We had a great view *and* we were warm watching from the comfort of our room.

And...in the morning, we enjoyed a delicious continental breakfast mmmmm!

Pictures from our evening (click pics to enlarge)

The group....
(from left to right...Larry, Tyler, James, Paul, Jake, Jennifer, Rebecca, Brittney)