Happy New Year

We celebrated the New Year with NAPA friends (4 kids; 2 kids) and a friend of Jacob's from SA (our 4+1), carbo-loading on pizza, an amazing onion dip, and cupcakes. There may have been some veggies and hummus, but I'm pretty sure not one kid touched them. Since we're all parents of young kids and royally outnumbered, the night ended a little before 10:00 p.m. - just perfect to get home, put the kids to bed, and watch the ball drop in NYC. 

A new year brought us a new van. The old one served us well for eight years and in order to ensure continued minimization of door dings, we went with another van...the same model, just newer. Ethan wanted to name it Ninja. Lucas suggested The Nault Van.

The conversation about what to name it on Facebook was hilarious. Suggestions included: Black Stallion, Fabio, BlackJack, Osiris (Egyptian god of the underworld), Hades, Rollin' Thunder. KITT,  and the one that made me laugh the hardest: Darth Van! We haven't really settled on anything yet although I can't bring myself to call it Darth. It's not evil. It has swagger! 

My resolutions of swimming more and volunteering less cosmically reversed themselves and I didn't make it to the pool in all of January. But I did volunteer to be Cookie Mom for Sarah's Girl Scout troop (for which SHE earned a badge...what's up with that?), and to create a video for Ethan's Cub Scout den. 

Jacob headed to Corpus Christi with his Boy Scout troop to camp at a church one night and spend the other on board the USS Lexington. He had already been to the Lexington with us before, but to spend the night in the crew's cramped quarters was something entirely different!