New Year's Eve

We partied in style.  We had a dance party to Taylor Swift's 1989 (and "shook off" 2015, I couldn't resist), talked about resolutions, and drank Martinelli's apple cider.

Connor the party animal

The two littlest fell asleep by 9, and around 11 Xander, Jonathan and my brother went outside with the rest of our neighborhood to light fireworks.  I stayed in and watched Jenny's Wedding, an interesting film about a woman in her 30's, Katherine Heigl, coming out to her family.

Oh!  And I almost forgot to write about our dessert!  I saw this recipe on Facebook and decided it was my kind of cooking:

put crockpot on counter
dump in 2 cans of apple pie filling
dump in 1 box of spice cake mix
dump in two sticks of butter
put crockpot lid on
turn on high for 2 1/2 hours

Voila!  It worked!  We had apple spice pie.

Adding the apples

While cooking.  We ate it with whipped cream, it would have been better with vanilla ice cream.

Alas, it wasn't long for this world.  We served it as a late dessert on the 31st, and when I went to go check on it around noon on the 1st, it was burned blackened hot mush.  Apparently an unnamed someone - and everyone who could speak denied it, so I have no doubt it was Connor - plugged it in and turned it on again sometime that morning.  And the already-baked pie was re-baked for another 3 hours or so.

Yeah.  Hindsight's 20/20.  We shoulda moved the stool.

As Jonathan was using all his muscle to scrape the blackened remains out of the crockpot bottom down the garbage disposal, Ari said sorrowfully, "What a waste of food.  It was YUMMY food too!"