Happy New Year

Like everything else, holidays like New Year's Eve are a little different once you have kids. The days of all night parties and drunken debauchery have been replaced by quiet nights at home with good food and good friends, and I couldn't be happier about it. Sure, it would be fun to get all gussied up and actually get to linger over a meal without wondering who's drawing on the couch (it was Ella B in case you were wondering), but honestly, wouldn't you rather enjoy that food in your sweatpants and slippers?

This year, we rang in the new year with a few of our favorite peeps: Christina, Jeremy, and Loreli from love.reverie.life and our neighbors turned BFF's Andrea, Steve, Arlo, and Violet. We made some awesome (and gluten free!) food, tried to force our children to eat it, and finally gave up and stuffed our own faces instead. At around 6:30, we donned some party hats, pulled out the noise makers, and did a traditional new year's countdown before all the kiddies were reluctantly hauled off to bed. As with every other holiday this year, Ella watched our countdown with both amusement and trepidation, like we were some primitive culture in the African bush. Sometimes she even seems to be taking mental notes: (Okay, so on the eve of the new year, you are supposed to eat and drink so much that you feel sick the next day, wear stupid hats, count backwards from ten, and make resolutions for the coming year that you will give up on in two weeks. Got it.)

Perhaps my New Year's resolution should be to try to make it to midnight next year, not because I really care, but because my husband was pretty annoyed with me (i.e. really pissed and trying to force me to stay awake) that I fell asleep watching Fringe at around 11:00. The upside to falling asleep early and sober is that you have enough energy the next day to go for a nice hike with your cousins. So, we spent our New Year's Day on top of the world with Tom, Sam, Nate, and Jacob and it only required a little bit of huffing and puffing and complaining, the former mostly from Michael who was carrying Ella on his back, and the latter from Nate who apparently doesn't really like hiking all that much.

Overall, it was a lovely New Year's Eve and Day spent with people who make us really happy. So, I resolve to keep doing a whole lot of that in 2012.

PS- Ella B said "Happy New Year!" too.