Last week I shared about Christmas with our family. Today I’ll share about our New Year’s traditions. From my childhood I mostly recall watching the Tournament of Roses Parade on television with my family. Mom liked to cook a pork roast with sauerkraut on that day. And of course, Dad liked to watch all the college football games.

For many years after Michael and I got married, we’d go over and spend the day with Dad, Mom, and my siblings and their families but we never really did much for New Year’s Eve. Fast forward several years and we went to a church that liked to have a service on New Year’s Eve, full of fun with skits and all. My kids were little at the time and Tiffany, especially, went to bed early EVERY night, of her own accord. I mean literally, she’d come to me around 6:30 or 7:00 and tell me she was ready to go to bed. Thus, we didn’t go often. Then one year they didn’t have it and my parents were home, so since we lived just five minutes away we decided to go over and ring in the new year together, all of us. (Tiffany could go to bed when she was ready.) And that was the start of our New Year’s Eve family time.

Now days we get together, bring appetizers and snacks, and play games until nearly midnight. At which time we pack everything up and get ready to count down with the New York replay of the ball dropping, with sparkling grape juice in Mom’s fancy glasses. It is one of my favorite things we do.

In years past, we’d get back together the next morning and Tracie’s husband would help the kids prepare a breakfast for us all, while we watched the parade. Over the last decade that tradition has dwindled. as has going over again on New Year’s Day. I guess we’re older and enjoy sleeping in and having a pajama day full of lazing around.

Unfortunately this year one of my nieces was sick after Christmas with a rather high fever on those special new year days. We were still planning to go to my parents’ house but Mom and Dad had a busy day of running around and Dad was a bit tired (remember he had open heart surgery near the end of November) and needed to rest instead of ringing in the new year with a bunch of noise. So we stayed home.

Of course Michael and Tiffany struggled to stay awake but we played some board games and forced ourselves to stay awake. Since we were not planning to be home and Dad usually buys the sparkling juice, we didn’t have any. By the way, we live way out in the country and not just merely around the corner from the store. We looked around and found a Lemon Lime Zevia. Hey, it’s carbonated! So we split that between the four of us and went to bed. It was a good time though. It was fun playing board games with my adult kids. So much so that I told them yesterday that I’d like to institute a board game night each month. Yeah, I’d like to do it more often than that but I have to be realistic with goals around here and I know once a month is attainable. There’s nothing to say we can’t do it more than that but aiming for at least once a month is good enough for me.

Tiffany and I made the appetizers we had planned to take for our celebration for our dinner on New Year’s Eve. I found some great ways to have Taco Bites and Pigs in a Blanket. And we had our White Queso with pork rinds and baked tostitos (for those that didn’t mind the crossover of fats and carbs).

Sean got a few board games for Christmas. Michael joined us as we played the Zelda version of Clue.

Then we played a round of Carcassonne. It was fun and I look forward to playing it again.

He also got Citadels newer version that has new districts and characters. They really enjoyed that game as well, although I think I needed to play it more to enjoy it as much as they did. My oldest, Brian, really liked it. They played this one on Christmas Eve night.

Well, I think that’s enough rambling from me. Sorry it was word intense in the beginning and all the pictures were in the end of the post, it’s just the way it worked out this time around.

I hope you have a great weekend. I’m going to enjoy being at home. Unfortunately it will be raining instead of snowing all weekend. I’ve had a very busy week with Mom’s knee surgery on Monday and running to the hospital for a few days and then running errands too. I was very glad to be home yesterday and finally get my Christmas tree taken down and that Mom has done so well with her recovery. We’ve definitely been blessed this week and am looking forward to relaxing this weekend.

Until next time, God bless,

Michele ºÜº