Christmas

We spent Christmas in t-shirts and shorts in tropical Princeton, NJ. The kids loved hanging out with their cousins. Such a fine looking bunch, don’t you think?!

Santa did not forget Daisy:

…whose workload dramatically increased with everyone’s arrival at her house:

We had our annual Talentpalooza:

When my daughter started playing her violin, Daisy began howling along. We howled right along with her:

New Year’s Eve

We were back home in Charlottesville to celebrate New Year’s Eve with our old friends with whom we have celebrated so many New Year’s Eves in the past.

They’ll be moving from Virginia later this year, so it seemed especially important to do things for auld lang syne…

Our dinner was wildly eclectic…the kind of weird dinner you could only impose on really good friends with whom you have serious history. The kind of friends who’ll stick with you despite whatever crazy thing you dish up.

We had Korean New Year’s soup as a starter. We had lasagna and pizza as our main courses. For dessert Round 1, my husband borrowed his dad’s recipe for Bakewell tart, an English dessert:

When we first began celebrating New Year’s Eve together, our kids were so young that we would have sleepover parties. Since this was such a special occasion, we decided to reproduce our earliest New Year’s Eve parties, sleepover and all. The kids humored us by posing as we tried to recreate some of the New Year’s Eve photos from years past, though as you’ll see, my second son was not at all happy to be up so far past his usual bedtime:

We released my early-to-bed, early-to-rise second son from the torture of staying up and the rest of us got ready for the countdown with dessert, Round 2: A galette des rois.

At the stroke of midnight, a new queen was crowned. We all stumbled to our beds shortly thereafter, with visions of New Year’s Eves past, present, and future dancing in our heads.

We’re going to miss these friends of ours, but I know we’ll take a cup of kindness yet for auld lang syne…

Wishing everyone health, happiness, and harmony in the new year.