Monday, January 01, 2007
Happy New Year
We had a fabulous New Year's Eve last night and this morning. Our friends Cyndi and Laura joined us. Cyndi and I have known each other since elementary school - okay, with about a 10 year gap in there for good measure, but that gap closed several years ago. Now that The Girl and I have moved, we live only a few miles from Cyndi and her wife, and it's wonderful to see them more often.
So they arrived last evening around 5:30 and our New Year's Eve was good to go! Of course, food was the featured event of the pre-midnight schedule. They kindly brought festive beverage mixings as well as some delish meatballs in the best sauce ever, along with some zucchini square thingies (which I found mixed quite well with the meatball sauce). This was followed up with our sophisticahted (no, that's not a typo, it's a pronunciation guide) menu of spicy-crusted shrimp with remoulade sauce (served in martini glasses, of course, just like in the photo, hence the sophisticahtion), prime rib, asparagus with hollandaise and polenta with crimini mushroom-butter sauce. Yes, not so much light fare, but yummy! And actually, some of it was from Cooking Light, or as we refer to it, Cooking Light-er.
An exciting development during the evening was that one or both of our friends might be joining my sisters and me on the Avon Walk this year! They have to check their schedule of whether that's a child custody weekend or not (they have the kids most of the time, but the dad - another high school friend) has every other weekend. Check the team walk page to see if more names have been added. Last year was a great event, and hopefully this year will be even better.
But back to now. After dinner we adjourned to the living room to play The Newlywed Game, which our friends had given us last year after we got married. They took the plunge this year, so we gave it a whirl. Warning to any same sex couples - this is a very heterocentric game, but we did find that trying to adapt it added to the fun of the evening. By the time we finished (they won), it was 11:30 and time to get ready to ring in 2007 with Dick Clark. Poor Dick - he's doing much better than last year, but he really wasn't ready to handle the countdown. We thought it was a good production choice when Ryan Seacrest was marking off the last minute and building the excitement, but then he handed it off to Dick for the last 20 seconds and he instantly fell behind on the count. By the time he announced Happy New Year we already were clinking glasses.
Then it was a call to the kids at their dad's to wish them a Happy New Year (and see if they managed to stay up). Not only had they stayed up, but they had also stayed up fairly late the night before, so apparently there is crankiness on the horizon for today. The Girl and I don't have to deal with this kind of thing, as The Boys never try to stay up past their bedtime, and in fact encourage napping whenever feasible.
After cheers were made and the excitement subsided from the annual fever pitch, we went downstairs to the music/family room and jammed! Cyndi and Laura are both music teachers, so The Girl got on the drums, Cyndi on the keys, Laura on guitar and I bounced around between singing, helping out on the keys, declining to pick up my own guitar that I haven't played since starting law school three years ago, and inflating and making up the new queen size Aerobed with the heated cover. We don't have a dedicated guest room here, as we opted instead each to have our own office, so we got this self-inflating bed for our occasional guests. It goes in the family room in front of the fireplace, so our guests have their own little suite with their own bathroom. Again, quite sophisticahted.
This was all quite fun and continued until almost 2:00 am. We never could have done this in the old duplex apartment with the trashy neighbors.
And now I'm up early, as usual (although 8:00 in general is late for me, but I don't usually stay up until 2:00...), while everyone else is snoozing away like rational human beings. The morning menu is a french toast variation, tea and orange juice. Maybe we'll even remember to take some pictures!
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So they arrived last evening around 5:30 and our New Year's Eve was good to go! Of course, food was the featured event of the pre-midnight schedule. They kindly brought festive beverage mixings as well as some delish meatballs in the best sauce ever, along with some zucchini square thingies (which I found mixed quite well with the meatball sauce). This was followed up with our sophisticahted (no, that's not a typo, it's a pronunciation guide) menu of spicy-crusted shrimp with remoulade sauce (served in martini glasses, of course, just like in the photo, hence the sophisticahtion), prime rib, asparagus with hollandaise and polenta with crimini mushroom-butter sauce. Yes, not so much light fare, but yummy! And actually, some of it was from Cooking Light, or as we refer to it, Cooking Light-er.
An exciting development during the evening was that one or both of our friends might be joining my sisters and me on the Avon Walk this year! They have to check their schedule of whether that's a child custody weekend or not (they have the kids most of the time, but the dad - another high school friend) has every other weekend. Check the team walk page to see if more names have been added. Last year was a great event, and hopefully this year will be even better.
But back to now. After dinner we adjourned to the living room to play The Newlywed Game, which our friends had given us last year after we got married. They took the plunge this year, so we gave it a whirl. Warning to any same sex couples - this is a very heterocentric game, but we did find that trying to adapt it added to the fun of the evening. By the time we finished (they won), it was 11:30 and time to get ready to ring in 2007 with Dick Clark. Poor Dick - he's doing much better than last year, but he really wasn't ready to handle the countdown. We thought it was a good production choice when Ryan Seacrest was marking off the last minute and building the excitement, but then he handed it off to Dick for the last 20 seconds and he instantly fell behind on the count. By the time he announced Happy New Year we already were clinking glasses.
Then it was a call to the kids at their dad's to wish them a Happy New Year (and see if they managed to stay up). Not only had they stayed up, but they had also stayed up fairly late the night before, so apparently there is crankiness on the horizon for today. The Girl and I don't have to deal with this kind of thing, as The Boys never try to stay up past their bedtime, and in fact encourage napping whenever feasible.
After cheers were made and the excitement subsided from the annual fever pitch, we went downstairs to the music/family room and jammed! Cyndi and Laura are both music teachers, so The Girl got on the drums, Cyndi on the keys, Laura on guitar and I bounced around between singing, helping out on the keys, declining to pick up my own guitar that I haven't played since starting law school three years ago, and inflating and making up the new queen size Aerobed with the heated cover. We don't have a dedicated guest room here, as we opted instead each to have our own office, so we got this self-inflating bed for our occasional guests. It goes in the family room in front of the fireplace, so our guests have their own little suite with their own bathroom. Again, quite sophisticahted.
This was all quite fun and continued until almost 2:00 am. We never could have done this in the old duplex apartment with the trashy neighbors.
And now I'm up early, as usual (although 8:00 in general is late for me, but I don't usually stay up until 2:00...), while everyone else is snoozing away like rational human beings. The morning menu is a french toast variation, tea and orange juice. Maybe we'll even remember to take some pictures!
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Posted by Rogueslayer at 9:04 AM 
