New Years

For New Years this year we decided to have it at our house. It's always a lot of work having the family over but I enjoy it. I would take slaving away all day at my house getting ready for guest any day over driving down to Miami and going to someone else's house.

New Years weekend was another busy one. I only got 3 days off not 4 so I had to prepare everything on New Years Eve, not the day before. After an entire day working on the house I finally started working on my dinner around 4 and didn't finish until 9. I made ambrosia, candied yams, and stuff shells. For some reason no one tried my ambrosia. Well only a couple people did. I guess they thought it looked funny. They missed out.

I setup 8 tiki torches in the backyard and made a launch pad for fireworks. I took Adri out back around 9 and showed her the fireworks. She got really excited. I'm so glad that I don't have a whiney scared child. She was clapping and smiling the whole time. The next morning was funny because we walked past the launch pad with all the spent fireworks and she pointed and kept yelling "fire". After we gone done with all the fireworks except the bottle rockets I took Natalie's cousins to the canal and we shot the bottle rockets into the water. They don't go out when they hit the water and they look like little torpedoes. Once they explode you see a flash and the water splashes. We could feel the ground shake from a few feet up on shore. We had a lot of fun doing that.

Around 11 I decided to play bartender and make fuzzy navels. I bought a bunch of Bacardi fuzzy naval mixes and made fuzzy navels, minus the rum. Gave me a chance to bust out all my fancy margarita and martini glasses. I didn't know it would be such a big hit though and I should have bought more. After every glass was made and brought out the family would yell "yeah" and then they would pick who gets the next drink. Note to self, make more next time. Also next time I'm gonna through in some Bacardi strawberry dacaries, mojitos, and pina coladas. Who says virgin drinks can't be fun? All the same flavor, no car accidents on the way home.

At 12 all the fireworks in the neighborhood woke up Lil Chub Butt. She was unhappy and crying. I got her out of the room and took her outside and she got happy really quick. She kept pointing at all the fireworks around the neighborhood.

Finally a little after 1am the family left and we got to start cleaning up the mess. Another long 20 hour day. We were trying to get Natalie's uncle to stay over that night but he just got back from NYC that day and had to take his daughter to work the next morning. Maybe in the future we'll get people to stay overnight and make it a two day party. Maybe if I can get my sisters and parents to come out, hint hint, we can make a week long party out of it. Camping in the backyard with a fire pit and the whole works. Yes, I'm a redneck.

On New Years Day I dont think we did much of anything except sit around. It's all a blur to me but I dont think we left the house. Naps and sitting around lazy. The plan for Monday was to take the baby out on her bike trailer but instead I just cleaned up the garage and then we took her down to the park in Miami where she got her boo boo which she still likes to point out. Yesterday morning when she woke up she told me "boo boo, it's hiding". She had on her coverall pajamas and couldn't see it but she wanted to remind me it's still there. Such a drama queen.

You gotta love Natalie's face here.

And she's ready for bed.

At the park. Natalie put her stuff down to go to the bathroom and I was taking pictures of Adri. Adri pointed by Natalie's stuff and said Monkey. I thought this was her monkey so I grabbed it for her and took pictures. Ten minutes later a couple hundred feet away Natalie asked me where we got that monkey. Apparently it wasn't Adri's. I don't know who's it was because no one was around but I'm glad we didn't get fleas from it.

Her new thing is to throw stuff. Here she is throwing dirt in the creek.