if three years is enough to merit the status of a tradition, we can safely say that our New Year's Eve open house/carol sing is in the running. looking back at my camera roll confirms that we did this for the first time two years ago. then we decided to do it again last year, and this year, our friend's parents who always come to visit over the holiday break (and whose beautiful voices are welcome additions to our carol-singing) asked if we were hosting again and I said, "sure!"
New Year's Eve 2024
New Year's Eve 2023 with baby Elizabeth and friends
New Year's Eve 2023
New Year's Eve 2022 with our old piano (and babies on the organ bench)
this year, Amelia, Ryan and their kids drove down from Erie and we spent the afternoon together before the party. we hit up the natural history museum, a perennial favourite with its life-size dinosaur skeletons, precious gems and minerals, and dioramas of woodland creatures.
big dino, little girls
sitting inside a sauropod footprint
this is the first time I've ever seen the archaeological pit site open for the kids to play. they loved it!
looking at feathers under the microscope
reconstructing a piece of "ancient" Egyptian pottery
museum crew
then we had to hightail it out of the museum to make it back home, tidy up, and prep the food (mostly finger food and appetizers). bless her heart, Amelia created a beautiful charcuterie board out of the various meats and cheeses whereas I would have just dumped it on a plate. the casual nature of our party worked in my ill-prepared favor as the other guests trickled in little by little and helped set out the rest of the food.
these are a few of my favourite people!
we stuffed ourselves with copious amounts of food and drink. the kids ran around and entertained themselves with various toys and games and just were generally very cute together.
future husband and wife?
I have no idea what was happening here, but they were all having fun!
I realized just after taking this photo that Victoria was holding a broken (plastic) plate. that's when you know it's a party
and then, the highlight of the night: the carol sing! Nick and Vin took turns on the piano bench accompanying our singing. I had purchased a set of caroling books for the occasion (and will need to purchase more for next year!). various permutations of the singing group evolved over the course of the evening and the kids wandered in and out. I have such warm memories of singing hymns and carols in four-part harmony as a kid and I love that these evenings will be part of my children's holiday memories too. it helps that four of the adults who were present on this particular night are professionally trained, full time musicians, and most of the rest of us have been singing in amateur choirs since we were small! for the most part we stuck to the proscribed harmonies in the book but every once in a while, the sopranos took it away with improvised descants.
next year, I'll have more copies so everyone can have their own! these books were great but the print was on the smaller side.
then finally, we closed out the night with "Silent Night" in English and then in German. if you listen carefully, toward the end of the clip you'll hear my friend's daughter sweetly announce, "Miss Kate, there has been an accident ... of a spill." fortunately, just an overturned cup of water in the other room ;)
eventually we came back to the family room to watch the ball drop on TV and finally get to bed. the next day, Nick played for 10 AM mass to celebrate the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. I couldn't quite get it together to make it there on time with all the kids after our late night, so after Nick returned, I took the older two to noon mass and then to the grocery store to procure food for our New Year's Day dinner (somehow that got completely eclipsed in the planning for New Year's Eve!). I ended up making this instant pot pork roast and it was absolutely delicious, accompanied by Nick's homemade sauerkraut, mashed potatoes, garlic knots, salad, and ice cream for dessert.
unabashedly served on paper plates because this mama was tired!
and thus, we officially welcomed in the year of our Lord, 2025!
Your turn: Do you have any New Year's Eve or New Year's Day traditions? Have you ever gone caroling door to door? What are your feelings on sauerkraut -- yay or nay?
it's about time for a good old airing of the grievances. while we have ever so much for which to give thanks, sometimes we need the catharsis of enumerating our woes, big and small. (you can read the 2023 edition here.) _________________________________________ first up, potty training. I buckled down and trained Greta and Cecilia both around age 2 1/2, and it went fairly well (I'm a big fan of waiting until the kid is practically ready to train themselves). Elizabeth turned 2 1/2 near the end of the school year, and logically it seemed like a great time to buckle down -- we wouldn't be driving around to after school sports and activities and we'd have more time at home. I kept waiting for the day when I'd wake up full of excitement and motivation to strip off the diaper and chase a naked toddler around the house. and ... shockingly ... that day never came. then we were preparing for our trip to Seattle in July and it definitely didn't seem like the right time...
Easter was "late" this year, April 20, which has the added benefit of slightly warmer temperatures. it always seems incongruous to me when Easter falls at the end of March and all the pretty Easter dresses are covered up by coats and we might have to choose snow boots rather than sandals! this was the first year Elizabeth was allowed to be more involved with hands-on egg dyeing and she was so excited. I bought the "deluxe" PAAS kit with extra supplies to make glittery and foil-bedecked eggs and somehow, by the grace of God, did not end up with glitter all over the house. I don't know how this one was so blurry but you get the idea! Greta's pastel eggs Cece's jewel-toned eggs I debated once again about which Easter mass to attend. we have attended the evening vigil once before , but that involves a lot of faith and perhaps a dash of insanity to attempt solo with young kids. so we typically go Easter morning, but I asked the older girls about it and they...
volume 1 volume 2 volume 3 volume 4 volume 5 1) Trader Joe's. prior to this week, I hadn't set foot in a Trader Joe's in years. the closest ones to me are at least a twenty-minute drive (as opposed to Giant Eagle and Aldi which are ten minutes away), and since they don't offer curbside pickup or delivery, I couldn't even peruse their offerings to decide if I wanted to pay a visit. but Greta has been asking me to pick up these PB&J snacks that her friends bring to school, and I keep hearing about amazing products TJ's offers (mostly from the hilarious Girls Next Door podcast -- every show with a TJ's mention is linked here !). for some reason, I was thinking that Trader Joe's price point was even with Whole Foods (or as it is sometimes known, Whole Paycheck), so I wasn't in a big rush to check it out. finally, last week I had a rare pocket of time after dropping Greta off for a school event close to a TJ's location and decided to take a ...
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