New Year's And The Old Folks

I don't remember when this tradition began, but somewhere back in our earlier days of marriage (code words for a lot less children involved) we started saving New Year's Eve as a time to gather with our friends. By this point in the holiday season, we have loved and enjoyed and made merriment with our families about as much as we can possibly stand, and so we started getting together with friends in our annual end of the holidays bash. It is a tradition I look forward to about as much as any other. Each year brings a slightly different guest list although it has always included Martha and Spencer Bigler. One year, it was just us and the Biglers. Anyway, this year we had the Biglers, Timilee and Heath Brown (another regular couple who has only missed maybe two of the gatherings over the years), Danae and Lamar Echols (also regulars) and Mike and Geralyn Bradley (new to the party but hopefully regulars in the future).

This year, heaven smiled upon us when the Browns arrived and Timi had brought her famous Little Smokies. I actually don't know how famous they are, but they are famous to me and everyone else who was there. I remember that she made them for us on New Year's Day way back when Abby and Sam were less than a year old. Who knew that meat wrapped in another meat and covered in sugar could be that awesome. (Ok, upon reflection, I love meat and love other meat and I really love sugar so I guess where could we go wrong really.) Beyond that, we had to have a vegetable tray to counteract the artery hardening you could actually hear if you listened closely enough. Also, the carbonated beverages flowed freely. (They always do.)

Most years include the annual guys vs. girls Trivial Pursuit game. Over the years, the guys hold a slight advantage (at least that is how I remember it) but the girls won the last time we had played. Well, this year was a hard fought battle with Trivial Pursuit, the 90's edition. Things to come out of this were that not everyone remembers that the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee that was indicted for stealing US House postage was Dan Rostenkowski. Ok no one remembered but me, but it was a guys question so that worked out ok although I took a lot of grief that I remembered that. We also clarified that Lisa Loeb and Lisa "One Eye" Lopez are not the same person and that at one point in her career, Lisa Lopez did wear a condom over one eye in a video possibly leading to her nickname. (Also clarified was that it was still in the package. Clearly, the discussion had really reached the low point although there was much laughter involved.) In the end, the guys won on another 90's congressman question that I also knew. I didn't take as much grief for this one because the guy's name wasn't Rostenkowski.

Following that, we played our own home made version of $25,000 pyramid. We only play the final round with each couple taking a turn. We have had a lot of fun with this over the years with the best being when Rich and Tami Tenney were playing and Spencer (Spencer says it was Preston, but I don't remember it that way) made a category for Tami to give to Rich which was "People who are better at Basketball than Rich Tenney". The best part was Tami didn't know what to say so she just started naming everyone at the party. Each time she would say a name, the laughs just got louder and louder. Poor Rich, he had no chance. This time, Mike and Geralyn were the winners with an impressive time. They would have come in second to Heath and Timi who tore through theirs until they got to the last one and Heath could not remember Will Ferrell's name to save his life.

The rest of the evening passed with games and reminiscing. We laughed, we laughed more and then we cried from laughing. Spencer and Lamar exchanged phone calls before and decided to wear the same shirt. Shannon sat down and grabbed Spencer's hand for no reason (I choose to believe it is because we have the same hairstyle and it was an honest mistake). We rang in the new year and realized that it is 2009 and we still don't know what to call this decade (ex. the 90s or the 80s). It was a great time and we look forward to next year.

Today is our 13th wedding anniversary. As in most years past, we have spent all of our money on Christmas and we are exhausted from New Year's so our anniversary gets the shaft. We went out to dinner at El Charro last night and then went to a wedding reception. We truly are our parents now. Today we will have a family birthday party. During our wedding, we were given the advice to consider our wedding day as the birth of our family and so we have always tried to hold a birthday party for our family. We have a cake and sing Happy Birthday to ourselves. With that, our holiday season will come to a close. But it will never end because it truly was a great stretch from Thanksgiving to our anniversary and it gave us a whole lot of memories we will never forget.