New Year's Eve, 2016

It's the end of 2016!  It was certainly an eventful year.  We spent the last day of 2016 cleaning up a bit, and resting too.  Since we left for a quick vacation right away, we hadn't had time to put away some of the items we found under our tree.  Madison hadn't had time to even plug in the new LEGO "Force Awakens" game she got, which today she did do.  She was enjoying that quite a bit, while Mommy and Daddy got to try some of the new bubble bath bottles that Mommy got for Christmas.  Once again, she got some Juniper Breeze, and all was right with the world.

The weather was grey and gloomy outside, even with a bit of surprising sleet.  We didn't have any accumulations, but it was enough to get folks chattering on social media.  The slightest bit of frozen precipitation around here, and folks go crazy!

Daddy's tummy has been sore today - I think I overdid it on vacation with swimming and walking so much.  We took it easy eating today, although some of that Christmas candy was very tempting.  The justification is that we'll all be fasting soon enough, and you have to get rid of all that chocolate, right?

We were all in our pjs for most of the day, and Madison determined early on that she wanted to stay up until midnight.  So that we did!  We watched "Rudolph's Shiny New Year" together, and then called all our friends and family to wish them a Happy New Year.  We still had to fill some time, so Daddy brought up a few movies - the one that Madison really wanted to watch was "Back to the Future."  We figured a time travel movie might be appropriate on New Year's Eve, right?

We sort of talked over some of the more grown-up parts (distraction!), but on the whole, Madison really, really liked this movie.  We'll be watching the sequels probably tomorrow and the next day, in fact - that's how much she liked Doc Brown and Marty McFly's adventures.  We even watched one of the "Back to the Future" cartoons we have.  Since last year, Daddy has the ultimate "Back to the Future" collection, which has all the cartoons, the ride, the movies, a 2015 message and movie short, plus a whole lot of extras.  We'll probably be watching more of the cartoons in the coming weeks.

But in the meantime, we were getting close to midnight.  Daddy set up on the computer so we could watch a live stream of the fireworks show at the Magic Kingdom.  This was the first year we chose not to watch the New York Times Square presentation, and the reasons should be obvious:  Dick Clark is no longer there, and usually there are some musicians present that we have no idea who they are (or what they are singing), and there are a lot of shots of a whole bunch of people crowded in the city.  We figured why not just watch some live fireworks from the Magic Kingdom, and listen to Mickey, Minnie, Donald and Goofy count down the last seconds of 2016?

And that's what we did.  We had some of Madison's favorite pumpkin spice drink, a sparkling flavored soda, and some nice glasses.  We counted down the final seconds of the year with Mickey and Minnie, and listened to the fireworks go off outside in our neighborhood.  At midnight, we did a proper to toast to the new year.  Plus Madison said that Mommy could kiss Daddy at midnight, because we were married.  That was funny, actually.

The fireworks are still going off all over the neighborhood, and since it is raining a bit outside, we aren't as leery of fires as we normally would be.  But it does in fact sound like a war zone.  There are so many fireworks of different volumes going off, and they're exploding all over the countryside, some nearby and some distant.  It's quite an amazing thing, really!

Anyway, 2016 was pretty eventful.  And hopefully 2017 will be bring us greater favor and blessings for us, and for you as well.