New Year's Eve 2024

Happy New Year!  Tonight we got to use those crackers that we've been holding on to, and we each pulled on our ends and all three of us won our pulling contests, the loud crack snapping and the package opening up to reveal the goodies inside.  I like this tradition.  I think it usually is for Christmas, but with Christmas so full of things to do, I like opening the crackers on New Year's Eve.  Anyway, inside are the paper crowns, which you can see we put on our heads immediately.  And there were those small prizes.  One was a metal puzzle that Maddie was able to solve - I wasn't able to do it before the new year, but I'll try again tomorrow!  I got some marbles, so of course Maddie told me not to lose my marbles.  Mom got a small ring game, and we all got the little jokes inside like this one, perhaps my favorite:

Q:  Why did the doughnut seller quit his job.

A:  He was tired of the hole business.

Anyway, we had a good night tonight.  To help the time go by, we actually bought a digital copy of the new movie "Wicked," which actually premiered online today.  Why not?  We planned on seeing this in theaters tomorrow, but decided to watch it tonight.  It was a better movie than I expected.  Of course, we love all things Oz, so there was an immediate connection there.  We loved the little nods to the lore scattered throughout the movie.  I'm not sure how things will turn out, as we don't know the entire story.  I mean, we know what happens at the end of the "Wizard of Oz," and in fact that much is largely implied at the beginning of this movie.  However, all is not as it appears in this movie as well, and we're well aware of that.

We also checked out the latest episode of "Skeleton Crew" tonight, and that was also pretty good.  There was this one bit with these small robot creatures that seemed to take a section straight from a RL Stine short story, and that wasn't a bad thing.  It's been a fun series though, a welcome return to fun in a Star Wars series.  I think that's one thing we've missed in the new Star Wars series:  fun.

Anyway, after watching all that, it was getting close to midnight.  This used to take so long when I was much younger, that huge wait until midnight.  I mean, could I possibly make it? 

Look what happened while we were watching the movie!  The amaryllis is ready to bloom, and might actually open up tomorrow!

And Maddie was on her island in "Animal Crossing" again, watching her friends there count down the new year.

We had some different festive hats too, these we found in the basement this morning with a few other small decorations and noise makers.  So we had Animal Crossing counting down the time, but we also had a channel on social media where a couple were broadcasting live from Main Street at the Magic Kingdom, where there was a massive fireworks display, and then Mickey, Minnie, Donald and Goofy all started panicking, because it was time for the countdown!  Together we joined everyone at the parks, all of us together counting 10... 9... 8...7...6... 5... 4... 3... 2... 1...!

Happy New Year!  It's 2025!  The fireworks went off, and we gave kisses and hugs and wishes to each other for happy new year.  We got our our sparkling grape juice bottle, a tradition for New Year's Eve, especially in those little celebration glasses.

Happy New Year!  Here we are in 2025, and it's going to be a great year.  Wow, it's suddenly January!  Wait, what?  But before we go forward, let's look back earlier in December... or at least earlier today.

That's right, it's day seven of Hanukkah.  We lit our candle tonight as we read from our devotional.  We were all cracking up again at the attempt to light the candle as we read the scripture, but Maddie got the Shamash lit, and then the other candles as well.  The menorah is looking good!

And so is this menorah too!  Maddie and I did a craft today, and it took quite some time to get done, but we had these metal frames of Hanukkah shapes.  Maddie had the menorah, and I had a dreidel shape.  We had all these small colored bits of plastic, and the two of us used tweezers to place the bits of plastic into the metal frames, which of course were laid out on a sheet of tin foil on a baking pan.  After the long, long process of painstakingly putting each bit of plastic in the right place, we placed the baking pan into an oven, where the plastic would melt into place.

They turned out well!  It took longer than expected, but it was fun, and the end product was really nice!

The rest of our day was actually pretty productive in the basement.  We've got things set up so that the DeSantafication process can start tomorrow, as we start taking things down bit by bit.  But yeah, we were doing a lot of clearing out today.

Maddie closed out the year doing some gaming, and doing a bit of cleaning up herself.  The weather outside was really nice today, and we kept the bird feeders stocked.  We've had a lot of bird visitors on that back deck, always a great source of entertainment.

We closed out 2024 with a relaxing day at home, and together.  It was nice.  This morning we looked back on the entire year on this blog, and as always you marvel at the things that happened all in one year, much of which you forget about over time.  It had some roller coaster moments for sure, but here we are, healthy and happy at the very end of it, and starting out the new year with hopeful optimism.  It's going to be a great 2025.  

Happy New Year!