Happy New Year!

One of the best things about Texas - midnight comes an hour earlier for us. At 10:56 pm, we sat down and turned on Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve. John brought me the sparkling grape juice, and oof! I couldn't get the freaking bottle open! So we watched the ball drop at 11 pm central time, John took a knife to the grape juice bottle, and we finally got into our bubbly. John is snarfing on his GF chocolate-covered pretzels, and I am writing to you all.

John drove up to Melissa, TX today and picked up a toddler bed for Libby. More about that tomorrow. I got to lay down for a bit before getting to work on our New Year's feast. It took about 3 hours to prepare it all, and man, it was so good! We got a call at the last minute from the owner of the local WingStop, who told us that 4 of their sauces were GF, and their wings are cooked "naked" (or nekked, as he said), meaning they are not tossed in flour prior to frying. So John ran out and got a bunch of hot wings along with a few last-minute ingredients for my hot cider, spinach dip, and tomorrow's pancakes. About 7:30 we sat down and ate.

Hot wings, spinach dip with veggies, fruit salad, 7-layer dip, chocolate-covered pretzels, and chocolate-covered peanut-butter Ritz sandwiches, drizzled with melted peanut butter chips (the pretzels too). Oh man. Yum. We forwent (past tense of forgo?) the sausage and cheese crackers, we'll break them out later this week. During dinner we had The New York Philharmonic Orchestra in the background. Their performance was broadcast on PBS.

After dinner, John disassembled the bed in Libby's room and moved it out to the living room while Libby took a much needed bath, as she was absolutely covered in chocolate. After her bath, we sat in the living room and finished watching the NYPO, who ended with Ravel's "Bolero", one of my favorite works. It was amazing to see. After NYPO, there was a broadcast of one of Pavarotti's old concerts. Libby was transfixed by him, standing stock-still and silent. I got her some warm milk, and instead of rocking her in her bedroom, I dimmed the lights and rocked her so she could watch Pavarotti. She usually turns and lays her head on my shoulder after her milk, and she tried that a few times, but promptly flipped around, presumably because she couldn't see Pavarotti that way. So I found out tonight that my baby girl loves opera, at least when sung by Pavarotti. Amazing.

After putting Libby to bed, John hauled our old mattress to the dumpster (he's such a man!) and we re-assembled the double bed in our room and got it all made up and pretty. We finished just in time to watch the ball drop.

What a busy day! John's plan for tomorrow is to watch football game after football game and stuff himself on leftovers. I may have to hide the wings. My project is Libby's room. Exciting. Tomorrow night is New Year's in Vienna, which will show the world-famous Lippizaner stallions from the Spanish Riding School. It airs on PBS at 8 pm EST. Watch it, you won't be disappointed. John and I got to see the Lippizaner stallions perform when we lived in Athens (GA, not Greece). One of the highlights of my time there.

Anyway, it's late and I still need to put the leftovers away. I hope you all have wonderfully blessed 2008!