Hi Friends,
How are you all holding up? For me, the first week of January after the New Year is always a tough one. It isn’t because anyone died then or any real reason. I just find it hard to return to normal life after the Christmas-New Year Holiday week. Honestly, I think transitioning to January after the excitement of the whole month of December is jarring.
Mr. Man and Preschool Nugget both had minor illnesses this week and both missed at least one day of school for sickness in addition to having a snow day on Friday.
Instead of focusing on the growing pains that come with starting a new year, let me show you some of the revelry of the holiday season.
Okay, well, the first picture is not of a necessarily revelous occasion, but it was a wonderful celebration of life, nonetheless. My mother’s mother, my grandmother, Marge passed away on December 9th. Here is a picture of my branch of the family, taken by my Aunt Jeanne, my mother’s sister, at the meal after the funeral.
During the week between Christmas and New Year’s we traveled to my father’s house in western, PA to visit family and enjoy their company. While we were there, my sister Liz suggested that we visit a light display that a person in my hometown put up on their property. It was a very elaborate light display that visitors were invited to walk through. My sisters found out about the light display on Facebook. The property owners hosted a church bake sale to raise money for people in Haiti earlier in December. On the night we visited the display, there were no other visitors, which was a shame because the lights were really something. I can’t help but feel that if this light display was located in my area, instead of my hometown, the attraction would have non-stop visitors, but I guess that it an advantage to living in Berlin, PA.
With Mr. Man’s tongue sticking out, this perhaps isn’t the best picture for next year’s Christmas card.
We spent two days in Berlin and had a great time visiting family. At times it was quiet but mostly it was lively. Games were played, presents were opened, and many, many cookies were eaten. My youngest sister Olivia did a beautiful job decorating the house. Olivia, Liz, and my Dad were great hosts.
We returned to our house before the New Year. Less than a day after returning home, my Aunt Sue and Cousin Ben, who we had just seen in Berlin, came to our home to babysit Mr. Man and Preschool Nugget. You see Mr. Katie and I were invited to the wedding of our friends Jeremy and Matt on New Year’s Eve.
Jeremy and Matt’s wedding was on New Year’s Eve in New Jersey and my Aunt Sue agreed to babysit the boys overnight so that Mr. Katie and I could stay up late and stay at a hotel overnight.
We are very grateful for their help and the boys had a great time at the New Year’s Eve party that Aunt Sue threw for them. They ate, danced with glowsticks, and stayed up till the “Magic Hour” of 8:30 pm (which they both believed to be midnight).
The wedding that Mr. Katie and I attended ended after 2 am and was part New Year’s Eve party/ part wedding. The venue was the very unique Art Factory in Patterson, NJ.
On New Year’s Day, we returned back to our house after having breakfast at the hotel with Megan and Jeremy. It was really nice to get to spent time with old friends. Aunt Sue and Ben took great care of Mr. Man and Preschool Nugget.
The boys loved the goodies from the party that we brought home to them.
In conclusion we had a nice holiday break. We hope that you did too. Very soon, I will some new stories to share with you about early January.
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Good winter to you all.
Katie
Lovely photos, Katie! I have a funny story: So, the very last time that we did this was New Year’s 2019 – 2020, but in downtown Pittsburgh, they have fireworks twice on the Eve: at 6:00 pm and midnight. The 6:00 fireworks are officially called the “Children’s Fireworks.” I joke that the 6:00 fireworks are so that parents can trick their kids into thinking that it’s midnight already, the New Year is here, and it’s now time to go home and go to bed.
Maybe that’s the real purpose of the “Children’s Fireworks.”
Anyway, this year on New Year’s, Jonathan and I had a fire in our chimnea in our backyard. I joked that I was getting tired, and maybe we could celebrate some other time zone’s midnight and go to bed before midnight EST. I joked that we should look up the time for midnight in Norway and celebrate “Viking New Year.” Then, a little bit later, we heard fireworks. We realized that we probably heard Pittsburgh’s “Children’s Fireworks” because we live upriver from Pittsburgh, and we live along the Allegheny River, and the sound from the fireworks in Pittsburgh probably travels up the river valley to where we live. I said, “I wonder what time it is in Norway right now.” So, I looked it up, and Norway is six hours ahead of us! So, the 6:00 pm fireworks in Pittsburgh actually ARE at midnight in Norway! So, now I can joke that Pittsburgh celebrates “Viking New Year.”
I like Viking New Years! When I worked at Frost Valley we had 10pm ball drop the first year for the families, during the New Year’s dance for the guests and then a 9pm ball drop the following year. Genius!
Great post and wonderful photos too! It sounds like you all had a very enjoyable New Year’s Eve. And the pictures of the boys in the 2022 glasses are adorable.
Thank you Katie for reading and commenting