New Year's Eve

Every year we throw a big New Year's Eve party. We have been doing this since 1999. (shoutout to charter NYEve members Stephen and Stephanie!) This year's theme was "Buca di Gianni's". If you have ever eaten at the restaurant Buca di Beppo's this makes more sense. I can only describe it as "tacky Italian".

The crowd was pretty small and laid back this year. I think the economic times have just made everyone feel mellow. But we ate carbs and drank wine and generally had a wonderful time. It makes me SO immensely happy to ring in the New Year with our friends, both old and new, and I love feeding everyone and decorating the house and having everyone get together. I think in some way I just want to be everybody's Italian momma, telling them "Eat! You look too thin!".

My mom drove five hours just to keep Finn for the party. This was due to a promise I extracted from her a few years ago, before we were even pregnant, to be my NYEve babysitter in perpetuity. I think she thought I'd never cash in those chips. She also promised to keep our children while we fly to Europe, although that vow, while spontaneously submitted, was given under the duress of being trapped in coach with three screaming children (not ours, obviously) on a transAtlantic flight.

And if you're reading this and thinking, "hey, why wasn't I invited to the party?" the answer is: unless you are a crazy stalker reading this blog, you're invited. 2009, same time, same place.

And it's been a banner year for us. If you didn't know, we actually found out we were expecting Finn on New Year's Eve 2007 (although we didn't tell anyone for quite a while). So New Year's Eve marked the end of a very exciting year for us! I know it was kind of a rough year for a lot of people financially, but in the grand scheme of life, we were immensely blessed last year.