Getting to 2013

Anne Marie and Gwen during the trivia game.

Some years I have declared the New Year by New York or Chicago time, so I could go to bed. This year, however, I did manage to make it all the way to midnight. (I must, in fairness, say that I am often awake at midnight. I tend to crash around ten o'clock, get ready for bed, and then find I am wide awake so read until I am sleepy again.) The reason I stayed reasonably alert throughout the evening was that we were having fun.

Megan (wearing a hat she made) concentrating on Monopoly.

Neither I nor my children are party people. But we do enjoy small gatherings with family or friends, and that is how we celebrated New Year's Eve. Our friend Gwen came over after she completed work at the clinic (she's an R.N.). We put together a collection of mostly finger foods, ate, visited, cleared away, and then played table games until midnight.

First we played a goofy trivia game that was one of the gag gifts given to me at Christmas (we won't go into that!). Then the Monopoly set came out and the competition was fierce. I fell first. Anne Marie put up a good fight, but she lost it all next. Chad had property with lots of houses and hotels, Megan had a pile of money, but bit by bit Gwen got it all. Ten minutes before midnight she cleaned them out and was the undisputed real estate mogul of the evening.

I didn't take many photos, and those I did take turned out very poorly, but they are what I have. I call those kind of pictures "Memory Photos"--they help me remember the occasion but have no intrinsic artistic value!

The photo I was aiming for was Pip the dog resting her chin on the table for a little nap. Although she was on Chad's lap, she was keeping an eye on Anne Marie, as she has ever since Anne Marie's surgery. The angle from which I took the picture makes it look like Chad has a huge hand--at first I cropped that out, but it amused me so I restored it.

It was our kind of party. Not enought excitement for some, I'm sure, but we really enjoyed it, and none of us woke up with hangovers!