Before getting into the Smith/Canan/Mason/Mowrer New Year's Eve/Day celebration, allow me to share with you one last tasty treat I enjoyed over my holiday break:
granola made by my mother. it was GOOOO-OOOOD!!!
The New Year's tradition started quite by accident six years ago. When Mr. Smith and I moved back to Knoxville in the fall of 2003, we decided not to rush into buying a house and moved in with my parents for a few months while I found employment and we were able to find a house. I found a job, and we started looking for a Smith Crib, but then promptly totaled my car when Tommy's was in rough shape and he was due the next new car. Who knew there were very few buy one, get one free car deals out there? Well, that set us back a few months.
The Mowrers had been kind enough to let us come over and spend almost every Friday night with them for months to give sweet Mama and Dipsey a chance to have their house in peace one night a week (sidebar: during this time, longtime friend Heather moved home with her husband Ben so he could write his dissertation while she was pregnant with their first child. One day she asked me if I ever had the thought during our teen/college years that we would be 30 years old and living back at home with our husbands in our parent's houses. I ummm.... confess I did NOT.) In the fall of 2004, we found our house and moved into our first new home. The nights with the Mowrers slacked off until... Matt the risk assessor accidentally burned a hole in his house with a BFI bin of seemingly dead ashes that rekindled when he left town on a business trip and his wife was left by herself in the house (sidebar again - when Jenny called the next morning to say the house caught fire, my idiotic response was "Did you put it out?" She informed me that the trained professional firefighters had.)
They moved into an apartment while their house got fixed and had to live there for about six months. It was a terrible experience but as I pointed out on the day we moved them back into the house, their house got totally redone from stem to stern and was like Mowrer House 6.0 OPTIMIZED!
In the course of all of this came the holidays. The Mowrers really hated their apartment so we happily wanted to return the Spend The Night favor and invited them to bunk over whenever they wanted. On New Year's Eve 2005 they took us up on the offer and we had a ball. We played games, and told stories and laughed and played more games and had more fun, and eventually all went to sleep in the wee hours of the start of '05. The next morning we all woke up, mentally resigned to go home... but after about an hour or two... we started... playing more games. And after a while after that... we started telling more stories and playing more games and having more fun until... it was evident that New Year's Day Sloth was where it was AT, and voila... a proud tradition was born.
Please check out last year's fun and excitement here. One moment of 2010 clairvoyance: Mr. Smith is upstairs as I type playing his xBox. Sigh. I saw that one coming...
But on with the show! I give you the expanded Smith/Mowrer New Year's 2010/11!
the smiths, kristina and the mowrers ringing in the new year
kristina, jenny and me make laughing look good. wait. that makes no sense...
The next morning, the crowd expands again to include the Masons and the party really gets started!
hap-py new year!!!
The boys get excited to get their game ON.
i... i just don't know what they are doing...
And well, wouldn't you know it - Shawn (who I pointed out in last year's blog) is always teasing Marty about spilling things and GUESS WHAT!!!
she makes a mean bloody mary! (take a tumble)
We got the stain out, but no worries! More near misses are involved. There was an early run to the store for Rock Band 4, but to no avail. The Mowrers own Rock Band 1 and 2 but for some reason RB 2 disk was missing. The search ended with the assurance that their old xBox contained the disk... but no one could find the proper power cord to plug it in to get the juice to make it turn on and spit it out. Tommy was needless to say,
sad
So I offered to TEAR THAT MOTHER UP! (I'm good at tearing things up. Think anvil broken with rubber mallet skill level. Or, just ask any appliance in the Mowrer's kitchen.) Unfortunately, those nerd boys wouldn't let me have my way with the wayward xBox. Did I mention Marty and Matt both have engineering degrees?
nerd alert on high
seriously. get out your pocket protector.
At long last, they gingerly open the case only to find THERE WAS NO DISK HAHAHAHAHAHA. So we all make do with Rock Band 1.
no one seems worse for the wear
yea! another start to the year with fun and friends! (and family was invited but poor mama was sick and couldn't come out MWAH feel better!) does the year get any better than that kinda start? i am convinced it does NOT. (with the exception of the omission of family)
The next day: back to the grind. I love my job, but had totally gotten used to a week of sleeping late (then getting up and doing a thousand chores I swear) and it was super hard to get back into the swing of things Monday morning. Someone apparently had the same idea because the fire alarm went off in the early afternoon in the administration building. I thought it was a test and called down to find out that all the admin staff in charge of such routine drills were making tracks out the doors. So, we got a 30 minute recess while:
firemen secured the building. only some welding work being done in an elevator, fortunately. i actually drew in breath this morning to rib one of the elevator repair workers about pulling the fire alarm and figured they'd already had an earful and so i let it go.
fifth floor visiting whilst waiting for the all clear
So there you have it! 2011 off to yet another good start. OH! Mama's thinking of starting a blog this year too! On gardening! .... .... .... Well. Here's hoping I learn something from it that she couldn't teach me after years of patient mentoring (I killed a tree once, peeps.) Hope 2011 is starting off good for you too!
Looks like you all had fun!!!
ReplyDeleteI would totally read your mom's blog/advice on gardening-tell her to make it happen;)