Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Hello, 2012!

Happy New Year, my friends! I hope you all had a fabulous holiday and are optimistic about all that 2012 will bring. Personally, I think it will be a great year!

Eric and I had a quiet but rather nice New Year's weekend (is that a theme for us these days or what?).  On Saturday afternoon, we were productive parents-to-be and set up the first of the furniture pieces we bought for Baby Girl: the chest of drawers. It took a bit longer than we expected, but we were very happy with the finished product:

Achilles was a big help during the assembly process.

Our next step will be transferring all of our clothes from our current drawer/bookshelf setup into the new chest of drawers, then we can do some shuffling of furniture and replace that current setup with the dresser and eventually, the crib. I'm really excited for it all to be set up, but we've got our work cut out for us!

We spent our New Year's Eve at home with delicious NYC pizza (a tradition started after our Times Square adventure on New Year's Eve 2008-09), champagne for Eric and sparkling cider for me. We had our festive glasses (a pair for all four of us!) and spent the night camped out on the couch watching the festivities on TV.

Blurry iPhone picture of a dog ready to sing some "Auld Lang Syne"

Happy New Year!

It wouldn't be a New York New Year's Eve without me complaining about how we really picked the worst year ever to do the Times Square thing. We had friends go this year, when the low at midnight was about 47 degrees. FORTY-SEVEN DEGREES. Remember how many degrees it was at midnight when we did it? TWO. Like, let's count the degrees: one, two-OH WAIT YOU'RE DONE. It was a solid 45 degrees warmer at midnight this year than it was when we did it. We knew when we did it that they were saying it was the coldest New Year's Eve in something like 100 years, but we figured, "oh, maybe by just a couple degrees - it must be miserable every year, so we might as well do it now." Not the case, my friends. Every year since then it has been significantly warmer. Our friends who did it this year even took off their coats for a while. I mean, what? I have never in my life worn more clothes than I did that night and I still nearly froze to death.

Me in Times Square on New Year's Eve '08-'09. I'm wearing so many pairs of gloves, I can't pull that pinkie finger in for my thumbs up.
Also, see that teeny tiny bit of exposed skin on my face? It HURT to have that much skin exposed. Actual PAIN.

But hey, now I have something whine about every year, am I right? We actually really tossed around meeting up with our friends in Times Square this year, but in my current knocked-up state I am just in no position to stand around for nine hours with no place to sit, no food, no water, and most importantly no bathroom. Times Square New Year's Eve is just not Pregnant Lady friendly. But, it looked like our friends had an amazing time, so I'm happy for them! As awful as our experience was, it is probably one of my most favorite New York memories and is an experience I'm so glad to have. I'll never forget it, that's for sure...and I'll probably never be that cold again.

Anyway, back to this year! At midnight, we counted down with Dick Clark and toasted the New Year:

So chugging sparkling cider from the bottle is not nearly as fun as chugging champagne, but I made the most of it!

After midnight we heard fireworks going off outside, so we bundled up and went outside to see the commotion. The waterfront was lined with people enjoying the celebration, and although there wasn't a big fireworks display over the river, we were able to see a little bit of the Central Park fireworks across the Hudson.

Hanging out with Achilles

Gorgeous New Year's Eve view - see the little pink ball of fireworks on the left?

Pardon my chins, and just focus on my wonderful husband, the cute dog, and the pretty view behind us!

When we went back upstairs, we turned on the NBC New Year's Eve special to see if we could see ourselves in the crowd at the Roots performances. And, success! Well, we saw the backs of both of our heads at once point, but Eric got his whole handsome face on TV. Honestly, he's such a television/movie star these days.

Look how we managed to both spend New Year's Eve at home on our couch, AND at this concert! The magic of television!

See Eric over there on the far right?

In other New Year's Eve news, my best friend Megan got engaged! Her boyfriend Andy popped the question after midnight and wedding planning is officially a go. I'm so excited for them both and can't wait for that wedding! Congrats, Meg!

On Sunday we went to the movies to see The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, which was very good! I had heard as much and was not disappointed. I did read the books and loved them (although the first was my least favorite of the three), but I think you'd be fine to see it if you didn't read the book. Eric hasn't read it (yet, at least) and he enjoyed the movie, too.

On Monday we really celebrated our New Year's Day in the traditional sense: we slept in, made French toast for breakfast, and watched the Rose Parade. Then we went out for a bit to a local kids' consignment store we recently discovered, where we found an awesome glider for the "nursery" for an incredible price! We ended up buying it today, so I'm psyched about that.

When we got back home we watched the Gators beat Ohio State in the Gator Bowl, which is always a nice sight to see. Then we made ourselves a big Thanksgiving-style dinner with all the fixin's: turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, green bean casserole and rolls. Delicious!

Yum, dinner!

And that was how we welcomed 2012. Not a bad weekend! Happy New Year, everyone!

4 comments:

krystal said...

I looked for you in The Roots thing! I tried to explain to my husband, this girl that I kind of know but don't really know, she went to this taping! He, of course, thinks I'm just weird.

Lauren said...

Love all the 2012 pics, so cute with the sparkling cider :-) That new years meal looks like what we had too with family YUM!

Dad said...

and now matter how many layers on that cold cold NYE, curvy thumbs rule!

jessica said...

Y'all are too dang cute, I love the chugging picture!! haha..Sounds like a perfect NYE to me :)

and I TOTALLY missed the Roots thing, boo! THat's awesome that your heads made an appearance! haha