New Year's Eve 2014

After celebrating our belated Christmas all day, that evening brought a holiday shift: time to switch gears from Christmas to New Year's Eve! Because although we were pretending the date was December 25th, in fact, it was really December 31st. Time to ring in the New Year!

Given that we have two small kids, we didn't exactly have a wild night planned. But, we wanted to do something to commemorate the end of what was one wild year for our family. Eric and Ellie had picked up hats and noisemakers earlier in the day, so we added more festivity to our Christmas pajamas.

Festive children!

E.J. is ready to bid farewell to the year of his birth

Before the kids went to bed, we watched a little on-demand countdown on Netflix, then shared an apple juice toast.

Time for our countdown to the New Year 8:00!

Cheers!

Ellie actually enjoyed the whole thing so much that we repeated the fun a couple of times! Then, it was off to bed for the little ones.

With the kiddos asleep after a long day of family fun, Eric and I opted to relax in front of the fire with some real champagne. We watched the countdown on TV, and reminisced about our New Year's Eve in Times Square (I'm not sure there will ever be a New Year's Eve when we don't reminisce about that one!).

Our New Year's scene

At midnight, we counted down with the rest of the country, then stepped outside onto our front porch to watch what we could see of the Jacksonville fireworks over the river.

It was a quiet way to ring in the New Year, but nice. What a year 2014 was for us, and I can't wait to see what 2015 has in store!