Goodbye 2011

OK blogger is fighting with me tonight and won't let me insert text between the pics.  Sorry guys!  I am coming off a migraine and don't feel like fiddling.  We had a great New Years Eve celebration here.  The first picture is Happy New Year in German, at least according to Google Translate!  We made a big poster and used a fancy font and hung it in our dining room.  We also took confetti and covered big numbers that I cut out of paper that allegedly had adhesive on it.  We stuck all the confetti on and I tacked them to the wall, and came back 20 minutes later to find them looking like a sad chia pet who needed rograine or something.  Huge bald spots and lots of confetti on the floor. Blech.  Took them off the wall, brought them outside and sprayed them with adhesive. Then reattached the confetti and to be darn sure it didn't go anywhere covered it with contact paper.  It actually wound up looking funky and fun. 

We had our German meal, while German music streamed through my computer.  The internet is so cool.  We listened to German rock, a German "soft hits" station and a German childrens station. It was pretty neat.  Usually finding music is the hardest part of pulling this together and now it is easy.  We always have a little Jeopardy quiz type game with some facts that I find about how a country celebrates.  The kids are geeks--they all love this!  Then we threw confetti and read our remembrances of the past year.  After all of that, the little kids danced on bubble wrap to German music and it sounded amazingly like fireworks.  In 34 minutes it is actually midnight in Germany and they love the fact that they can honestly say Happy New Year for the country we celebrated.

Happy New Year all!  I wish for all of us, opportunities and memories, hugs and smiles, sunrises and birdsong and joys to carry in our hearts to give us strength when times are hard.  Blessed be!