Happy New Year!

2006! Wow does time fly. I was at the grocery store yesterday (yes, due to a busy schedule and poor planning I had the misfortune of being in Wal-Mart on New Year's Eve! Brilliant move, eh?) and as I was putting things in the cart I was remembering all the excitement and panic over Y2K. Hard to believe that was six years ago already.

We took the kids over to my parents last night and hung out a bit at their annual New Year's Eve party. They have a group of friends that they always get together with and rotate the party year to year to a different couple's house. Last night was my parents turn. We visited with them and snacked on some yummy food. The kids loved it because there were other kids to play and raise cain with. We're good friends with the son of one of the couples and he was there with three of his children. His children are older and more self-sufficient. Mine--not so much. They were pretty ramped up with the party atmosphere and so we spent most of our time watching them and keeping them from:

A. Breaking things
B. Hurting themselves
C. Hurting others
D. Ruining carpet, furniture, wallpaper, etc.

After a couple of hours of this we decided to throw in the towel and go home. Don't get me wrong, my children aren't little monsters. They're just 7, 3 & 1 with lots of excitement for the party, friends to play with and parents who can get distracted from time to time trying to carry on a conversation. They were pretty darn good for the most part it's just that we weren't able to really relax and enjoy things, plus the little one was getting sleepy.

So, off to home we went. We dodged the swerving cars and made it home in one piece. The girls celebrated the New Year early by popping the confetti champagne bottles on the porch and yelling "Happy New Year!" We let them stay up to watch the ball drop but neither one made it. We woke them up to watch the key moment and then they stumbled to their own bed. Of course that was only 11:00 our time so we flipped over and saw that Fox News was covering the ball dropping in Manhattan, Kansas (known around here as "The Little Apple")! My husband is a K-State alum so that was pretty cool to see.

While the girls were asleep on the couch I spent the time laughing until I was crying reading Crazy Aunt Purl's website. Love reading her entries, definitely my new favorite site. My husband thought I'd been swigging champagne behind his back. Do you ever read or see something funny and try to tell someone else about it? Except you completely ruin the story because you can't keep a straight face? And before you get to the punch like you start giggling and laughing? No? Just me? Well that was pretty much how every snippet of her site went that I shared with him. He just smiled and nodded his head like an adult does with a goofy kid who always tries to make up his own, better punch line to a joke. "Hey, hey, why did the chicken cross the road? Because he was a doody head! Ha! Ha! Ha!" Yeah, that was the same reaction I got. And since I can barely figure out how to post on my own blog let alone turn her name above into a magical link to her site I'll just type it out by hand since I'm just that lame:
http://www.crazyauntpurl.com Go, read, laugh, repeat.

After wiping the tears off my face, cleaning my glasses and blowing my nose a dozen times I actually did some knitting! Not only that I managed to do something New! And! Exciting! I began knitting in the round! For my first time! Although let me clarify that the only time last night my *husband* laughed until he cried was when he watched me trying to figure out how the hell I managed to turn the cast on row into a joined circular shape. I turned to my trusty lap top and did a quick search and found instructions! with pictures! Exactly what my non-engineering little brain needed. With the handy pictures I managed to join the knitting and get going on the sunshine hat. I now have 10 rows done and will be picking it back up after this entry. Only now I'm concerned about how I'm knitting it. I read something on Aunt Purl's site about if you don't hold your needles a certain way you actually end up knitting it inside out or some such thing. I'm just going to keep forging ahead though. It's going pretty quick and easy (which is usually a sign I've made a horrible mistake) so if I do screw it up I don't mind frogging and starting over.

Sorry no pictures of the progress. I let my photography/business partner borrow my CF card to shoot some weddings this weekend.

Have a great 2006!