Goodbye 2007, Hello 2008

For New Year's Eve, we went to the zoo to see the Christmas lights and then to Pizza Hut for supper. We got home around 9 PM and I put Violet to bed. Even though we are in the Central Time Zone, we still see the New Year's shows (like Dick Clark) live. So, when they do the countdown, it's only 11 PM here. So we all celebrated at 11 PM with some sparkling cranberry juice that we got from Goodwill. (David had dropped off some donations and they gave it to him because someone else had dropped it off and they don't take food donations. It was still sealed, so we drank it and we're still all alive.) Maybe if we had cable TV there would be some "live" New Year's show for us to watch, but all they do here (on the regular broadcast channels) is re-run the same show they just showed an hour earlier! Needless to say, it's very anti-climactic. I struggled to stay awake until midnight, but had dozed off, when David woke me around 12:03 saying "Happy New Year." Then I went to bed. New Year's Day is different here too. No one has heard of having pork and sauerkraut. Obviously, you can buy it at the grocery store, but it's not a featured item, like the traditional foods here--blackeyed peas and turnip greens. We had a "traditional" New Year's Day meal at David's parents house: blackeyed peas for peace, rice for riches, turnip greens (again for money because they're green), and some sausage. It was good. I like turnip greens and blackeyed peas (which are really more like beans than peas) and probably healthier too. Last year I made pork and sauerkraut at our house and invited David's parents over. They enjoyed it, but Veronica complained about the smell of the sauerkraut the entire morning that it was cooking. You would have thought she was being tortured! I'm sure it built lots of character.