Happy New Year...from ALL of us

First, I must say that I was wooed by Blogger's promises of cool templates and changed my blog and I lost all my stinking links. And I can't remember what they all were. So, if there were websites that you always linked to from my blog and the sites aren't listed, please remind me what they are so I can add them. I know I need to add the Guangdong Friends group, Mom. I'm working on it.

Well, our New Year's was somewhat eventful, I guess. We had invited Mark and Kimberly over for fondue, as usual, and, as usual, we waited until the last second to start getting the food together. We have a fondue pot but it's the kind that uses sterno so I wanted to go to Target to get an electric one like Kimberly's. Well, apparently electric fondue pots were the hot Christmas item around here because there were none to be had. We also checked Belk's, Sears, JC Penney, Kmart, another Target, Bed Bath and Beyond and Linens n' Things to no avail. It kind of sucked. Finally we just bought another fondue set that uses sterno but the new one is fancy stainless steel with little cups for dipping sauces and such. Also, David did not want to go shopping with me but I begged him to come with Maggie and me with the promise that it would be a short trip. Ha! He got some chai tea at Starbucks as his reward for coming. Then since we were up in town, we went to Lowe's Foods to do our grocery shopping. Maggie sat in a buggy that looked like a car and she "steered" us around the store. Then she got in trouble because she kept trying to stand up in the buggy. I tell you what, Maggie has the best "you can't make me" look I've ever seen. Can't wait til she's 13. Then on the way home, we realized that we had not bought chicken broth so we had to go to Food Lion before we could go home. Our quick shopping trip turned into a 3 hour extravaganza. Lowe's Foods shoppers look a little different than Food Lion shoppers. Food Lion shoppers sometimes look as though they've been beaten down by life. We are Food Lion shoppers.

Then Mark and Kimberly came over and we got to fondu(e)ing. Yum, yum, it was good. Cheese fondue, bouillon fondue with steak and shrimp and then chocolate fondue that was made of....semi sweet chocolate and HEAVY cream. That's it. Oh my, it was tasty. Maggie conked out around 8 so we packed her off to bed and she was snoozing away in no time. Then suddenly around 10, she started screaming. David went in to check on her and stupid Katie the cat had gotten locked in her room and we figure she must have jumped in the crib, awakened Maggie and probably scared her half to death, causing the blood curdling screams emanating from her room. Not so fun. David accused Kimberly and me of being too loud. Surely not. So Maggie got up for a while and kept falling asleep so I went to put her back to bed but every time I put her in the crib, she SCREAMED. She screamed like she used to when I thought she would take a nap in her crib. We let her scream for a while but she was not stopping and I did not want to sit there and listen to her scream for 30 minutes while we waited for the ball to drop. So Maggie got to ring in the New Year with us.




Then she STILL wouldn't go to sleep so she slept with us. I hate co-sleeping. Maggie thrashes all over the place and makes all these weird noises and tries to steal my pillow. She woke up at 7 this morning and I just wanted to die. I was so tired. So, this is what she did from 10:45 until about 1:30.

I did not get to do that today. Wah.

We went visiting today with Maggie's local grandparents. Well, first we went to BJ's and dropped $180 on a LOT of paper products. Then we went visiting. Maggie was her usual charming self and I think she might have been glad to see some faces other than mine or David's. She ate some more kielbasa tonight for dinner plus pork that had been cooked in sauerkraut. She must have some Polish in her somewhere. I like to go visiting. Our house can get somewhat claustrophobic at times. I think it has shrunk since we added another family member.

Finally, I will leave you with a picture that one of our travel mates sent us. I am stunned everytime I look at it. I cannot believe the changes.