Thursday Thinks: Happy New Year!

Congrats, guys! We made it to 2018! 

In our house, we have a New Year's Eve tradition. We grab some sparkling juice, play Rummy, and watch Dick Clark's New Year's Rocking Eve. We do this every year, and even though we'd been traveling (nine hour drive) that day, and were all nearly falling asleep, we held up our tradition.

Or at least, we tried to.

See, we'd been gone for Christmas, and this was our first day back, meaning we had no sparkling juice. Therefore, we made a trip to the local grocery store at like 10pm. It was cold-- I'm talking like -5-- which one should expect from a Chicago winter, but I was not ready for this and wanted to move to Florida immediately because this week is supposed to get down to -15.

Anyway.

So we go to the store, pick up stuff for dinner and made sure to get that sparkling juice. Our house is only a few miles from aforementioned store, so within ten minutes we were carrying things in, which is when one of the bags broke, and the sparkling juice fell in slow motion onto the sidewalk. You heard it hit the sidewalk with a hard thunk, and then all of a sudden this ShAtTeRiNg, and there went the sparkling juice.

The store had been ridiculously busy, and it's right next to a pizza shop which was also ridiculously busy, and it had taken us like half an hour to get there and back. Plus, we still had to shower those traveling germs away before we could get down to business, and did I mention how cold it was? 

Yeah, there was no way we were going back for more

We were now on crisis alert, because jUICE. HOW CAN WE TOAST THE NEW YEAR WITHOUT JUICE?

But we had to move on-- get things done before we started with our tradition. So I gave the dog a bath (she'd been traveling with us), took a quick shower, waited while the parents took their showers, and then dinner. We had fishsticks and I was like that gif of Pooh, so I turned on the tv while we ate and searched for Dick Clark on the channels, but 

he

wasn't

on.

Instead, Steve Harvey was doing a NYE special, so I thought maybe they'd replaced it. I put Steve on. It was NOT the same, there were like four songs total and I knew like two and it was more talky talky than singy singy and that was sTRIKE TWO for our NYE.

It wasn't too long before we finished eating, and that means it's card time. At this point, its like 11 or so, maybe a bit after, so I go grab a deck of cards.

See, I love playing cards. It's rare that I win at Rummy, but it's my faaaavorite, so I'm all excited and grab my new deck of cards, themed: Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 2-- Baby Groot. THESE CARDS ARE ADORABLE. I'd flipped through them before to see what they looked like, and they were so cute.

 What I didn't pay attention to, however, was the numbers. 

I take first deal, get everything set, pick up my cards, and Dad points out that the numbers are so. hard. to. see. They're done in this weird script and the black isn't dark enough to stand out good against the blue and red and it's obviously going to be a struggle. Especially for my dad, who needs glasses, and my mom, who has contacts but did not have hers in at that particular moment.

But we play anyway, because it's like the only deck of cards in the house that we could locate within two minutes.

We play, watching Steve and having to bend over the table to read the cards, until like fifteen til Midnight, at which time mom gets up and goes into the kitchen. She returns with three mugs-- Tinkerbell for her, Grumpy for Dad, and Rey for me-- and they're filled with Kool-Aid. 

Thank God for Mom. It wasn't sparkling juice, but it was something, which was better than what I'd thought we were going to have.

So, we continued on with our tradition, toasting with our Kool-Aid at midnight and and finishing up our game of Rummy, which mom ended up winning. Texting everyone HAPPY NEW YEAR at 12:00 and being surprised at who answers and who doesn't (It always seems to be the opposite of who you'd think).

It wasn't quite what we were expecting, but it was still a great NYE. I went to bed around 2am on January 1, 2018 feeling pretty pleased with our evening.

That is, until one of my friends texted to see if I'd seen the Imagine Dragons performance.

The one that had aired just before the ball drop

on Dick Clark's New Year's Rocking Eve

that had apparently aired for everyone

but

us.

Happy New Year,

Stephanie