Happy New Year!

Last night someone on the Buy Nothing Group offered up some NYE balloons, available after noon today (since they were throwing a Noon Year's Eve party at their house, wouldn't need the balloons for the evening, and wanted to spread the joy). I wasn't selected to get the balloons.

But! The person who was selected messaged me to say that she only wanted the word balloons (that spelled out "Happy New Year!") and since I live just around the corner...did I want to come pick up two big garbage bags of white and gold balloons? 

We had just finished preparing all the pirogies, but they were in the oven warming...so I said yes! We could come right now! So we got the balloons and then had our dinner. 

After dinner I set up a balloon drop in the living room:

 

We aimed to have our dinner and have scriptures and prayer and do our countdown and balloon drop before all the teenagers arrived, but we mistimed things, so we ended up eating dinner without company, having scriptures with Andie and Carter, and having prayer and the balloon drop with Andie and Carter and Hunter and McKenna. And that was alright!

I'm not sure the balloon drop was as exciting as I'd imagined (it got stuck on Benjamin's head a bit), but it was exciting enough.

We had fun batting balloons around for quite some time:

I'll put a few pictures below. None of them are spectacular (my phone was rebelling against my lighting choices, I guess), but this picture just about takes the cake:

So...pictures of people with balloons:

Eventually Daddy and all the teenagers loaded into the van so that they could go to the dance, which was out in Cumming. Because the dance ends at midnight, none of the teenagers can technically drive home afterward (there's a law in Georgia that puts a curfew on teen drivers), so we drove all the kids up to the dance and left them there. And then Grandpa (who lives closer to that area than we do) picked up Rachel, Miriam, Andie, and Carter and took them to his house for a sleepover (Hunter and McKenna were picked up by their guardians). So it worked out well. 

After they left we played with balloons for a little while longer and then turned off the lights and turned on some music and played "Stake Dance."

Here's Phoebe hugging the biggest balloon:

And here are some dance shots:

We danced to all sorts of music, reviewed the cha-cha, and learned The Macarena (which I told the kids was important cultural knowledge). 

Then we put Phoebe to bed and I read a chapter of our book aloud to the kids and then Andrew came home and we played the game Benjamin got for Christmas—Scram! It took us a minute (and a few YouTube tutorials) to figure out, but we got the hang of it after a while. 

And then we played MarioKart. 

And then we got ready to ring in the New Year...and Phoebe woke up (because of fireworks, perhaps?)...and rang in the New Year with us...and threw up all over the place.

Andrew took care of that throw up mess and got Phoebe settled back in bed while I took the kids on our traditional New Year firework hunt/walk. This year some neighbours at the top of the hill and around the corner were setting off fireworks. We stood/sat around for a long time enjoying them. 

Zoë isn't pictured below because she is standing on my feet (which were in shoes) to keep her feet (which were not in shoes) warm:

Here are the kids wishing the world a Happy New Year:

For me, 2025 has already been educational and inspiring. 

My sister Josie taught me that you can schedule texts to be sent later! I was so impressed when she texted me precisely at midnight (which is not her midnight) to wish me a Happy New Year. She wrote back all, "Oh, it was nothing. I literally scheduled all my New Year texts at 3:00 this afternoon in time for Patrick's New Year." And I was like, "Excuse me...schedule texts?"

So I learned how to schedule texts today! 

I scheduled one to wish Josie a Happy New Year at 2 AM...and it worked...and all she did was laugh at me!

Also, I wrote this post while listening to Lloyd Miller's Jazz in Iran and it's so great. I mean, I'm not sure that jazz is my favourite, but it's not not my favourite. And there have been so many interesting instruments paired with traditional jazz instruments. There's been French, there's been English, there's been Persian/Iranian (I've heard it both ways, with various reasons behind both ways). There's been scat. It's been so interesting. 

So interesting to think about Lloyd Miller living in Iran and producing (?) a Jazz variety show, so interesting to see women participating in music-making like that (uncovered!), so interesting to think about how Iran has changed over Lloyd Miller's life (he recently passed away).

So interesting to think about how places—and times—are changing for other people, becoming unrecognizable, and "out of joint" (as Hamlet of Shakespeare, or Marx or Derrida might say—I'mr reading Derrida's Specters of Marx right now and it's been a fascinating read so far). Later in the semester we'll be having a guest lecture about Palestinians and hauntology, which I'm really looking forward to. It's also been interesting to think about how jazz ties into literacy (following a talk by David Bloome at LRA early in December, where he spoke about how "metaphorically, reading comprehension is viewed as a jazz performance event in which musicians interacting with each other, with the audience, with the sheet music in front of them (or memorized), with histories of related jazz performance events, and—while leaving traces of past jazz musicians and performances—creating new music far beyond the sheet music and past performances").

2025 is looking good!