HAPPY New Year!

That phrase always reminds me of my brother, Dustin. Back in the day, we used to spend most of New Year's eve sitting on our barn roof--singing stupid songs in 4 part-harmony (or trying), eating corndogs, trying to be quiet so the coyotes would come and we could shoot them, spying on the neighbors, you know, normal stuff...and Dustin would stand up every so often and yell on the top of his lungs, with a voice that sounded exactly like the drunken party-goers you see on TV in Times Square, "HAPPY New Year!" Ahh...the good ol' days!

This year, however, I didn't sit on a roof. Tyler and I went up to Estes Park with a bunch of friends to celebrate both the New Year and Jordan's 24th birthday at a cabin (one of those huge 6-bedroom ones that is bigger than most houses) that Jord's friend Jackie's family owns. (Was that confusing or what?) It was really fun. We spend the evening hanging out, talking, eating, playing Wii and dancing.

Here's the birthday boy, bowling on the Wii...

The girls got the dance party started early in the kitchen. Everyone else danced later, but of course we were much too busy to take pictures then...

Then we watched the ball drop (Elmarie had never seen it before) and marveled at how old and dead poor Dick Clark looks...I suppose that's cause he is...old...not dead. And we toasted in the New Year, complete with very loud and annoying party horns. Then Ty and I learned that if you sleep in front of a fireplace, but the fire goes out, you in fact become colder than you would in a different location. At about 6am, we realized that the wind was blowing down the chimney and onto us...oh well. It made it an adventure! The next morning we woke to discover the amazing view. (It had been dark when we arrived.)

For the Colorado-familiar folks, the cabin was directly across and above the Estes YMCA camp (as you can see in the 2nd pic)--we had fun figuring out which cabins were ones we'd stayed in.

We had yummy breakfast, hung out for awhile longer and then headed home and spent the rest of the day napping and watching movies on the couch...ahhh...vacation! I was off work through Thursday, so now it's back to real life...and working out---that's my goal for '08!