Midnight Madness

DISCLAIMER: In order for this post to make any sense, you might want to review my explanation of what Cubans do at midnight on New Year's Eve.

We thought it was going to be a quiet New Year's Eve. Helen (my niece) invited us over to play games and eat junk and wait for midnight. The kids, Daisy (7) and Ben (2) probably were not going to make it to midnight anyway. In fact, she told us, we would probably be home by ten. It will be a mellow evening and why doesn't Eric bring his telescope too?

Exhausted from all the other partying we've been doing (for the entire month of December!), we agreed to the nice and quiet New Year's celebration with family. Eat a little. Play games. Do a little star-gazing. Quiet. Mellow.

Quiet? My family?
Mellow? These Cuban people that I am related to?

WRONG!

Of course it seemed to start out innocently enough.
We started off getting Dick Clark and his Rockin' New Years thing on tv.

But then added the festive Happy New Year party hats to that. . .

And something bubbly. . .

And a table full of appetizers and desserts . . .

And . . .
We were noisy. Oh so noisy. And we had noise-makers to add to the noisy-ness. And a two-year old with a noisemaker. (As if a little Cuban two-year old needed any help with noise making. =D) And no, the kids never did go to bed. We were all having too much fun.

And five minutes to midnight we realized that we had eaten most of the grapes so there were not going to be 12 grapes for each person, so we came up with a new superstition (for variety's sake) - we'll just eat 12 different food items! Let's update that whole 12-grape superstition and bring it into this century! Oooh, we are so tempting fate here!

So midnight caught us a little off-guard. Shoving 12 really bizarre and unrelated food items into our mouths and kissing everyone and running outside to set off the tiny exploding bottle poppers which caused the neighbors across the street to come out to see what the noise was and why were those people throwing water into the street?? and embarrassed to be caught they yelled "Happy New Year" at us and slammed the door. (Well, I'm not really sure whether they were embarrassed or fearful, but that's not important right now. =D)

We didn't have a suitcase ready - for the traveling part of the superstitious behavior - and I was kind of hoping we'd get to Italy this year, but Eric quickly grabbed what was available, which was the case with his telescope lenses, so does that mean we'll be doing some space travel this year? (don't even go there.)
And it was a really long way to the mailbox to put money into it (for prosperity, of course), so he just put my purse and his wallet outside, so I'm not really sure what that signifies. (Maybe I'll be going to the mall a lot more this year?) ;-)

I decided that I was going to be braver this year. And I think this post and these pictures prove that I'm not only willing to make a fool of myself, but I'm also willing to tempt fate. (Ooh, she's just so fearless!)

The truth is that I would have denied the whole thing, but Daryl caught it all on tape. (sigh)