New Years Eve and other things.

We have company staying with us right now. Company is always good to have because it makes me do extra cleaning all over the house and I really have to clean in my office because it is also our spare bedroom. Since my office can be one of the messiest rooms in the house (I am embarrassed to say), it is good for us to have company often to make me keep it in order.

Because of the fact that we have company I am not sure if I will be posting much in the next couple of days. Just thought I would let you know.

Tomorrow night we are planning our annual New Year's Eve party. I enjoy staying up until the New Year and being with friends and family while doing that. I also have no interest in going out and drinking at that time so the perfect solution for us has been to have a family friendly New Years Eve party to which we invite everybody from church and other friends. We have lots of fun playing games, sometimes making music and eating lots of snacks! Our house is usually bursting with people and you can find somebody in pretty much every room. On New Year's Day we are usually exhausted and our house is a mess but at least we are not dealing with a hangover and we have lots of good memories.We have done New Year's Eve parties ever since we first got married (Well not the first year since we had just gotten married).

New Year's Eve has a lot of very fun memories for me because when growing up my family would travel out to Nebraska to my Grandpa's house. My Mom has 8 siblings (and so there are over 30 cousins) and as many of them as possible would come at that time for a fun reunion. My Mom's family was a singing family and when younger they had done some concerts. (Singing Gospel). I am not sure when it started but at some point they had started a New Year's Eve sing where they would rent a big building and they would invite other groups to come as well and the Petersen family as well as other groups would sing. At around 10 pm they would always take a break to serve homemade doughnuts. As it neared midnight a group of men would go on stage and would pray to bring in the New Year. For various reasons we don't do that anymore but there are certainly a lot of happy memories!

I hope you have a wonderful New Year's Eve and a happy New Year!