Welcome, 2011!

Unless you've lived in New Orleans, there's no way I could possibly describe just what it's like to celebrate New Year's here. This city knows how to celebrate, of course! The fireworks start way early in the day and just get bigger and stronger and louder as the evening progresses. When we first moved here, we were just shocked by this. I mean, this wasn't an official fireworks show put on by some organization in town. It was just people buying expensive illegal fireworks and lighting them off like crazy all over town. Way bigger and crazier than the 4th of July! So the past few years, we've never really done anything to celebrate the New Year, besides put the kids to bed, watch TV and listen to the fireworks going all night long (since sleeping would be impossible, even though somehow our kids always slept through it).

So, this year we were lucky to have lots of fun places to go and things to do on New Year's Eve. We had a get together early in the evening with some friends and enjoyed good food and fun games, and later in the evening we headed to some other friends' house for the true New Orleans style celebration. There was good food, good company, and of course--big fireworks! So, with our kids in tow, we headed out for the evening (not sure exactly how they would do staying up that late!).

And you'll have to excuse my crappy pictures of the evening (wasn't really planning on taking fireworks shots, so these are all handheld, therefore not so great, but you get the point, right?!), but these were all taken right at about midnight and a few minutes afterwards. There were big, huge, loud fireworks going off in every direction and just standing on the steps, you could see them light up the midnight sky. The pictures were all taken from the steps just in different directions, to give you a better idea.

Our hosts lit off some fireworks of their own while we all stood out front, truly ringing in the new year. It was something else! It was such a great time!

The boys fared pretty well that night, also--considering the fact that this was midnight! Even though we made some progress with Sam and fireworks at the bonfires, he still insisted to watch them from inside the house. He was much more comfortable that way! Thanks to our friends the Ortiz's for such a fun fireworks show!

And just like that--another year has come and gone. It seems that we put so much emphasis on "one year", and then in a snap of the fingers a year goes by. It's crazy. But we welcome 2011, it's going to be a good year! It has to be, right?! Lots of hopes, dreams, and goals for this year to come!

Happy New Year!

"If you can't fly then run, if you can't run then walk, if you can't walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward."
— Martin Luther King Jr.