Happy New Years Day....kitchen 1, Genna 0

Eat poor that day, eat rich the rest of the year.
Rice for riches and peas for peace.
- Southern saying on eating a dish of Hoppin' John on New Year's Day.


OK, I already have broken my vow to never clean the kitchen again (although I have to admit that my real "perfect" husband cleaned the kitchen for me after the second mess today) so I am scratching that resolution off my list and making number 2 a vow to enjoy my family more...look at the good versus the bad. Some day, they won't be around here to be messing my kitchen while insisting that they are not responsible and WILL NOT clean up after someone else. So while they are here, I am going to try to remember how lucky I am to have them here and to accept the role of housekeeper/mom with more dignity and grace than I have as of late. I am also hoping that my perfect real husband will also decide not to put "getting a new wife" on his resolution list.

And, with that said, I have to say that this welcoming of 2009 has been one of the best "in with the new out with the old" times I have ever had. Last night, at the stroke of midnight (central time) we all gathered in Bibianna's room (had to really work to get her to wake up) and counted down to 0...hugged and kissed and then all went to bed. This morning, poor little Bibianna was so upset because she missed the celebration. When we all assured her that she didn't miss is it, and she could tell that she had drank some of her sparkling cider from her champagne flute, she was astonished. Which leads me to question....what exactly is in that sparkling cider?

Today, I made a huge pot of Hoppin' John to ensure that we have good luck for the rest of the year. Carolyn reminded me many times that it is bad luck to believe in superstitions, but I was not detoured from making one of my favorite dishes anyway. Joey made a chocolate pie. Of course, another tradition that Carolyn and I started a few years ago and now Bibianna joins in, is the Twilight Zone marathon on the SciFi network. We tune every TV in the house (except Joey's) in to the SciFi channel so that we don't miss one minute of the marathon that we are not sleeping through. We also make sure that we are stocked up on junk-food deluxe so that we can have a marathon party to go with the marathon Twilight Zone. Great way to start 2009!