New Year

We often work on a puzzle at New Year's. Sometimes one that we start that evening or sometimes one we started between Christmas and New Year's Eve. This year, Mal received a puzzle from his secret santa, so we started on that just a day or two after Christmas. And actually finished it the day before New Year's Eve!

1000 pieces and proved quite tricky. It also hung over the edge of the table slightly, which provided the added challenge of trying not to knock any sections off inadvertently! Ryan worked on a bit of everything. I started with the lettering, which took me a few days, before lending a hand with some people, and Gareth and Mal focused on faces and wands. Gareth mostly helped the first day, but after that was more focused on his new video games. Mal took over as the face expert. It was so fun to see his puzzling skills blossom this year, though he still has no patience for sorting through and finding all the edge pieces to start with.

Instead of puzzling on New Year's Eve, we spent the early evening virtually with my sister's family. We set up a zoom call and a watch party so we could simultaneously stream The Thin Man and chat about it together. I, of course, had seen it several times before as these older movies were common in my household growing up. But it's been at least a decade. I'm sure I made Ryan watch it once in our early years together, and the kids had never seen it. We all loved it and it was so much fun to laugh together at the antics (well, drunkenness) of Nick and Nora Charles. The younger kids particularly loved the dog (and really, who doesn't love Aster?). 

We munched on cheese and crackers, veggies and hummus, and jerky while we watched. My mom's gooseberry jelly paired with brie is divine. Ryan and I also tried some new cocktails (French 75, boulevardier, and bijou). I only had a few sips of the boulevardier as whisky forward cocktails are less to my taste. Very fun to try some new things though. Even though I set my alarm for the wrong day and woke up late the next morning, this was definitely one of our best New Year's yet!

Also, just for fun. I thought for sure our garden was done for when we got the snow and accompanying freezing nighttime temps for a couple days. But the chard seems to have bounced back quite well! As you can see, the squirrels or rabbits or whatever continue to enjoy it. So we (or the animals) should be able to eat these last few leaves at least.

I'm on furlough this week, but don't have any major plans since Ryan and the boys are both back at school/work. At some point I'll take down the Christmas decorations, I suppose.