4 Seconds A Day: December 2015

Out Before The Year News Itself

The Krupp elders came in to close out the Christmas and ring in the new year with us. Yuula padded her Minnie collection and Laura and I got some vintage bowling balls. Guess who's joining a league after all.

Yuula ran the already road-weary grandparents into submission, but mommy and daddy got a nice break from child rearing for the weekend. 

For some reason, every time her parents come visit, some random and equally horrible toy from Laura's childhood pops up around the house that distracts Laura for days.

We made beef wellington again, because we can

Dave became slightly obsessed with changing all our circuit breakers from 15 to 20

And Yuula became a barista and set up a coffee house in the living room. Convenient.

They just hit the road, bright and early, and should be back in Georgia to see Dick Clark reign in the New Year. 

(shhh they don't know he's dead)

Our New Year In A Nutshell

Turn It Up!

Who's The Ones You Chose

Hanging out with my kid, my wife, Eric and Fatih and hopefully chowing on some delicious Turkish food and having a confetti fight.

MMXI (Must Morning X Itself)

2011. Twenty Eleven. Two Thousand OneOne. Call it what you will. Don't matter much. I'm gonna be neck deep in new music and bowl games today. Already spinning a particularly enjoyable ditty by a new unknown. On my second cup of tea. Decaf this one. So far the new year is a soft lamp of Cuban velvet.


the first photo of 2011 - how could it be anything but delicious?



Yuula is still sleeping. She doesn't have anything pressing today so, why not. Laura & I are enjoying a little quiet this morning, lying on the floor of the living room watching Law & Order rerun. I guess they're all reruns now. But I even got a double ear rub. I'm gonna give her a new playlist for her ride today. That's what I'm gonna do.

Baby's awake.........





2011, resume.

And Then There Was One

*NEW YEAR'S UPDATE*

Baby New Year has gone to bed, followed closely by her mother and as soon as this glass is empty, her father. I may survive in a purely catatonic state to watch 12 year olds lipsync in sequined stripper outfits and Dick Clark drool on his microphone, but don't quiz me on it tomorrow morning.

(If you are still up, and for some reason reading this, I may have one more tidbit left for 2010, if youtube would hurry the hell up. It's nothing that can't wait, but I'd like to go out on somewhat of a high note. About 11 minutes remaining...)

Midnight Doesn't Stand A Chance

Pork steak and potato wedges was the choice for last meal of the year. We just finished Season 5 of Weeds. Oh boy Shane. What did you do now? We just found out that we'll have to wait til February for Season 6 to come out. Moving on to Dexter I suppose. Or maybe Mad Men. We will get our feet wet. But I'm having to convince Laura to stay up for New Year's ball drop. See, we have a strict 9pm bedtime here with no exceptions, focused towards baby, but Laura loves the bedtime and I have my suspicions. Right now I got her interested in this vaccination documentary I found on Google TV, trying to keep her up, but I think it's causing paranoia. It's not exactly a measles mumps rubella kinda evening. We may change to something a bit more lighthearted, it being New Year's and all.


New Year's chill


So the house is clean, the cider is gone I just poured myself a little Bulleit bourbon and I plan on soldiering thru to midnight, if midnight only. We've put the film on hold, are giving my newly formed "best of 2010" playlist a spin and giving Yuula a dancing lesson. We may make it afterall. No promises. There's always next year, next year and next year. And I'm looking forward to it, as usual, but forward to it being nothing. I need a break. 2006 we got engaged, 2007 married, 2008 we bought a house, 2009 got pregnant and 2010 had a baby. I want to 2011 to be special for nothing in particular. Let's see what we can do eh?



Happy New Year People

Out With The Green, In With The Blue

I've decided on a New Year's resolution: take better care of my teeth. It's a three step process.

1. New toothbrush. I got it for Christmas. My old toothbrush I've had for about 6 years now. It is green, but it wasn't always. The new one is blue and is called an Oral-B Pulsar. It pulses. It has an on & off switch. I really like it. It makes me brush nice and slow. I pulled a piece of apple skin that's been in there since Monday.
2. Floss. Never did it. I think we have some, but for some reason I am very excited about getting some floss going in there. I think I'm gonna find some hidden treasures.
   
3. Mouthwash. It's delicious.

So that's all I'm promising to right now. I may think of more as the night goes on. Never been one to make resolutions, or at last follow thru with them. They're usually forgotten by President's Day.

No Way To New Year

Mess! Amber alert! This place is tragic. The coffee table is at the back door. There's baby clothes everywhere with no discernible sign as to whether they are clean or dirty. The bedroom still has suitcases from when we went to Georgia full of clothes. The dining room has refuse everywhere, there's a sink full of dishes and the daybed is still open in the backroom. The cleanest spot is the top of my nightstand, and even that is a random trash pile.

So today, New Year's Eve will be dedicated to cleaning up. This is no way to welcome in the new year. How embarrassing for us. How thoughtless of 2010 to leave such a mess for 2011. Hopefully we find the proper motivation to start somewhere and end soon. Right after this episode of Weeds of course. We've whizzed thru seasons 3 & 4 in three days and onto season 5. Pretty crazy.

Hopefully I can make it back later on today to spew some year-end priority. In the meantime, here's a few photos...

Yuula taking some Christmas gifts for a spin

The closest I could get her to the bok choy.

Good morning New Year's Eve.

Resolutely This Year

in no particular order...

• sit up straighter
• figure it out
• build the wood pile
• watch more black & white movies
  
• take a step with the driveway
  
• set the timer on the TV so we don't wake up to crazy Japanamation at 5am
• eat more yogurt
• eat less yogurt
• do things better
• be less fat and tired
• call it quits
• organize socks
  
• start good things

That about does it.

Final Images Of A Decade

happy new year

Fourteen Twelve Ten Eleven Ten

Oh Dick..



And a little early there on your exclamation. On behalf of society as a whole, or at least my household, please Dick, make that your last New year's broadcast. It just brings a sadness to the whole already depraved celebration, and even tho we dragged ourselves away from a fiercely jovial round of Mario Kart at 11:58 just to catch the ball drop, I have to say, it put a real damper on the evening.

35 Hours To Go

The year's ending, and I think everyone knows it. I had some plans to get things done, cross a few things off the new year's to-do list, but I'm guessing it'll all have to wait. I'll just ride the year out, the whole day and a half that's left of it, spend some quality time with my playlist of this years best music and try to assemble them in some kind of order, which will be a joke, but it must be done.

Laura gets home around 6 and I'm guessing tonight will consist of some Wii, a nice salad and maybe room cleaning, but probably cozying up on the couch and taking in as much Office & Sunny In Philadelphia as humanly possible.

Got Dad & Mom & Tyler & Melissa coming over New Year's Day, just gonna sit around and eat and watch football. That's how we do. The menu is coming along, but we'll probably be having to run out last minute for sour cream or something dumb. That also means they'll be bringing over their dogs, which means the cats hide in our bedroom. All of them. They each have their own hiding spot.

Mom & Dad are staying over Friday night and we're gonna do who-knows-what on Saturday, although the weather channel says we'll be snowed in and frozen. Maybe we'll just watch TV all day and I can have my father show me how to fix the washing machine & the fuse box. Maybe we'll teach them how to play Shut the Box. Bring your singles. Maybe we'll play Call of Duty. That'd be pretty awesome, a little modern warfare with Moms & Pops. I guess we should figure out how to play it first. Maybe tonight.

Oh! And her cough was all but extinct last night, so somebody finally got a goodnight's sleep. Good thing. Good things.

Expect some posts concerning all things "best of the year". And expect to learn something.

Now Near New Years

Well, Christmas has come & gone. We have been enjoying our gifts and gadgets thoroughly. One came in the mail yesterday.

I guess Christmas isn't over yet. There's a few more things en route.

But we're pretty much back to the ol' routine. The new year is coming and I can't help but feel like it's gonna refresh us a little. We got some plans for 2010 ya see. Little things here and there. Maybe a road trip, maybe an air trip. Maybe a new driveway. Maybe a bunch of zero balances on credit cards. Maybe all of it. Maybe none. It's all very exciting. I can't wait to see what happens. I do know we are gonna eat healthier this year. We've already started...

Plus we got out new Wii to help us along. According to the Wii I am obese and Laura is 62, so we've got some work to do. And I suck at balancing on an iceberg and catching fish in my mouth while dressed as a penguin so.....

We got plans for the house too. Like this little nugget I drew up last night.

I saw it on some While You Were Out or Trading Spaces episode a bunch of years back and never got it out of my head. Now I want one.

But mainly I think we plan to take the year's end in with a quiet smile. Relaxing around the house, cooking from one of the four cookbooks we got for Christmas, or just playing Shut the Box for jordan almonds. It's our favorite new game, besides Mario Kart, but that's not really new is it?

And a game that Laura cannot cheat at, therefore she has to play fair, therefore she loses. Every so often.

It was that 6th round where she got a whopping 125,789 points. The idea is to get the lowest score. That didn't help. And cats have been enjoying the new cushions we got for the dining room chairs more than we have, but our warm butts appreciate them on those chilly mornings that are soon coming.

Whatever it is that 2010 brings, I'm sure it's gonna be amazing. Why wouldn't it be?

I'm out of turkey.

Survival Rivals

"It's the end of the dinosaurs!!"

This Here Is The New Year

This New Years promised to be like noneother. The past few we've spent the new year sitting on a couch sipping some wine, champagne if we felt ambitious, watching wannabes talk about how the new year ball is made of the worlds finest Waterford crystal and pearls digested thru a sperm whales belly and have Dick Clark drool off another countdown. But this year, with Mike & Andrea down, we figured we'd go all out, or all out for us anyhow.

Mike & Andrea prepared another delicious dinner, this time curry chicken.



We planned on having taquitos, so this was an upgrade.

We had a few drinks and for a while there feared whether or not we'de make it to the midnight festivities. This is the girls with 3 hours to go. Outlook bleak.



We decided to get the party started early and shoot some fireworks off in the front yard. We hadn't realized how cold it had gotten so shooting the fireworks had to be done in sessions so we didn't freeze. Mike was master of ceremonies.










Took a little time to get them going with the cold wind and all but... they went.







And this... this here, is the new year.



Happy New Year Everyone! We're gonna start stockpiling illegal fireworks now so if you don't know what your doing next New Years Eve... you know where the party'll be.