Yeah, I know, I know what you’re about to say: “It’s March, for Peet’s sake”, and here I am talking about celebrating this new year, but I have some photos to share and memories to eternalize, so you can’t stop me.
We all gathered at my parents’ house and spent a quiet, but fun New Year’s Eve my sister, her husband and the kids, my aunt and my cousin. It was pretty much the same cast of people that we had for Christmas, minus my great-aunt. I wanted to invite her, I always wanted to invite her, every year!, but she always refused and joked that she couldn’t do another night-long event so shortly after our “extensive Christmas partying”.
I remember the days when I still lived back home and my friends and I would go out to a New Year’s Party somewhere. While this would still be fun with the right crowd of people, I’d always pick a family New Year’s Eve over a night out any day year now. I wouldn’t want it any other way.
my BIL and J drinking Kölsch beer
my Dad – all smiles
Basti
We all helped prepare food for our fabulous feast with a raclette and hot stone grill and then we sat, ate and chatted for hours.
our dinner – raclette and fondue
raclette grill
My lovely sister and BIL
J and I – surprise!
my Mom reading to Greta and Tom
Both kids wanted to stay up til midnight no matter what, but Greta actually fell asleep early and we weren’t able to wake her up again for the fireworks. I swear, we tried! Tom, on the other hand, was wide awake until 3 a.m. in the morning.
At midnight, we all went outside (that’s what we do) to see the fireworks and do our own. EVERYBODY does it in Germany. This is the only picture that came out somewhat decent. Taking firework pictures is hard, just in case you were wondering and I didn’t have the time to play around with the settings enough.
The fireworks were going on for a good 30 minutes and then we all went back inside and played “Trivial Pursuit”. I usually love those kind of board games, but this game was a) an old edition (from the 1980’s), so it had a lot of outdated and simply weird questions and b) can you imagine playing a game like that in a foreign language? J was going nuts, because half of the questions were absolutely foreign to him…. thankfully, we played in teams and he was paired up with my Mom, who ended up knowing a lot of the answers to questions that J didn’t know and vice versa.
Needless to say, it was a long night. My Mom put Tom to bed at 3 a.m., my parents went to bed around 4:30 a.m., my sister and I around 6:30 a.m. and Basti, my BIL and J stayed up til 8 a.m. – you can imagine, when Greta got up bright and early after 10 glorious hours of sleep, none of us was really in the mood to get up and entertain her.
What did you do for New Year’s? Did you stay up as late as we did?
Kat
March 6, 2013 at 6:16 amTom and Greta look like such little angels! My goodness. I just wanna squish their little cheeks, haha. :) Is your mom also a twin? Because that lady next to her looks so much like her – at least in the picture. And I always love pictures of your dad, he always looks so genuinely happy and friendly and kind. :)
Glad to hear that you had such a lovely New Year’s over here! I would also always choose family New Year’s over partying with friends.
Nilsa @ SoMi Speaks
March 6, 2013 at 7:29 amWow, your family really knows how to party! I’m quite certain I would’ve used Greta’s early bedtime as an excuse to sneak into bed early, too. I just can’t stay up late the way I once could. Even in my hip, swinging single days, I always felt New Year’s Eve was for amateurs, so I’d often stay in.
b
March 6, 2013 at 10:15 amIt looks like you had a great time! I think I made it to around 3AM or so.
Maribeth
March 6, 2013 at 10:40 amBeautiful pictures! Greta and Tom are precious! We did nothing for New Years. Drank a little champagne and watched the ball fall in Times Square and went to bed!
Stevie
March 6, 2013 at 12:43 pmRaclette! Yummy!
Our New Year’s Eve was pretty low key, but lots of fun. We spent the early part of the evening at our local bar and then headed back to our place with a few of our friends where we played games and drank (too much) champagne at midnight. ;-)
Katrin
March 6, 2013 at 12:47 pmHello, I just found you on Chrissy’s blog! I am a German living in America too so I had to check it out. I just looked at your “About me” page and I took the exact same picture last year. What a beautiful place!
Can’t wait to read more!
katelin
March 6, 2013 at 3:48 pmyour new year food looks so festive and fabulous and delicious! glad you had such a great time :)
Nora
March 7, 2013 at 9:04 amLove the photos! Looks like a great evening and that food: YUM! I’m with you- taking photos of fireworks IS hard.
Stephany
March 7, 2013 at 10:30 amYour party looks like so much fun! Good food, good family, good times. :) Although I couldn’t imagine staying up late. I made it to midnight, which I consider super awesome for me. Ha.
Emily Jane
March 7, 2013 at 10:34 amI definitely didn’t stay up that late, but we had sparklers! And I must say the resemblance between your BIL and one of my colleagues is uncanny!!
Zoé
March 8, 2013 at 1:01 amI made it! :)
I just finished to read your whole blog from
the beginning until now. It was a long way and
I enjoyed to read every day.
I’m a little bit proud of me, I had to use the
dictionary only 3-4 times…
And I will check now every day if it give something
new from you. :)
I like how you write and it’s never boring, no matter of
what topic you write.
I hope my english is not to bad…
best wishes and greetings from Switzerland
terra
March 14, 2013 at 3:50 amI can’t even remember the last time I stayed up that late. I’m usually crashed out no later than 2 and there have been years in recent memory I’ve barely made it to midnight. With so much family to have fun with, it’s no wonder you all stayed up so late!