Happy New Year!

Elizabeth, who has inherited the sentimentality gene from me for sure, has preserved the last of Christmas 2012:

{sidenote: I'm proud of her proper use of the apostrophe. I fear that this younger generation has a sinister grand plan to eliminate apostrophes--or only use them in places where they do not belong-- which pains the language geek in me. So I'm always happy when I see them used and used correctly}. Anyway, we had a really great Christmas. Elizabeth was really worried that Santa was going to be overloaded with cookies, so she wanted to set out a hamburger for him instead. Jacob, the purist, was horrified by this idea. In the end, in an effort to keep the peace, we set out cookies AND grilled up a quick burger for Santa (we didn't have any buns so we had improvise).

Also, in our house we apparently can't just mix up a blend of oats and glitter and set them out for the reindeer, nosiree, we need to set the table for them (also Elizabeth-driven, in case it's not obvious):

Hopefully since the reindeer had placecards they were able to figure out whose glittered oatmeal was whose.

I love getting ready for Christmas, and I love Christmas, but I really don't love the aftermath of Christmas, which is where we are right now. I never like seeing January magazines show up in my mailbox in mid-December -- they always seem kind of depressing compared to the December issue. Case in point:

December 2012:

January 2013:

First, in December we are just not worried about lightening up our comfort foods. Bring on the full-fat layer cake with sugared snowflakes. Second, the January cover reminds us that we seek comfort foods in January mostly because it's January; i.e., cold and dreary and not Christmas anymore.

But Januarys are much more fun than they used to be ever since having a baby (Elizabeth) in January! Also, who doesn't love the promise of a new year, a clean slate and all that? I kind of went back and forth in my mind about whether 2012 was extraordinarily unlucky or extraordinarily lucky, but eh, in the end I'm going to go with lucky. It was actually a great year, at least if you take out mid-July to mid-September, which pretty much sucked, I'm not gonna lie (even my optimism has its limits!) but the other months more than made up for that little stretch.

But . . . I had this nagging feeling that I forgot to eat black eyed peas on New Year's Day 2012, and I wanted to make darn sure that I didn't make that mistake again, juuuuust in case. So I made a hoppin' john for New Year's dinner.

Wishing everyone a happy and healthy 2013!!