Welcome -2010

Well, another year is gone - and now we have another year to look forward to. But that's what happens every year at the end of December and as we move into January.

I thought I would liven the blog up with a picture this week. Only thing is, the picture is not of a New Year's celebration. The picture was taken in a posh Cairo, Egypt hotel in January of 1987 while we were on a tour of Jordan, Israel, and Egypt. Never had seen an Egyptian wedding before and thought maybe this was the way we should have done it back in 1953 - hired an Egyptian band to do a processional through the lobby of a fancy hotel. Or maybe we should have asked the pastor if it would be all right to do it down the center aisle of Bethlehem Lutheran Church on Livernois Avenue in Detroit. I suspect he would not have been completely agreeable to that.

I remember, as a teenager in the nineteen forties going to a neighbor's house for New Year's.

They had a huge Zenith radio and we would play records, eat cookies, and drink C......... D.....

Ginger Ale and listen to Guy Lombardo at midnight. The Nordmans were wonderful people -

became almost surrogate parents to my brother and me - and they had a daughter. She never became a fixture in my love life - she was a couple of years ahead of me in high school and was very much the platonic big sister I never had. And my mother could never understand why I spent so much time there and could talk to Bill and Mollie about things I never would talk about at home. We found that eventually some of our children did the same thing - Linda had the Berrys and Jeff had the Whitmans. What comes around goes around I guess. But the Nordmans house was where we spent New Years eve and it was where I caught the school bus in the morning.

Anyway, that was where and how I spent New Years eve when I was young. A few minutes after midnight I'd slosh my way (a lot of ginger ale will do that to a person) up the hill to our house and wonder what the new year would bring. Now I spend a quiet New Year's eve at home, go to bed early -- but still slosh my way..............to the bathroom a couple of times a night. Not just New Year's eve -- but hey, that's part of putting years behind us.

And by the way, I DID have a can of C......... D.... Ginger Ale last Thursday night. Just for old times sake. And it tasted just as good as it had in the 1940's.