This will be year 17 of getting together with the same group of neighbors. It started when we all had young kids, who played in the basement while the parents had a party upstairs, and everybody could walk home. A few have moved outside the neighborhood and a few have moved in and joined the party, but mostly the same group. Great to have old friends and watch the kids turn into adults.
We’ll wander on over around 9 with an appetizer and champagne. We used to send the kids out with sparklers at 11 pm CST (midnight on the east coast with the ball drop on TV) and tell them that was midnight. Now we hope they’ll all get home safely from wherever they are. We still do fireworks at CST midnight, which DH provides every year. The local flooding made getting to the fireworks store an adventure, but failure was not an option. Just hope we manage to set them off without any attention from the local authorities. No risk of fire this year.
Safe and happy New Year to all.