Eve of the New Year

dancing with lights at Zane and Margaret's

We celebrated last night at Zane and Margaret's fab New Year's Eve party. Once again they outdid themselves with cool party favors and great music. Everyone got magnetic flashing buttons and flashing bendy tubes of plastic. The effect of people dancing, covered in flashing lights was hypnotic.

We feel privileged to be able to bring our kids along to this annual event, and Phoebe and Liam know they need to be on "best behavior" all night long.

Phoebe got a new outfit for the event and look mahvelous. My favorite moment of the night was dancing with Julie and both kids to a seriously cooking Latin song. Liam even dropped to the floor and showed off his break-dancing moves. What pure joy!

phoebe's new outfit, sparkles and grunge

We didn't make it to midnight at the party this year because the effects of too many late nights finally came home to roost with the kids. So we left at about 11:20 and tried to make it all the way home in time for midnight.

At the stroke of midnight, we'd made it as far as the start of our 1/4-mile-long driveway, but not all the way to our house. So we stopped the van and gave out our Happy New Year kisses in the driveway. It was certainly the most unexpected place I've ever celebrated the start of a new year.

Here's hoping 2006 is a year of amazing things... so far so good.