“Fast away, the old year passes Fa la la la la, la la la la Hail the new, ye lads and lasses”
Can you believe it’s already 2023? 2022 (for the most part) just zoomed right by! Here’s a look at how we celebrated New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day this time around.
I like a theme, so we started the day yesterday with hot chocolate rolls:
We spent a lot of the day decorating sugar and gingerbread cookies. Mickey Mouse shapes were very popular this year!
I also (finally!) made eggnog:
We decided that 2022 deserved one more Disney Dinner, so I made one of our favorite recipes from Delicious Disney, Monte Cristo sandwiches:
After Apollo 13, we had our traditional hot chocolate bar, with the addition of hot chocolate bombs that Ladybug and I made!
Another new addition was hot chocolate Chex mix:
My only motivation to stay up until midnight is ringing in the New Year on my Animal Crossing island, and I made it!
New Year’s Day is the perfect excuse to wear something sparkly, am I right?
Of course we started the year with a special dinner, so I set the table with the china again, and this time, I learned a new napkin fold to make things a little fancier!
Pork tenderloin is a fairly traditional New Year’s Day main course here, although I did prepare it differently this time. I also made twice-baked potatoes, roast carrots and parsnips, and for the first time, spiced apple rings, since you apparently can’t buy them in a jar anymore.
It was delicious, and not as much work as Christmas dinner (and way, way less work than Thanksgiving!).
For dessert I made a hot chocolate cake, complete with homemade marshmallow creme (I told you I like a theme!).
So that’s how we said goodbye to 2022 and hello to 2023…and now I’m looking forward to giving the kitchen a bit of a break!
For the first time since before the pandemic, this is a year I’m actually sorry to see go. We had a lot of fun this year, and made enough memories to make up for all the things we didn’t get to do in the previous two years.
But first, January, which is always a fairly quiet month. We rang in the New Year, and I looked ahead to some of the things I was most anticipating in 2022 (Spoilers: they all happened this time!). Ladybug and I had the opportunity to go to the “Beyond Van Gogh” exhibit, which was really cool. Chickadee finally resumed her job as my grocery shopping buddy after taking a very long hiatus during the pandemic. We had our traditional Burns Supper.
We finally had a decent snowfall in February, which provided Turkey and Bunny with their first-ever official snow days. On the 6th, we celebrated the 70th anniversary of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’s Accession to the Throne with a tea party, the first of many Platinum Jubilee celebrations. We had a special dinner for the Opening Ceremonies of Beijing 2022, the first of several special themed meals we enjoyed during the Olympics. We eagerly celebrated “Twosday.”
Where do I even begin with June? I don’t think there has been, in the whole history of our family, a single month packed with so much fun. We started by attending a street party for the Platinum Jubilee, and I even made the Platinum Pudding to continue the celebration at home. We acquired some new neighbors. To celebrate not only the return of Albert Pujols, but also the historic season for the battery of Molina and Wainwright, we attended a Cardinals game at Busch Stadium as a family for the first time in at least five years. We picked lavender for the first time. I had a fun birthday celebration. And that was all the “boring” half of the month because….
After all that fun, July was spent from recovering, both from COVID, and from all of our travels! We spent the first two weeks back home lying around the house watching old Disney movies (Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros were favorites) and playing with our souvenirs. We were all healthy by the time Bunny’s 18th birthday rolled around. I had my first root canal, which was not as bad as I feared, but not something I’d care to repeat.
August was a similarly quiet month. We did make a quick day trip up to Chicago for the Fab Five’s first visit to Navy Pier and an appointment at the Rare Dirndl design studio. We finished summer school (Disney themed, of course!) before everyone started back to school…Turkey and Bunny in their second year of college, Moose a junior in high school, Ladybug a sophomore, and Chickadee in the fifth grade.
September is usually a low-key month…it’s kind of the February of the second half of the year. Ladybug, Chickadee, and I did go back to the Missouri History Museum for the first time since before the beginning of the pandemic, and took part in a great hands-on exhibit. Chickadee had her braces removed. And then, a terrible day. Of course I knew Queen Elizabeth II wasn’t going to live forever, and based on her age, her time on earth realistically had to be drawing short. Just the same, I guess I really wasn’t prepared for her passing to coincide with her Platinum Jubilee year. I did take a break from the wall-to-wall news coverage I couldn’t turn off to attend our town’s Oktoberfest.
And that brings us to December. We were back in St. Charles for one of our very favorite events, Christmas Traditions. We had a very nice Nikolaustag, even if it did make me feel old. We also enjoyed Luciamorgon. Our Christmas in Germany themed Christmas School was a lot of fun and helped us connect to our heritage! We baked all of the things. The Fab Five finished their Advent project. We had a very merry Christmas. But we needed a little more Christmas, so we visited the Wild Lights at the St. Louis Zoo before it closed for the season.
I don’t see how 2023 can top this year, and I don’t think there’s really any point in trying. Some things are once-in-a-lifetime experiences, and there’s just no competing with them!
Already it’s the second day of 2022! Here’s a look back at our New Year celebrations.
I found some hot cocoa rolls with marshmallow frosting for breakfast on New Year’s Eve…I thought it was the perfect way to start a day that features a hot chocolate bar!
We had pizza for dinner…I don’t know that we ever have the same thing two years in a row on New Year’s Eve!
After our annual viewing of Apollo 13, I set up our hot chocolate bar. Things were a little different this year due to various shortages…I couldn’t find speciality hot chocolate or peppermint candy canes (which I hear became very difficult to find this year), but we did have several other flavors (mint chocolate, raspberry, and wintergreen), and three kinds of whipped cream (regular, chocolate, and peppermint).
I did manage to stay up until midnight, but only so I could ring in the New Year on my island in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
We had what is a fairly common dinner for us on New Year’s Day, starring pork tenderloin.
Chickadee helped me make dessert, featuring two different recipes from the My Little Pony BakingBook she received for Christmas: