Ringing in 2006

My whole family over last night and I cooked a traditional Puerto Rican New Year's Eve feast which included the main dishes of Pernil http://www.elboricua.com/pernil_RChef.html and arroz con gandules http://www.elboricua.com/RicanChef_Arroz%20Con%20Gandules.htm. After we ate we sat around and watched tv and talked, just enjoyed eachothers company. The kids were calm and just extremely happy to have everyone here.

As it got closer to midnight we prepared by getting out the glasses, bubbly, grape juice for the kids and all the party stuff. The entire living room was filled with helium balloons and we had noise makers, party hats, streamers and poppers, blowers...the works. We started the count down and the kids were ready to make lots of noise and a whole lot of mess. We had a blast. We scared the crap out of the dogs and guinea pigs though...all this went on for over 10 minutes afterwards the kids took to sucking the helium out of the balloons and got a kick out of sounding like drunken chipmunks. My brothers even helped me clean up *shocked face*.

All in all it was a perfect night in my book...makes up for the events of Christmas weekend. I hope you all had a great New Year.