Happy New Year 2011

We had an awesome New Year's celebration.  We went to First Night.  This is a crazy Boston tradition of spending the evening outside, viewing ice sculptures, watching performances and eating street vender food.  Kind of like a summer street festival, EXCEPT IT IS 10 degrees outside!  There are fireworks at midnight.  Really?  Who the heck thinks this is a good idea?  I suppose, only the people who would hang out in Times Square to watch the ball drop would be interested in this.  At least at First Night you are not corralled by bike racks and left to stand in a huge crowd - you are free to walk around.  After 6 years in Boston, this was our first First Night.  And, admittedly it was only interesting b/c we had a lack of better plans, our friends were going to the parade, and it was unseasonably warm in the 40s or something.  And if we were going all the way downtown, we might as well get a hotel room and make the most of it (note downtown is 6 miles away).  And if we were getting a hotel room, we should get one with a pool and make it a family fun date.  We did.  And it was.  Awesome.  One of my favorite New Years Eves.

If you would have told me 6 years ago that my idea of a good New Years Eve would be to be 8.5 months pregnant, staying in a chain hotel to use their indoor pool, walking in the freezing crowded streets for 2 miles to see ice sculptures and a parade, followed by running back to the hotel to avoid fireworks, realizing we missed the non-cranky dinner window and have no reservations and room service looks sucky and will take an hour, so we have to eat at "Champions" the hotel bar, (which admittedly was very good for what it was, and I was not sad for this option), and running up to our 2 double beds to put 2 toddlers to sleep while we all watched the ABC scrubbed version of "Wild Hogs" (with John Travolta & Wm H Macy) in bed ... and that falling asleep as the Dick Clark Ryan Seacrest special was just STARTING would be a great New Years Eve, I would have said, hand me the mom jeans and push me over a cliff.  But instead it was AWESOME.  I loved it.  Want a repeat next year.  (And incidentally I was awake for New Years at midnight, only b.c i was awake 47 times that night - and I am not exaggerating the 47 times.  I have a new Fitbit activity monitor and it told me so!)