New Years Eve Memories

What did you do for New Year's Eve? Me, I just stayed home and watched the Twilight Zone Marathon.

I had a touch of the flu. That's me peaking in the window at William Shatner! (my favorite Twilight Zone episode!) Actually, I felt as bad as that guy looks! So my New Year's Eve was pretty uneventful...but relaxing.

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I recalled past New Year's Eve celebrations. One of my favorites was when I was 20. I was all alone for New Year's at BYU. My roommates were still home in California. I had to get back to Utah to work right after Christmas because I had a job at the University Mall...selling shoes at Thom McAn. (do they even exist anymore?) Just before closing an old friend came by and invited me to go with him to Park City for New Years Eve. He worked at one of the ski lodges there. I said "Sure!" I was grateful not to have to spend the evening alone.

I stayed in the employee dorms of the ski lodge and had a blast! Skiing, riding the tram, goofing around. Such fun! At midnight a trail of skiiers holding torches skiied down one of the slopes. It was an awesome sight.

(this isn't a picture of the night I was there...but I found a picture that looked just like it!)

I'll never forget that. Those were the days I didn't have a care in the world. Oh, to be that young again!

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Another New Year's Eve memory. I was 21 living in Spain, serving an LDS mission.

In Spain they have a tradition at New Year's Eve (or Nochevieja) as the countdown to midnight begins, you eat 12 grapes, one on each chime of the clock. I was with a favorite family celebrating New Years in Jaen. The family gave us all 12 grapes to follow tradition.

Eating the grapes was very funny because it's impossible to finish eating the grapes by the time the clock finishes chiming. We all laughed at each other with our cheeks full of grapes. Pretty soon we had a big mess of grape juice all over us! I remember they told us that this tradition started in Spain because one year there was huge grape harvest and the king of Spain decided to give grapes to everyone to eat on New Year's Eve. Ingenious!

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And now my least favorite New Year's Eve memory. It was 1987. Daughter #2 was 9 months old. She was sick with a stomach virus and bronchitis and was in the hospital for 5 days. It was a very stressful time for our family as you can imagine. She had to be kept in a mist tent the entire time for the bronchitis and had an IV to replenish her fluids. She was terribly dehydrated and the only place the doctors could find a good vein for the IV in her in her foot! Poor little thing. The nurses set up a bed for me in her hospital room. The only bed available at that time was a small juvenile size bed. But I didn't care. I slept there next to my little baby each night she was in the hospital. The first night there in the hospital was New Year's Eve. I stayed up to watch Dick Clark's countdown. As the New Year began I turned to my little girl--asleep in the mist tent, contected to machines and tubes--and said outloud, "Happy New Year Stacy!" I'll never forget that.

A few weeks later, she was back to her old self. As you can see in the picture above, she was once again healthy and happy!

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And in closing...I hope your New Year's Eve memories were good ones.

Perhaps you saw...

wait for it...

Pink Elephants!

This darling baby quilt is similar to another elephant quilt I did for a lady back in Oct. I lightly quilted it with a medium meander throughout. I used a pantograph pattern in the border called, "Sydney."

The back was a lovely minkie fabric. It was soft and cuddly. I know the little girl who received this for Christmas loved it!