HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Happy New Year’s Eve to all of our blog family. We will be spending New Year’s Eve at home this year — preparing for our annual New Year’s party on January 1st. I will be toasting to everyone on our extended blog family. It has been quite a year with a number of changes on the blog, including the addition of our extraordinary team of weekend bloggers. We are now approaching 10 million hits and 10,000 posts. It is hard to believe how far we have come on the blog and yet manage to retain our civility and good humor. I am deeply appreciative to each and every one of you — your contributions and camaraderie on this blog.

Tonight Leslie and I will share our traditional bottle of Schramsberg Sparkling wine. This is my wedding anniversary. Fourteen years ago, Leslie and I eloped on New Year’s Eve after eight years years of dating. (There is an ongoing dispute over calculating the event, I insist that this is our 22nd anniversary but Leslie insists on not counting the eight years of dating). We always celebrate with a bottle of Schramsberg — the bottle I bought after we got hitched at Alexandria City Hall on New Year’s Eve. I used my house school ring to marry Leslie.

We are expecting 150 friends to share in Wasabi Bloody Marys) and our traditional soup: The Bowl of the Wife of Kit Carson Soup. I smoked a Turkey yesterday and will be making the soup this morning. It is like being a cook on a Navy destroyer — and I love it.