It’s New Year’s Eve, and I’m giddy as a schoolgirl. More and more, New Year’s Eve is becoming my favourite holiday. We’ve always just got home from visiting family, so we are all delighted to be sleeping in our own beds again. We always make fondue and it’s elaborate but not really too much work, and the five of us are together all day long with no pressure to pack or do presents or visit anyone. It’s just a fun, quiet day with some great traditions, and now that the kids stay up until midnight it feels festive for all five of us.
This year more I’ve been a little reflective, too. I feel we are a family in transition – moving from the little kid years to the big kid years. We visited my sister over the holidays and she has four kids under 12, including a brand new baby, and we’d forgotten the madness of bathtime and bedtime and diaper changes. We’re in a different place now that our youngest is 10 and a half, a place where we can watch tween movies together and stay up late and go to the ski hill for the day without worrying about naptimes.
This time next year we’ll have two kids in high school, and one almost ready to get a beginner’s license. We’re probably only a year or two away from them wanting to spend New Year’s Eve at a party with friends – or maybe they’ll stay up all night playing video games while Sir Monkeypants and I fall into a fondue coma on the couch. Either way, how much longer will it be that we’re spending evenings like this, the five of us together, our sweet little family unit?
So I have a bittersweet feeling about 2018 – there will be good stuff and moving-on kind of stuff and growing up to be done. Happy New Year, and happy 2018 – hope all your transitions are good ones.
TurtleHead 
I really like this transition phase. More than I thought I would to be honest. Having a face mask pal, binge watching buddy and the ability to zip out for coffee with Mike without being worried about babysitters and bed times is a pretty sweet deal.
We always spend New Year’s with a group of our closest family friends. All the adults in the kitchen, all the kiddos in the living room. I was just wondering this year, how much longer the kids will join us. We’ve already lost the oldest one of the group, not surprising, he is 20+. The oldest of the rest is 18, the youngest is 12. It will be interesting to see how long they want to hang together with us.
It’s a different world now that I can leave them periodically. On to the next phase.
Happy New year!
I am absolutely loving the teen years, but lately I’ve been unusually nostalgic and occasionally weepy about the lost little-kid years (Angus is probably going away to school in the fall, it’s not rocket science, I know, but I forget that’s probably the reason when I’m in the throes). New Year’s Eve we have the same few families over, and the girls go up to Eve’s room and the boys go down to the basement and the adult hang out on the main floor, until kids start trickling up and down to wrestle for bean bag chair space and mock musical acts with us and wait for the ball drop. It’s a really lovely evening. You’re dead on about bittersweetness, though.