NEW YEAR'S!!

I had to work like crazy for a couple days before New Year's, but luckily I had already worked like crazy during December so I'd have enough hours in that I could leave early to catch my flight to Utah (which was crazy anyway because of the snowstorm), and so I could work as little as possible on New Year's Eve.  I was hoping to make it up to the Tri-Cities to watch Erik's band (well...part of it) play at First Night Tri-Cities.  I managed to make up my extra time so I didn't have to work at all on New Year's Eve, and I convinced my boss it was a good idea for me to take Friday off so I'd have extra hours later in January when I was crazy busy, so I had Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday off.  It was great!

I managed to get ahold of Erik's roommate, Dave, who was driving up to Kennewick that night, and ask him to let me catch a ride.  So I raced home, packed in like 5 minutes, then drove to the East side of Portland and found a place to park my car for the rest of the week.  I met him over there, and we drove up to the Tri-Cities together on Tuesday night.  We went straight to Erik's sister and brother-in-law's house to play Rock Band!!  It was SO fun!  I had only played for a couple minutes once before, so I wasn't very good, but it was fun!!  I love Ellicia and Geoff--they're fantastic!  

1/2 of Johannin (aka Puddy (Dave) and Erik) at First Night Tri-Cities

Then we drove to Erik's folks' house and stayed up waaaaaay too late.  It was nice to hang out and see each other after a couple weeks away.  New Year's Eve was VERY chill--we just hung out and played the lazy game most of the day.  Then it was time to head down to First Night.  We checked out an Irish trio--they were great!  :)  Then it was time for the boys to play.  They were a total blast, as usual!  :)  They have so much fun when they play, and they're great about getting the audience involved and interested.  They knew at least half of the audience, but that probably made it even better.

The best part of the night was when it was almost midnight, we all went outside where they had a big New Year's (disco?) ball suspended from a crane.  Ellicia and Geoff, Erik's mom and dad, and Erik and I were all hanging around waiting for midnight, and some old guy was talking.  It came time for New Year's and we're all getting ready for the countdown when he says, "Alright, everybody!  Are you ready?  Here we go!  ONE!............TWO!..........."  Meanwhile everyone's looking around going, "What the...????!!!???"  Hello?  CountDOWN, anyone?  There's a reason it's not called a countUP!  We were all soooooo confused.  Are we counting to ten?  Sixty?  One hundred?  What?  So he continues...."EIGHT!.................NINE!.....................TEN!.............

GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

GO?

We all just looked at each other and didn't quite know what to do!  Even the crane operator was confused!  After "Go" he kind of just shrugged and let the ball down, then some fireworks started and we did the traditional New Year's hug and kiss thing.  

Super fantastic people!  Left to Right: Gary and Julie (friends of Erik's family--they are wonderful!), Mary Jo and Ed (Erik's parents), Ellicia and Geoff (Erik's sister and brother-in-law).  Dancing to a Johannin song.

And did I mention it was FREEZING?!  So as soon as the fireworks ended we skedaddled to the cars!  Erik and I went and met Dave and some friends at Denny's for a bit, then headed home.

New Year's day was VERY relaxed.  We just slept in, enjoyed the day, went to church and met our friends' (Jonny and Karen) new baby, Noah!  He was BEAUTIFUL.  And Karen looked fantastic for having a baby that was only like 10 days old.  Then we went home and headed to bed so we could head out on the next adventure in the morning.

This video is kind of long and not the best quality (just from my little digital camera), but I really like this song they wrote.  It's called "Bright Eyes" (I think).