Happy New Year!

Here's wishing all our friends and family a wonderful, peaceful new year. We had a very nice little party at our house, with our friends Shanda, Marco and their son Noah (4 years), who are back in Italy visiting for the holidays, and Kathy, Nico and little Emanuele (10 months).

It is, needless to say, a bit of pressure having a professional chef over for dinner (Kathy attended the Culinary Institute of America), but she brought a wonderful roast turkey breast, Shanda brought a delicious dessert, and I prepared Artichoke Bruschetta for a starter, and then a Mushroom and Farro Torte for a main vegetarian dish, Creamy Baked Spicy Polenta (seriously yummy) for a side dish as well as a little salad. Then I made sure that I served dinner late and made plenty of drinks available in the meanwhile, so that by the time they ate, they were all drunk and starving, so nobody complained about the food!

We had entertainment from the kids as well. Shanda is a dancer, and Noah has inherited his mom's talent. That kid has some really good moves, and since Lucia, of course, loves dancing (especially flipping her hair around), they were a happy pair.

Emanuele made it an early night, his first New Year's Eve was apparently not enticing enough to keep him awake, but the other three all made it to midnight, just barely. Colin and Lucia were in bed by 12:30pm, completely exhausted, but Colin was thrilled that this was the latest he had ever stayed up in his life. When I told him that his Grandma had said that his 5 Lamaze cousins were all in bed by 8:30pm, he was so psyched that he had been allowed to stay up later, and maybe, for just a few minutes, Marco and I were cool parents.