Why do we have to have all these damn kids?

This was the picture and caption that graced the invitation to our first-ever annual New Year's Eve Open House, borne of not having booked a babysitter six months in advance. We opened the doors early in the evening, so people similarily stuck at home with their offspring could have somewhere to go, while the people who got dibs on all the sitters could stop in for a cocktail and lord it over us on their way somewhere grown up and exciting.

Tomorrow evening we will host this event for the third time, and while the above-quoted sentiment (our favorite line from It's A Wonderful Life, and the part where Patrick always breaks down and cries) still holds true, we now fling open the doors by choice, not circumstance. Our party is the most fun we have ever had on New Year's Eve, hands down. And it's all over by ten, which is as late as some of us can stay up anyhow.

This is an eclectic gathering. In addition to the usual suspects, I have invited people from the neighborhood, from church, and from the supermarket. We take 'em old and young, married and single, imbibing and sober (but ix-nay on the ong-bay, y'all....you know who you are). If you know me well enough* to feel slighted that you haven't been invited this year, please be assured it was an oversight, and come. I would be so thrilled to have someone there who actually reads my blog. Like Big Bird, when the other people on Sesame Street could finally see Snuffalufagus.

God knows how many people I have invited, and what percentage of them will show. I think the core group is around 20-30 adults, but then we have over three hundred children between us. Plus the people from the supermarket, church and anybody I met at any gathering where alcohol was served over the holidays.

The house already looks trashed. I have a Sam's Club run to make, to get shrimp for etouffee and assorted low-prep munchies. There is absolutely no way I am going to get this place presentable between now and six p.m. tomorrow. I was thinking I would just spray the mounds of dirty laundry with fake snow and drape them in tinsel and mini-lights. I was also wondering if I could get some kind of annulment for all the cheese and chocolate I've eaten over the past ten days, so that if I could find something clean to wear, I would fit into it.

I better get busy. Happy New Year, everyone!

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*I mean actually know me. Not feel like you know me. We do have a vicious Rottschund on the premises to ward off the crazies, you know.

Oh! Itunes is giving away a free download of Auld Lang Syne by one of my favorites, Jack Ingram. It's on the itunes home page. Add it to your party playlist.