How could we make this New Year’s Eve more rowdy than in past years?\u00a0 Perhaps\u00a0go to a party to ring in the New Year?\u00a0 No.\u00a0 Maybe a Watchnight\u00a0Service at church?\u00a0\u00a0Not!\u00a0 We’re Baptists after all — we don’t get\u00a0THAT rowdy!\u00a0 How about super-charging our night with a\u00a0double sleepover with two of our boys’ friends.\u00a0 That’s the ticket.\u00a0There’s nothing\u00a0quite like five boys —\u00a011 and under — to pep up a New Year’s\u00a0Eve celebration!<\/p>\n
Last night, we stayed up until midnight to watch Dick Clark count down to the start of 2011.\u00a0 The only problem with living in New Mexico and watching the “live” ball drop in Times Square in New York City is that it is a repeat.\u00a0 Yep.\u00a0\u00a0Our local ABC affiliate in Albuquerque\u00a0just replays the\u00a0real live\u00a0event that happened in NYC\u00a0for us in the Mountain Time Zone to watch two hours later.\u00a0 Even though we know we are viewing recorded footage, it’s still fun to celebrate on New Year’s Eve with all the folks in Times Square.<\/p>\n
In New Mexico, New Year’s Day is also a day of tradition, with eating taking on a\u00a0distinctly Spanish\/Hispanic flavor — chilies, squash, beans and corn and, Posole, made out of Posole corn, several spices and diced pork.\u00a0 Now, as a southerner living in the Land of Enchantment, I have come to\u00a0like green chilies and other\u00a0food staples in this area of the country.\u00a0 But, today is not a day for adding green chilies to any of the dishes that we are cooking.<\/p>\n
New Year’s Day is black-eyed\u00a0peas, hog jowls (with the peas and fried), homemade macaroni and cheese, fried corn fritters, and corn bread.\u00a0 The fritters\u00a0are about as close to the Posole\u00a0as we’ll get today.\u00a0 If my mom were here, we would also have a delicious orange cake made with freshly grated orange rinds.<\/p>\n
Traditions, holiday and otherwise, are wonderful ways to link us not only\u00a0to family\u00a0who\u00a0are spread out across the country, but also to family who are no longer with us to celebrate on these special occasions.\u00a0 When I fry up the hog jowls today, I’ll think of my dad.\u00a0 He was the one\u00a0in our family who had that job until his death four years ago.\u00a0\u00a0When I eat my black-eyed peas, I’ll remember my mom and grandparents and all those\u00a0New Year’s Day pasts where we\u00a0sat around the table in Lake Placid, FL, enjoying\u00a0food and family.<\/p>\n
None of can know what the rest of the day will bring into our lives much less 2011.\u00a0 As we look back at the year that was and ahead to the year that will be, may we remember that, no matter what, “God is good, all the time; all the time, God is good!”\u00a0 Whether you’re eating black-eyed\u00a0peas and hog jowls or Posole or Cabbage, I want to wish you a blessed and prosperous new year.\u00a0 May God’s abundant grace overflow to you and your family in 2011!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
How could we make this New Year’s Eve more rowdy than in past years?\u00a0 Perhaps\u00a0go to a party to ring in the New Year?\u00a0 No.\u00a0 Maybe a Watchnight\u00a0Service at church?\u00a0\u00a0Not!\u00a0 We’re Baptists after all — we don’t get\u00a0THAT rowdy!\u00a0 How about super-charging our night with a\u00a0double sleepover with two of our boys’ friends.\u00a0 That’s the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11,16,1],"tags":[165,308,3378,712,715,716,717,789,987,994],"class_list":["post-1425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-family","category-uncategorized","tag-black-eyed-peas","tag-dick-clark","tag-food","tag-new-mexico","tag-new-years-day","tag-new-years-eve","tag-new-york-city","tag-polole","tag-times-square","tag-traditions"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1LP7G-mZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1425\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}