New Year's Day

New Year's Day found us back at the condo for a New Year's / Christmas celebration. My MIL wasn't feeling well at Christmas and since she knew we'd all be at the condo for New Year's, she decided to wait and have Christmas with everyone on New Year's Day.

We spent a lazy afternoon on the balcony and even though we weren't facing the harbor, the view was beautiful.




We took some family pictures




And we were supposed to eat a big family dinner together. Remember that I told you this kitchen had amazing appliances but there were a lot of buttons? When it was time to put the pork tenderloin in the oven, my FIL put it in, pushed some buttons and assumed that cooking would take place.

We had black eyed peas and collards cooking on the stove, cole slaw and potato salad waiting in the fridge and everyone hung out, waiting to eat.

The kids were busy staring at the pile of presents waiting to be opened

and it was getting to be about time for dinner to be ready.

My FIL went into the kitchen to get the pork out of the oven and - Surprise! Even though there are lights and temperatures showing on the oven, nothing has really been happening inside. The pork has been cooking very slowly and what should have taken about an hour and a half is obviously going to take at least 2 more hours.

Word spread fast to the hungry people and caused great unhappiness. For some reason, my MIL had been hell bent on not opening presents until after dinner and the idea of the kids having to wait another hour and a half to eat AND open presents caused my SIL and I to panic. This was a good sized, 3 bedroom condo but you put 5 small kids, 1 teenager and 7 adults in there and it gets crowded really fast. The kids were pinging off the walls and things were going to get ugly if something didn't happen fast.

We told my MIL that there was NO WAY these kids would hold out much longer and that if the food wasn't going to be ready for a while we should change the plan and open presents while we waited. Thank God she agreed!





My MIL has a thing for zebra print so we made her a blanket, which she loved.


My FIL liked the bird house the boys made him.


She just wanted to play with everyone else's stuff LOL


Once the presents were open the kids had stuff to keep them busy.



The Island King got all kinds of cool kitchen gadgets for Christmas so he wanted to use his new meat thermometer and test the tenderloin. He and his brother tested the meat and then I heard my BIL say "About another hour? I can't take this anymore!"
He'd brought a ham to go with the tenderloin and since it was cooked, he got the ham out and started slicing, proclaiming dinner ready.


It took the tenderloin 5 hours to cook and we never did figure out why. One of the buttons on the oven was a Warm button so there is some speculation that maybe they warmed the tenderloin to done. We were all really glad we had the ham.

My BIL and SIL had plans with her family for that evening so they left after dinner and all we heard from our kids was "Let's go swimming" It's only 40 outside so why not? LOL
The Grand has a nice big hot tub overlooking the harbor so we put on our bathing suits and went to the pool. The wind was blowing and it was really cold but they have a clear glass windbreak around the hot tub so once you were in the water you couldn't feel the wind and it wasn't that bad.


Getting out and drying off was not so pleasant LOL

We soaked for a while and then someone mentioned pie and even the boys agreed that they'd had enough swimming and were ready for pie.

We ate chocolate pie, sweet potato pie and pecan pie until we were close to popping.

We said goodbye to the Emerald Grand and came home about 10, tired, happy and full of pie. Not a bad way to start the new year!

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