New Year's Eve at the Emerald Grand

My mother in law decided that she wanted us all to spend New Years on the harbor so she rented a condo at the Emerald Grand.


We showed up in the early evening to check out the condo and do a little snacking before heading down to the harbor.


My sister in law and I were fascinated with the kitchen appliances - which were really nice.


The dishwasher had SO many buttons on it that I'm not sure how you'd ever learn to work it.

My SIL touched something and the numbers 119 started flashing and then the dishwasher turned on. We never could figure out how to turn it off and it was still blinking when we left.

We snacked a little and then headed down to the harbor to see what was going on.

Elvis showed up in the Harborwalk square and put on a pretty good show. This is a local man and I've heard about how good he is. I was surprised that he didn't look more like Elvis but then he started singing and it sounded like Elvis Presley himself was standing there.



There were a lot of people out.




And I was amazed at the number of women wearing tiny little black dresses and no coats. It was 39 out and the wind was blowing hard so I know they had to be cold.
We were all bundled up and I told the Island King that if he wanted sexy clothes we'd have to stay inside all night because I wasn't going out in the cold half dressed LOL Of course he had on 2 jackets, a coat and a beanie so he wasn't dressing for sexy either.

Only my MIL's husband Joe gave up warmth for the new pimp look he's sporting LOL


We spent the evening wandering around the harbor and going back and forth to the condo to get warm and refresh drinks.

On one of our trips down from the condo we passed a room service tray that had been put out into the hall for housekeeping to pick up. The Island King couldn't resist messing with his mother so he acted like he was going to eat something from it.

The kids kept telling him to do it and his mother was yelling at me to make him stop. I did manage to make him put the fork down and to quit freaking his mother out LOL

This year Destin had their first annual Ball Drop. They strung lines from the top of the Emerald Grand over to the beach at Norriego Point and at 11:00 the ball lit up.

The ball moved slowly to about halfway over the harbor and then at midnight it went rushing down to the beach where it set off a big fireworks display.



When my MIL rented the condo she thought she was getting a balcony on the harbor side of the building so we could watch the show from the balcony. They ended up putting her on the north side of the building so we weren't up there

We were down on the pool deck freezing our behinds off LOL

The view from the pool deck was incredible though and the fireworks lasted for 20 minutes.



They had 2 kinds of fireworks that we've never seen. One was a bow


And one was a smiley face.


They had a huge finale and 2009 was lit up on the beach.



We went back up to the condo where my SIL gave the kids horns and confetti streamers.
And that made the Island King decide that they should go elevator riding. There were people everywhere and the elevators were always packed so off they went to ride the elevator.

They pushed all of the buttons so they'd be sure to stop on each floor to bring joy and noise to everyone LOL


They were gone for a long time (I waited at the condo so I could go and get them after security picked them up LOL) and when they got back the Island King told me that they'd made lots of new friends and that he's coming back next year just to ride the elevator again.
Scary.

About 3am we got tired and decided to head for home. The condo had 3 bedrooms and we were welcome to stay but our house is 3 minutes away and I always sleep better in my own bed so we came home to sleep.

It was a really fun New Year's Eve and a great start for the new year.

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