New Year's Eve

My friend Patty and her mother and I went to Brookside Gardens to see the light show.  It was very impressive!   Trees and bushes were covered with lights, but there were also many free standing objects made of lights - animals, flowers, arbors and so forth.  Some animals had sounds to go with them - think frog croaking or wolf howling.  A few scenes were animated, with squirrels running up and down a tree or lightning and rain.  We walked all over the grounds, including a stop for hot beverages.  It was cold, but not bitter cold and no wind.  A great way to spend part of the evening.  We went early, which was a good thing, as when we left, there were cars waiting to get parking spaces.  I'll post a few photos here.  The rest will be on flickr, but not yet.  I'll post the url when I get them up there.

 The first photo is Nessie or at least some sea monster.  This one had a baby swimming along side.

 These flowers are hyacinths. They had a whole row of them.

 The frog actually croaked.  Very clever.

I was actually awake at midnight, but only because I fell asleep in my chair and woke up at 11:50!  I heard some fireworks in the neighborhood, as I went to bed.  Yesterday, I took down the Christmas decorations.  Did the outside ones first.  It was fairly warm, which was nice.  I spent the afternoon putting all the MANY little decorations away in boxes.  They never seem to go back into the boxes as easily as they came out!  I have a bit more to do today:  box up the tree, take down the lights in the kitchen, and get the boxes back onto shelves in the basement.  Again, the problem is that they don't fit back into the spaces the way I think they should.  Or maybe the problem is just that I have way TOO MUCH STUFF!  Anyway, the house is almost back to normal.  I will have to vacuum, as there are bits of silver tinsel all over.