a 'friendly' New Years Eve dinner

New Year's Eve dinner was at our house with our traditional Lobster Tail dinner... Fran and Bill  were driving on their way back from Philadelphia and stayed over for a couple of days on their trek back to their home in Kissimmee Florida.. Tom and Denise were back home after a couple of weeks at their daughters'  in Charlotte... a fun time with good friends.. great dinner prepared by Patricia..  a game of Mexican Train Dominoes somehow got in the mix after dinner---oh noooooo!  ..and before we watched the Ball drop in Times Square at Midnite.....

even the 'fat man in the red suit' stopped by for dinner.. guess all those donuts and adult beverages we left out for him on Christmas Eve brought him back

'Fat-Man in Red Suit' stopped by for Dinner

HO..HO..HO... HAPPY NEW YEAR

a pretty early morning Sun at the beach

on this beautiful clear morning a trip to the beach at Sunrise was in order.. the ocean water temps are 51º so way too cold to wet a line in the surf..

heading home...yippee

after a somewhat hectic but nice holiday yesterday it was time to leave and begin our near 700 mile drive south home.. we left Mary's house in Sheepshead Bay at 830am trying to leave before the forecasted snow flurries started... guess what.. as we crossed over the Delaware Memorial Bridge leaving New Jersey we got to the Delaware side and snow flurries... came down pretty hard at times....before long the flurries stopped as  we crossed over into Maryland on Rt 301 heading toward the Annapolis Bay Bridge..  that was it as the temps started to get up into the low 50's for the rest of the drive home..  arrived at the house just before 8pm so we did pretty good.. BTW it was nice to be home and away from that hectic pace with crowds and traffic  in NY

MERRY CHRISTMAS.. Ho Ho Ho

got up early on this very chilly 20* morning  then we all headed out to a 930am Christmas Mass at St Marks.... after Mass we picked up our bag of gigundo bagels along with a few crumb buns at our favorite bagel shop--Emmons Bagels down near the fishing docks in Sheepshead Bay..... we left for Long Island around 12 noon heading out to our nephew Thomas' house for a super Christmas dinner with family  .. snow on the ground from an overnite dusting out in Holbrook added to the mix...  brrrrrr....

the ride back to Brooklyn at 930pm was better than I thought it would be traffic-wise with the usual bottlenecks on the Southern State Pkwy and where else..  the Belt Pkwy between JFK and Pennsylvania Ave...  a pretty good Christmas for all..