December 31st and New Year

         Roland had come home early on Wednesday.  He probably shouldn’t have even gone in.  He slept most of the day.  He needed to.

         I took Jenna to the library for the afternoon countdown.  I have been to the library on December 31^st before.  But the last day of 2014 was different.  The library was overly quiet – except for children in the library.

         It wasn’t crowded.  Less crowded than I have seen the WV library – EVER. Roland had told us to leave early in order to get a good parking spot.  I honestly don’t think it would have mattered what time we left.  The turn-out wasn’t as good as it had been the last time we had gone for the New Year/afternoon countdown.

Jenna decorated a hat and asked me to finish her noise maker while she went to participate in games.  I wished Anna had been with us as I think she would have enjoyed the parachute game.  I don’t know if the library near where she lived had offered a New Years celebration or not.

 I left Jenna in the auditorium while I went to the teenage section to read.  It felt like the library was closed. It was actually kind of awesome just to feel peace and enjoy my reading. 

I returned for the countdown.  Two years ago I could have just stayed put.  The children were loud enough that you could hear them no matter where you were in the library.  There was a lot less children on December 31, 2014.  Even from the auditorium they didn’t sound even half as loud as they had two years prior.

As we passed the park, Jenna expressed her desires to go there.  It was cold.  But the air was clean still and not filled with the pollution that’s come with the New Year thus far.  We went home to get Highness and returned to the park.  I walked the dog while Jenna played.  I also took a fair amount of pictures.

Jenna always wants to stay up for the New Years countdown.  When I was growing up, my family had always played games on New Years.  I was willing to play games with Jenna, but she wanted to watch Aliens in the Attic. So we watched that followed by Little Shop of Horrors before we shuffled and dealt cards to play Go Fish.  We were playing cards when we heard the fireworks and the clock marking the New Year. 

We finished our game and played another – though I don’t recall what it is we played.  Cranium, I think.  And then we went to bed.  Not a typical New Years celebration.  But typical that someone was sick.  This year it just happened to be Roland.

        

         I am surprised that he was feeling well enough to donate blood the next day.  He had an appointment on New Years’ Day.  One had to have an appointment in order to donate.  They weren’t taking walk-ins yesterday.  That was my first time ever not being able to get in without an appointment.  But because it was New Years’ day, Red Cross didn’t have a full staff.

         We were at Red Cross for a long time before Roland was hooked up and producing blood.  It took him less time to bleed than to wait and be checked in.  I read four chapters, I think.

         We did get our game playing in – only a couple of hours though.  We went to Bill and Kayla’s and played a couple of games.  One was called Mad Gab – which we’ve never played together before.  And one was called Whatzit – which is puzzle solving which I’m not terribly good at.  Jenna played that one with us, and she is good.

         I’m in awe at all the birds I’ve seen – even on December 30th which was an extremely windy day.  What surprises me more than the birds are the fall leaves that have continued to cling to the trees.  Those are some major STRONG leaves!  January 2^nd and they are still there.  Nature is puzzling lately.