that's the difference / New Year's Eve

Our furnace went out on New Year's Eve. It smelled like smoke, and I thought it might be in conjunction with the home automation system my husband was putting in. Not so. I then thought it might be the fridge, because that's where the smell was strongest, but also not so. Then I got the idea that it might be the furnace. Yes, so! (I love it when I'm right.)

It was less than 20 degrees outside at the time that this revelation came. We had houseguests and a one year of knowing each other party to have that evening (yes, the party did happen!) and I just thought, "I do not have the time for this."

But for me, New Year's Eve wasn't the "Remember when the furnace went out on New Year's Eve and we all froze half to death because of how cold that winter was?" Nope. Because my husband is handy, and we have a very awesome guy in our ward who was willing to tape 20 min of the Huskies game (turns out he probably shouldn't have watched, as I heard they got slaughtered) who does commercial furnace fixing to come and look at our problem. Turns out it was the blower, and it took a couple of hours, but my husband is a genius and figured out a way to, with one $10 part, jerry-rig it so we could be warm. My FIL is a sweetie and went to get the part for it, since there was one at a store near him, and we were only cold a few hours.

Instead of being miserable story worthy, New Year's Eve was fun and enjoyable. We all had a good time until L, at about 11:15 pm, when asked what he wanted to play next, said, "Snoozley Snoozle" and insisted on going to bed, and even though we told him he didn't have long to go, etc., somehow missed the fact that he was going to be giving up midnight bubbly and fireworks on delay tape from London, so there was a bit of a kerfuffle on New Years Day. But all in all, it was a very fun time had by all, once we got the blower bit sorted. (I did feel like the blower sucked up my husband for part of the day, so it was hard to celebrate properly, but I was being a bit ungrateful, I think.)

It occurred to me that it was a very different experience than what would have perhaps happened at the home I grew up in. Then, if we could not find someone to come out, we might have gone cold and it would have been "the freezing cold New Years," spawning many memories. As it is, it will be nice to remember because it was the anniversary of the first time I met my whole family. It was fun to recall the night we met and all the fun things we did then, too. 

Happy New Year!