Easing into the New Year

With our oldest son living in Raleigh, NC, our middle son living in Hilo, Hawaii, and our youngest son out for the evening, my wife and I decided to spend a nice quiet evening at home to ring in the New Year.

We started off the night by picking up some Thai food from Coco Thai Bistro in Narberth. We love Thai food (there are always plenty of vegan options), but we had never tried this particular restaurant. Fortunately, it was a winner; we both thoroughly enjoyed our meals, and we look forward to going back soon.

We had also picked out a movie to watch while having our dinner, The Family Man, with Nicholas Cage and Tia Leoni. If you haven’t seen the movie, here is a brief synopsis from Rotten Tomatoes:

Wall Street playboy, Jack Campbell is at the top of his professional game with little time for anything else. Jack’s lavish, fast-paced lifestyle drastically changes one snowy Christmas night when he unwittingly stumbles into the middle of a grocery store holdup and in a bold display of self-preservation disarms the gunman. The next morning he wakes up in a suburban New Jersey bedroom lying next to Kate, his college sweetheart who he left in order to pursue his career, and to the horrifying discovery that his former life no longer exists. As he stumbles through this alternate suburban universe, Jack begins to feel strangely comfortable in this new role of loving husband and father to two children. Jack finds himself at a crossroad, where he must choose between his high-powered career and the woman he loves.

In many ways, the story reminds me of “It’s a Wonderful Life”, also one of our favorites. It’s a feel good movie, a nice way to start off the new year.

Anyway, the movie was over around 11, and I used the next 30 minutes or so to finish off my blog post from yesterday, and then we turned on the TV to watch New Year’s Rockin’ Eve and the countdown to 2016. We successfully made it to midnight, and were thrilled to get “Happy New Year!” texts from all three of our sons.

We even managed to stayed up long enough to watch Jimmy Buffett singing Margaritaville, but in case you missed it, here’s the video.

It was a great way to ring in the New Year, and I am looking forward to all that 2016 has to offer.