happy new year, South Georgia Islands!

Several years ago Pook's grandparents gave him a globe as a Christmas gift.  It had the unique feature of showing the time in any time zone as it spun around.  That New Year's Eve afternoon, he began to watch the globe to see who was already in the new year, ahead of us.  For a five or six year old, which he was at the time, I was impressed with his grasp of time zones.  "Happy New Year, Aunt J in the UAE!"  "Happy New Year, Great Britain!"

We had a family of friends over for dinner and for New Year's Eve, although we'd been impromptu and hadn't really decided what we'd do at bedtime for the kids.  Turns out, it took care of itself.

After dinner and much play upstairs, the four boys came rushing in and informed us it was Almost Time!  "Look!" they shouted, pointing at the globe, "It's almost New Year's!"  We looked where they were pointing and saw the South Georgia Islands and the clock showing 11:46pm.  They boys were frantic.  We needed party hats, noisemakers and bubbly drinks All Now!  And, as wise parents, we obliged.  CD pulled up a countdown of Times Square from YouTube and when we were all assembled, he clicked play and we began to count in the New Year.  We hugged, clinked glasses and blew our horns. "I didn't have a horn!" came a wail.  "Well, we can't do it again" replied his dad.  "Um, actually we can," CD pointed out.  And so we got the party horns better distributed and... we did it again.  The children were so excited to be part of the celebration that it was contagious.  It did feel like midnight.

They wandered back upstairs to play for a bit, but at (Eastern Time Zone) 9pm, they dragged themselves down and asked to go [home] to bed. In their heads it was well after midnight and none of them had ever been up that late before.  The party began to break up and our friends left.  We put Pook and Bug to bed and cleaned up the kitchen.  It was no where near midnight, but we felt like we'd had our celebration, so we went to bed ourselves by 10:30.  It was truly (and has now been repeated for three years) the perfect New Year's Eve!