Winter Break...Or did we break winter? I can never remember...

For reasons best described as "things that wouldn't be any fun to explain," we decided not to have a New Year's party this year. As it turns out though, we're not quite as good at not having a party as we thought we'd be.

There's a very fine distinction between having a party and inviting over some people to eat and drink and sing and talk and yell "Happy New Year" and stuff. I'm not exactly sure what the distinction is, but for what it's worth, we did the latter.

Here's us on New Year's Eve, not having a party:See the man in a chair on crutches and in a leg brace over to the left? That's my brother.

And here's my brother again handing out glasses from the champagne tower he poured: He poured it NOT because we were having a party, mind you, but because he's the best brother in the universe and it makes his sister happy to see him pour a champagne tower in a silly hat. Have I mentioned he's the greatest brother in the entire world?

Anyhow, he busted up his knee in a sledding accident and now has to try and chase this cute guy around while on crutches:Not to worry though, he's got all kinds of information at his disposal to help him out. Look, here's a helpful tip from the side of my mom & dad's coffee pot:My favorite part is where it says, "Children and hot fluids should be kept apart."

Who even knew coffee pots OFFERED parenting advice I tell 'ya?!?!? I hope he's watching the temperatures of that boy's baths! 'Cuz they say baths can be chock full o' hot fluids.

So that was my brother and sister in law's cute guy, also known as my nephew. Here's another cute guy looking at a scat chart:I used my super expert smudgy tool so that if you happen to run into him at the grocery store you won't recognize him and say, "Hey, aren't you that guy I saw on the internet reading about scat?"

If you're wondering if you read correctly, you did. It's a picture of The-Guy-Who-Knows-A-Song-About-A-Chicken reading about poop.

Here's one of him writing a haiku, which was one of the activities at the party we didn't have:It's hard to tell which is sexier, learning about poop or composing haiku. No, I mean that. It really is hard to tell.

So that was basically our vacation:
The-Guy read about poop.
My brother busted up his knee.
My daughter puked all night the night before New Year's Eve.
We ate a bunch of great food.
We did quite a bit of snowshoeing.
We did unbelievably goofy things just to make the baby smile.
We played guitar and sang and discussed Plato (no really!) and laughed a lot. Not all at the same time though.

And we finished it all up by not having a party. It was a fine vacation (and thanks Mom and Dad!)!