Happy New Year!

We celebrated New Year's Eve at home as usual. But this year wasn't quite as festive as it has been in the past without our annual NYE guests, Nana Bev and Popi Jerry. They had come early this year to celebrate Christmas so it was just the 8 of us ringing in the New Year.

For our New Year's Eve feast, we had our annual tradition of ajiaco soup, a delicious chicken and potato stew recipe from Colombia. This year both Rose and Kate pitched in to make it. They were great little helpers chopping, pouring, and stirring up the ingredients.

Over the years, I've come up with some short cuts when making the soup so it is no longer a 4+ hour event thankfully. The ajiaco turned out delicious!

All eight of us sat down to enjoy our last dinner of 2025. The ajiaco soup was accompanied by another favorite Colombian recipe of ours, limonada de coco, a delicious frozen drink of fresh lime juice, coconut cream, ice, and sugar.

After dinner, Rose broke out the bubbly (aka, carbonated apple juice). Sam was making us all giggle with his silly faces as he sipped up the bubbly juice.

After we cleaned up, we broke out our New Year's Eve party hats and horns.

We enjoyed a big bowl of 12 grapes each, a Colombian tradition to bring us 12 months of good luck in 2026.

Then the real party began with dancing and the big countdown to 2026. Of course, we counted down early and were all in bed by the time the clock struck midnight. Happy New Year everyone! Praying for a wonderful 2026 for all.