Happy New Year 2012! Cheers, Hugs, Movies and Champagne Bubbles Headed Your Way

Happy 2012, Everyone!  No, this isn't the one where I recap the adventures, successes, and missed opportunities of 2011.  This isn't the one where I stand up on the Internet and publicly declare my ill-fated resolutions (that one might come later this week...  or not at all...  we'll see). 

This IS the one where I count my blessings and share the highlights of our quiet New Year's Eve celebration, home as usual, with our kids. 

One day, I might like to go to a black tie New Year's Eve party in a fabulous, glittery gown, having forced Bernie into a dashing tuxedo against his will, and I shall sip champagne and be devastatingly elegant into the wee hours of the morning.  For now, though, we like to stay home for New Year's Eve and watch movies.

Jeremy Sumpter as Peter Pan, 2003

We watched the 2003 Peter Pan movie with the boys, and loved every minute of it.  How did I miss this film when it first came out?  This Peter Pan is faithful to the original 1904 play and 1911 story by J. M. Barrie, and the film conveys much of the Victorian cultural and historical context out of which the Peter Pan stories were written as well.  This was definitely a film that kept our entire family enthralled from beginning to end.

We wrapped up Peter Pan at ten o'clock, and I decided that was late enough for little boys to stay up on New Year's Eve.  We tucked them into bed and I annoyed them by singing bedtime songs in French, Italian, German, Latin, and finally, when Anders begged me to stop singing in foreign languages, I couldn't help myself -- I sang Rachmaninoff's Vocalise (a song without any words at all).  Don't be too impressed -- I didn't claim to have sung it well!  I believe the hounds joined in with my howling towards the end...

Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher in No Strings Attached, 2011

After torturing my children musically, my husband and I cracked open the champagne and settled down to a recent romantic comedy, No Strings Attached starring Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman.  It was pretty cute as far as these fluffy-feel-good-romantic-comedy flicks go.  Funnier moments included Kutcher's character, Adam, presenting his girl with a bouquet of carrots on their date after she forbade him to get her flowers.  We were enjoying our movie and our bubbly so much that we lost track of the time and realized, at the end of the movie, that we were half an hour late ringing in the new year.  I hope this is not a portent foretelling that I will be late to everything important all year long!  Oh wait, that was last year...

Happy New Year, Everyone!