Though a busy start, we enjoyed bringing in the New Year!

Before we headed off to join Steve and Cathy at their house for New Year's Eve, I had some snow shoveling to do, and then we drove Lucas down to Boston's Logan airport for his flight back to L.A.

New Year's Day picture of the deep snow hill the plow created after yesterday's storm ended. You can just see Beau along the walkway heading for the back door.

It had snowed again during the night Monday, and left at least another 6 inches of snow on top of the 6 that had fallen through Sunday. Russ, who's doing the plowing for us this year, had come Monday afternoon to clear the driveway, but by Tuesday morning it was loaded again. I knew he'd be back at some point, and so I just cleared out the barn doors, the area around my car, and then had to shovel out a path for the car through the mound of wet snow piled in from the the driveway.

Traffic wasn't too busy, and the roads were cleared by the time we headed out around 12:30 pm Tuesday afternoon headed for Logan. But I did have to do my 5th snow clean up when we got home before heading off to Steve and Cathy's at 4:30 pm.

Beau had been invited to New Year's Eve with us, and he was so excited when we pulled up in front of their house. He was barking and bouncing around in the back seat, and creating quite the scene. When we opened the door, he bounded out of the car, tore right past Cathy who had come out to greet us, and leaped into the kitchen. What a guest....

We had bought a couple of bottles of a Josh Red Blend that I was excited to try as I've never had a bottle of Josh that I didn't enjoy. Steve got those opened, and right out of the bottle the wine was smooth despite the deep, rich red color that you'd expect to have a much more robust flavor. It would go just great with the stuffed ravioli we would be making for dinner.

Relaxing with some wine in the living room before heading into the kitchen to start cooking.

Beau also relaxing. It's been a long but good year for The Beau Dog.

And best of all, Cathy let Beau lick out the frosting bowl. He thought he had died in pig heaven!

We had a great time helping with the cooking, trying not to get dough all over us from the hand made raviolis we were making for dinner. Cathy had advised us to bring aprons, and we needed them for sure. We topped off our wine, the aprons went on, and we were into the thick of things!

Cathy and Sue kneading the dough for the ravioli.

Steve and I made a great supervisory team, though we both chipped in with several of the processes.

Sue tending to the ravioli sausage and mushroom stuffing.

Cathy showing me her version of how to make the bechamel sauce. I was tasked with the whisking, and had to really pay attention as it's so easy to burn.

We're ready to serve everything up!

Dinner is served! Happy New Year!

As we were sitting after dinner, my nephew Scott texted a happy new year greeting. He and Mary Liz were celebrating with his mom, Abbie.

Abbie, Mary Liz, and Scott wishing us a happy New Year!

We stayed watching Dick Clark's New Years Eve With Ryan Seacrest until the ball was dropped, but that was about it for both of us. Even The Beau Dog had wound himself down. It was 1:00 am New Year's Day when we rolled into bed. It had been a long, and busy day, and we were both beat.

I had just a little snow clean up to do Wednesday morning from when Russ had come to do his plowing the night before. I wanted to get that out of the way as this stuff wasn't going to be movable if the temps dropped as they were supposed to. We had just a really lazy day New Year's Day, with the wood stove going, and watching a couple of Hallmark Channel movies.

Happy New Year!