Happy 2014!

Though we moved in 2013 to a new block, we could not miss our old neighborhood's annual New Year's block party - the best one in Leon!

Since we didn't have our own place on the street this year, we set up shop at a friend's house, who were out of town and let us use their house for our home base to set up the grilling and chilling. As always, it was a great party and a nice opportunity to say hi to old neighbors whom we hadn't seen in a while.

Luke and his parents came by again this year and once again, helped out with the grilling. But Luke extracted a promise out of Elder that by next year he would be ready to grill by himself, and they agreed that they would have a minimum of three grilling lessons during the year to get him ready... sounds good to me!

Besides the burning of the old year in the form of a papier mache old man, another New Year's tradition is that if you walk around the block with a suitcase, that means you will travel during the year to come. One of our neighbors clearly wanted to travel in 2014, so she pulled out that suitcase, and paraded around the block:

We left William at home with Elder's mom and a babysitter, and I was a bit worried about him waking up and just crying and not getting back to sleep, since we had just come back from our trip to the States, where he had been with us 24/7. But thankfully, he was perfect just for that night and allowed us to stay out just past midnight, when we hied it back home to our little boy.

And here are the rest of the photos of that fun evening: