Carlisle's Diary

Happy New Year 2014!!!

Dear Diary: January 4, 2014

Happy New Year!!! It's 2014! Wow! I can't believe it; can you? Sorry it took me so long to write in here but we've had a super busy NYE. For starters we decided to do something totally different this year for that. We took a vote and decided to run/fly down to Manhattan and watch the actual ball drop! Yep, you heard correctly. We parked ourselves in the shadows on top of one of the skyscrapers in Times Square with champagne bottles and glasses ready to toast in the New Year! Boy was it a spectacle and a half. In all of our decades of living in this country we never once considered going to NYC for the ball drop. Go figure right? I mean it happens at midnight so we don't have to worry about sparkling and no one would ever see us come or go. So that's what we did! All photos are below.

I have to tell you, I've never seen that many human beings in one place in my life. Rogue, Alexander, Corin, Keith, Amy, and Peter having lived in NYC before moving to Hanover had watched quite a few of those balls drop over the years. So to them it was nothing; we meanwhile had our eyes bugging out of our heads. Even Jasper having seen the Civil War was aghast at the sheer volume of humans sardined into one relatively small area. The noise was overwhelming; we didn't speak much just watched the crowd go nuts down on the street. Then it was time to countdown as the ball lowered slowly!

10....9....8....7....6....5.....4......3.....2.....1.....HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014!!!

We all kissed our mates long and hard before hugging and kissing everyone else. We stayed that way for a long time. Then Alexander and I opened 2 bottles of champagne and we toasted to each other's long eternal lives and prosperity. As it was still 3 hours before NYE on the west coast we would wait before calling Charlie, Sue, and the others on La Push. Charlie and Sue are engaged! How do you like them apples? When Bella told Leah on Christmas Eve, she was so shocked she couldn't say anything for a long moment and then got up and hugged Bella for a good long time and Seth joined them in a group hug saying how they'll be related now! Everyone laughed.

No matter who wants to admit it or not, we and the wolves are getting more and more intertwined as family. And I think secretly Leah is very pleased with the fact that now she and Bella will be step-sisters. That wedding is somewhere later on along the lines of this year. They haven't even considered setting a date. I heard from Leah herself and she and Keith were giving Alice overtures that they wanted their wedding toward the end of February just NOT on Valentine's Day. Way too girlie, pink, and poofy for Leah. Rogue shuddered...turns out she's not a fan of that day either. This brings me back to the 'she hates the color pink' theory.

But I digress. So after we watched the ball drop and celebrated a bit on the roof, we returned home to NH to celebrate the rest of the night. In fact as I'm writing this entry, I'm having a glass of champagne; just splendid to be able to enjoy it. When we got back we had presents to open. You remember I mentioned in here last time that because we had all decided to donate to charity as opposed to give each other gifts. We did however say that we could give gifts to our mates and vice versa. Because of the sheer number of couples—we have 14 of them—instead of going through the whole hoopla of explaining each gift, I will just list them; most are self-explanatory anyways plus their corresponding photos are below. So here they are in no particular order:

1) Me and Esme: Precious stone from Madagascar (which was made into a pendant); a diary my father kept. (I will explain that more below)

2) Edward and Bella: A trip to Shakespeare's house in Stratford-upon-Avon, England; scrap book of both of their human lives. (Bella found old photos of Edward as a baby and such and made a scrap book of their human lives)