Christmas Road Trip: Day 10

Road Report
None; we stayed in Tioga today.

Notable Events
When Susan was shopping in Grand Forks on Wednesday, she bought lobster tails for us to make for the family at Dad and Beverly's as a fancy meal for New Year's Eve.  However, Dad and Beverly had already arranged for us to meet others for a nice supper at a restaurant tonight, so we prepared the lobster for dinner at noon instead!  They were delicious with melted butter for dipping, roasted asparagus with hollandaise sauce, and creamy garlic potatoes.

My second-cousin Stacy lives next door to Dad and Beverly, and her daughter Megan is Hillary's age.  So Megan came over to play with the girls this afternoon.  This evening we went to The Jungle, a steakhouse and lounge just a few blocks to the north, where we met Beverly's son Dennis, his wife Julie, and Dad's sister Penny, who all joined us for supper.  Susan and I shared tenderloin and jumbo shrimp . . . so delicious!  We also saw my uncle Shine (Dad and Penny's brother), his wife Janet, Shine's son Joel, Shine's son Jeff, and Jeff's wife Wanda; they stopped by our table on their way out, so we got to visit with them a bit, too.

Suzanna, Beverly, Abigail, Dennis, Dad, I, Hillary, Julie, and Penny

They all came over to the house afterward.  Julie taught the girls how to play Skip-Bo, a game that she and Dennis gave them for Christmas.  Beverly laid out a wide variety of Christmas cookies, and I served up glasses of a citrus-flavored drink mix that my sister Sandy had sent with us.  It's meant to be mixed with champagne and then frozen and served as a slush, but I mixed it with ginger ale and served it over ice for a non-alcoholic but special drink that the girls could enjoy on New Year's Eve.  And it was delicious.

Dennis and Julie returned home a while ago, but Penny's still here, and we're approaching midnight.  We've got cups of sparkling ginger ale to toast the arrival of the new year at midnight.  Then the girls are heading to bed, although I plan to stay up until 1:00 A.M. here (in the Central time zone) to celebrate the arrival of the new year in our city (in the Mountain time zone).  Happy new year, Faithful Reader!  Let's toast to great things in the coming year.