New Year’s Eve 2013

Bjarki and a friend chillin’ on our loungers.

Inside, Emma was having something to eat behind the smashed up remains of the ginger bread house.

Once darkness fell, we put on our fancy clothes, and made our way to a party! Our hosts were Herdís and Halli (not pictured here). Herdís is the daughter of Tómas (they’re the ones wearing the aprons), who is Finnur’s uncle (Þórarinn’s brother).  The two brothers (Þórarinn and Tómas) usually alternate hosting the new year’s eve party, but this year Tómas’ wife was nursing a broken elbow so their daughter stepped in as hostess.

Food, food, glorious food!

Table from the other side.

Couch-girls. Emma was on her best behavior, until it was time to go to sleep that is. I optimistically put her in her travel cot and left her to ‘go to sleep on her own’, except she (not surprisingly) totally freaked out, and ended up vomiting.  I guess she was a little too full for such an exercise. Oops!

Bjarki fell in love with this huge rocket!

Anna trying to get Bjarki to Put. It. Down! He had trouble listening that night. He may have been a tad bit excited…

Finnur took the kids outside around 20:30 to fire off some rockets.

Shortly before 9 pm, I packed the older kids in the car and drove a few minutes to attend the bonfire in neighboring Garðabær. We parked a ways away from it, and had to begin our hike by sliding on our butts down this icy slope!  Thank goodness for solid, slightly plastic-y pants!

After stumbling through a large snowy field of tufty grass (thank goodness for hiking shoes!!) we finally made our way to the bonfire.

The upside to arriving from that direction was being upwind from the bonfire itself. We also had a good view over a part of Garðabær, as well as neighboring Kópavogur where…

… the local rescue squad started the annual dual-firework show. Kópavogur and Garðabær are two adjacent towns (think tiny versions of Mountain View and Palo Alto) and they try to out-do each other every year.

After Kópavogur had finished, Garðabær got going and put up a fancy show.

Here be fireworks!

Big fireworks are especially fun up close!

Anna kindly looking my way.

The bonfire was roaring!

Anna and Bjarki holding starlights after the big shows were over.

Standing pretty darn close to a big fire. The main crowd was located on the other side, where the proper access road is.

Starlights are always fun!

After we’d had our fill of fire and fireworks, we walked all the way back to the car.

Back at the party, it was time for homemade ice cream and the most ridiculously addictive chocolate ice cream sauce I’ve had in recent memory.

At 10:30 pm it was time for the hour-long retrospective annual comedy show, which was actually funny this year!

The show ended at 23:30 at which point everybody went outside to shoot up some fireworks, and look at the neighbors going crazy with their explosives.  Thankfully the weather was peeeerfect!

Fancy lights going off.

Shooting up from a small hill.

Sisters.

Guðni adding a little light to the world.

Rescue flares are fun too!

Margrét and her dad, Vignir, with flares.

Hilmir also got a flare.

Fireworks over the row-houses.

It took a while but I finally managed to take a not-terrible long-exposure of Bjarki swinging a starlight.

Anna with a starlight.

All around us people went totally berserk shooting up stuff, but we were a tad low down to see it properly.

Two minutes before midnight.

Bamm, bamm, bamm!

Tómas holding a flare.

Four of us at nine minutes past midnight. Emma was sleeping inside (a kind guest managed to lull her to sleep while I was at the bonfire), but she woke up shortly after midnight.

Time to toast to the new year!

To a Happy 2014!!

Cousins. With their mouths full of chocolate!

And with that, it was time to head home! The kids were in bed shortly past 1 am, and Emma slept all the way to 07:20 the next morning. Yay!?