Happy 2013

I was telling my kids yesterday that 2013 is going to be a really good year.  In part because life just gets better.  But also because people think 13 is an unlucky number. But I've always found that things that are traditional bad luck are good luck for me. 
Well, this is something I decided at age 16.  Mostly because this one day when I was on my way to Red Owl to shoplift some cigarettes for my friends.  (Yeah, I know, I know.  I had some troubled teen years!)  Anyway, I was on my way there and I found a penny on the ground heads-up.  As you know, a found heads-up penny is good luck.  Well, that day, the day I picked up that heads-up penny and went to Red Owl, was the day I got busted for shoplifting.  And rode in the back of a police car. And waited in a little room with writing all over the wall from others like me who'd been locked in the room. (I even saw the names of a few classmates).  Then I got brought to this conference room where my parents--My dad and my mildly embarrassed/mildly amused staff of the TOWN POLICE and FIRE COMMISSION mom sat waiting for me.
The cop: Well. What do you have to say for yourself
Me: *sob* I'm sorry.
The cop: That's a pretty bad habit for you to be stealing to support it.
Me: I don't even smoke *sob* *sob*
My parents (who always knew how to see the humor in any situation) could barely contain their laughter.  Anyway, I was grounded and made to do community service for a few months.  Lesson learned.
That was the day that I decided that
1. Stealing is bad
2. Luck works opposite for me and I would never pick up a heads-up penny again.
I also started walking under ladders, laughing off broken mirrors, and I chose lucky thirteen as my soccer number.

I didn't tell my kids all that.  Just the stuff about the ladder and the penny and number thirteen.

It's going to be a good year.  We celebrated with the kids--hats and horns and a fancy cheese plate and non-alcoholic bubbly.  We counted down at 7:00 and yelled Happy New Year out the front door.
After the children were tucked away, Tad and I ate dessert and re-read two letters from 2001, when I was in the Peace Corps and we were newly in love and away from each other.  It was lovely to see the ways we have changed and the ways we have not.  We danced near midnight and went to sleep.

Happy New Year everyone. Here are some of our family's traditional New Year's Eve photos: