I have always wanted to "do it up big" for New Year's. Wear a fluffy party dress, toot on a paper horn and dance the night away with a never-ending supply of champagne and jumbo cocktail shrimp. Jon and I are planners in most every way, except we never seem to make New Year's plans until about a week prior when most of our friends have had their plans in the works for months. We usually just end up going out to dinner and heading home to drink and watch the ball drop in the comfort of sweatpants, which is in no way inferior, and hell, which I might prefer anyway, but sometimes a girl just wants to get dolled up, you know?
Considering that this might be our last New Year's celebration sans La Petite Bebé, we decided that this was the year to do it up big. As luck would have it, our friends Allison (the friend who was with me the night Jon and I met) and Ryan also wanted to do something fancy this year as New Year's Eve also happens to be their anniversary. I actually missed their wedding two years ago after catching the worst stomach bug I've ever had in my life (lost 5 pounds in 2 days from all of the vomiting!) so I was so thrilled that I would finally get the chance to celebrate with them. We decided to go to a hotel that overlooks the Inner Harbor in Baltimore. The hotel's fancy restaurant (where they had their rehearsal dinner) was actually hosting a celebration where there would be delicious food, an open bar, live music and fireworks over the water! Just what we were looking for!
The night started off wonderfully with Allison and I getting ready simultaneously just the way I used to get ready for Homecoming with my best girlfriends. So much fun to have girly time! She just had their baby Matthew in July; doesn't she look gorgeous?
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(I'm wearing my new J.Crew Ballerina dress that I got on ebay for only $50! It's a bit poofy but it makes me feel like I'm in Center Stage!)
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It was an adventure getting to the hotel as the Metro decided to just skip our stop. Well, I mean, the train stopped but it didn't let anyone on or off! Lovely. So we hopped out at the next station and as we were trying to hail a cab, a sketchy passenger van pulled up beside us the man inside called out to us, "Hop in, I can take you!" Allison and I looked at each other with a look that said "Like hell we're getting in some strange van!" but Jon and Ryan talked to the driver, deemed it safe and we all jumped in! The man tried to convince us that he was some sort of undercover cop, but it was quite obvious that he was just a wanna-be. He had binoculars and a radio and told us how he tried to join the regular police force for 20 years but they never let him in. Uh-huh. You should have seen the look on the doorman's face when we pulled up to the hotel and all of us in our shiny dresses and suits popped out of a beat-up van...hilarious!
The spread of appetizers they had out was simply amazing. In included Maryland crab legs (yum!), jumbo shrimp, Waldorf salad in martini glasses, sushi and the best cream of crab soup I've ever tasted. Everything was so delicious and I pretty much filled up on the appetizers. There was an unfortunate incident where Jon accidentally hit the end of his spoon which was resting in the cream of crab soup and a huge spoonful flung through the air and landed in my lap. As in on my new dress. Thank god I was wearing black. I love Jon's "oops!" face in the picture below, taken right after it happened.
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As I mentioned, the hotel is in the beautiful Inner Harbor and the restaurant had huge windows overlooking the water. Unfortunately, it was so windy that night that the city of Baltimore called off the fireworks display. It was a bit disappointing but the view was still spectacular.
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We had a wonderful dinner with salmon and some sort of beef and couscous and a whole bunch of stuff that I don't remember because by the time we decided to eat, we had already downed a lot of the bubbly stuff. Before we knew it, the band was counting down the last dwindling seconds of 2008 and then it was an all out celebration. Horns were tooting, noise makers were rattling and Allison had somehow managed to snag our very own private bottle of champagne! The photo below shows the reason why Jon takes all of our self-portraits...my arms are too short!
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Thanks to my Wii Fit training, I was able to hula hoop one of the zeroes from the 2009 balloons that had been hanging so nicely above the bar.
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And then it was time to leave, both the restaurant and 2008. I have a feeling that 2009 is going to be our best year yet. We have so many exciting plans for it already!
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