It started out so well: the Panthers played the Saints in New Orleans just after Christmas. Mom and Dad drove down for the game and then across to Houston to spend New Year’s with us and the Wickeds.

They arrived on Mom’s birthday. I cooked a pork tenderloin on top of leeks and made the crash hot potatoes from Pioneer Woman. Then Mom and I sat together on the floor in the guest room and she picked out  pearls and beads for a necklace that I still haven’t made. And that doesn’t fill me with guilt at all!

For New Year’s Eve we had a party. Dad loved parties so much: throwing them, going to them. Any excuse for a party, really. He just really liked people, and he loved to be surrounded by a crowd. He wanted to know all about everyone. In the card she sent after he died, my mother-in-law called him “joyous.”

I just re-read that card today, and I was so glad to see that word. Bit by bit, I’m getting to remember that joy. How proud he was of all of us. How warmly and completely we were loved.

But I digress. I invited Dingo’s whole family, but only three of them came, so there was an enormous pile o’ food. That’s pretty normal for me. I like to pretend that I’m cooking for, as Mama puts it, “Cox’s army.” I had bought a ham WAY on sale, and we had scalloped potatoes. Dad requested cooked carrots – a food I had avoided for decades, but I used a recipe from Martha Stewart so easy and good that I have cooked it all year long and eat them like a snack.

Late late, all the menfolk piled in the car to buy fireworks, which Dad talked about afterward as a treat, because they’re illegal in NC. We had a little fireworks show at the bottom of the driveway along with half our street.

It was a great visit, such a happy and relaxed few days.

Last night I went to bed at 9:15. I was ready to be done with 2009.