Manning Family Tree: Celebrating the New Year

Saturday, January 3, 2009

Celebrating the New Year

Every year on New Years Eve, Eric's family & some friends of theirs go to their local bowling alley for a night of bowling. They have invited us every year that we have lived close to them, but this is the first year we have attended. It was a blast!!!

First we all met at a Mexican Restaurant for dinner. There was 18 of us in all. I wasn't going to eat as I knew there was food at the bowling alley, but once I had a wiff of Mexican food, I was a goner & had to eat at the restaurant as well. We had a good time feasting on Mexican food. After dinner, Jase decided he didn't want to go bowling, so he went home. My Brandon also didn't go as New Years Eve is a big police scanner night & he wanted to stay home to listen to his police scanner.

So at 9:00pm the rest of us went to the bowling alley which was right next door to the restaurant. We all got checked in, got our shoes & our lane assignments. We had 4 lines total & they were right next to each other. In our 2 lanes we had 2 teams. The "Winners" (I called them the wieners) which consisted of Eric, Jeannette, Dave & Vicki Holmes (their friends). Our team was the "Playas" which was me, Mike, Jesse & Cade. Danica & Taylor were on the other 2 teams along with the Holmes kids Keven, his wife & Danica's best friend Bethany, Mindy, Jessica, Krista, Kyle & I forget the middle son's name (sorry).

We got to start bowling around 9:30pm. Each few lanes had an employee assigned to hand out money. Sometimes there were colored pins when bowling & if the head pin was a colored pin & you got a "strike" you won a dollar. Yipee!!! If you bowled a "spare" & there was a color pin anywhere in the spare, you won a quarter. We were also all given 3 raffle tickets & throughout the night they called out numbers & gave away prizes such as cash, free bowling games, gift certificates for dinner at local restaurants, etc. Out of all the prizes given out that night, I think our group of 17 won about 75% of the prizes. It was quite fun.

They also had food to munch on throught the night. Mostly finger foods, such as small sandwhiches, chicken wings, taquitos, pizza, little wieners, stuff for tacos & nachos and dessert. You did have to buy sodas if you were thirsty. I'm not sure why we went to dinner first as there was enough food at the bowling alley.

Right before midnight they handed out party hats, horns, noise makers, streamers & gave everyone Martinellis (for the non drinkers) or champagne to toast at midnight. Then they turned the screens onto the countdown in New York in Times Square & we counted down to midnight. Then everyone yelled "Happy New Year", blew horns & celebrated by toasting each other, kissing & hugging each other.

Afterwards we went back to bowling & got to bowl until 12:30pm. All in all, it was a clean, fun filled evening spent with family & friends. I see why Eric's family & their friends do this every year. We will probably do it every year from now on as well. It was much funner than staying at home & celebrating by ourselves.

Here are some photo of our night. This first photo is Eric, Mike & Cade trying to figure out the scoreboard & how to put our names into the computer & up on the screen. Vicki Holmes (friend) is in the background.