Last night, my parents took all three kids for an overnight visit to ring in 2010 in classic style.

When I was growing up, my parents would turn the clocks ahead every half-hour after dinner, until we were convinced that midnight had arrived (usually by 9:30 or so.) Then, thrilled with our success at "staying up" we'd grab the cymbals off of my brother's drumset, pots and spoons, and other noisemakers and run out into the middle of my parents' rural lane and start flailing away. After a few minutes of banging and crashing and screaming, we'd hurry back into the house, convinced that the police were surely on the way to arrest us for disturbing the peace.

Why did we fear the police were on the way? Well, my parents learned early on that it was a sure-fire way to get us hustled back into the house, into our pajamas and tucked into bed, "pretending" to sleep in case the fuzz stopped by. That way, we could say, oh no, we were asleep!

Heh.

And so it went this year, with my kids gleefully sharing that they had managed to avoid the slammer when we picked them up this morning. They apparently had had a "power outage" that stopped the clocks during the night, and threw them all off by about two and a half hours. SO WEIRD.

Double heh.

As for me and the husband, we ate some Thai food, and watched a silly movie, and turned in right after the real stroke of midnight. We sure know how to party.