Yesterday we celebrated New Year's Eve with a large party at the Zane family.

We arrived in Secaucus on Friday night and during the day we prepared for the party. It was a lot of fun to make oliebollen, and I had a grateful audience.

The party was excellent. We danced a lot and welcomed the New Year in style.

Four days after we left Secaucus, we are back at Jonathan and Irena's to celebrate New Year's Eve. There's a big party here tomorrow, and we're looking forward to welcome 2012.

Tomorrow morning we're frying oliebollen, a Dutch specialty.

The last two weeks of the year have begun. Our Christmas tree is up, my cubicle is nicely decorated and I'm listening to Sky.fm's Christmas station all day long.

This morning I have posted the year overview for 2009. It is only available to registered users of this site. Send me a message if you do not have an account yet or if you'd like me to reset your password. You should also be able to use your Facebook account to login.

We've been unpacking some more boxes this week and the second bedroom is getting ready. Today we brought several boxes with books and papers to my and Sasha's work.

On the way back home we did grocery shopping and bought our Christmas tree. It's a beautiful one, quite large. It's larger than we've had before so I'll get some extra lights tomorrow and will decorate it in the evening.

It's been raining all day today. We had an early appointment in D.C so I took the metro from Foggy Bottom to my work. The moment I put down my umbrella on the floor, I saw an umbrella under another bench. A good reminder not to forget my own!

In the evening it was still pouring, and when I came home there was no power in the apartment building. However, one elevator was still working and there was partial lightning in the building hallways. Our apartment was pitch black, a strange experience. I went for a great run in the rain and took a shower by candle light. The power came back 30 minutes later.

We had a nice day in our new town, Arlington, today.

In the afternoon we walked to the library. They still had our information on file from 2005. Made me feel at home.

We had dinner in the Silver Diner and then did our grocery shopping for the week.