Orange Green Tea Punch

I really haven’t missed alcohol much at all for the past seven months. I kind of thought I would – we were living in wine country up until two weeks ago, after all. But no, I’ve been perfectly content to just drink tea, water, juice and small amounts of coffee since finding out I was pregnant back in July.

Deli meat, on the other hand, is a totally different story. All I want in life lately is a ham sandwich, piled high with meat, some Swiss and mayo. I’ve tried heating up the meat first, but it isn’t the same. I’ve already directed Dan to make sure my first post-delivery meal is a sandwich.

The one exception to the “I don’t really miss alcohol” rule seems to be when I think about New Year’s Eve. It is the one time of year when we make brandy slush, and we savor every last glass of that batch. That obviously isn’t going to be how we ring in 2015. We’ll also be forgoing our usual board-games-and-cocktails New Year’s Eve party. I don’t think we’ll be up for driving to Milwaukee for our friends’ party that soon after moving and closing on our house, and I doubt we will be unpacked and settled enough to host a big crowd at the new place.

I’ll be honest, I’m a little bummed to be missing out on our annual December 31 traditions. But, I reason, nearly all of our traditions are going to change in some way next year anyways, right? We won’t be giving them up entirely, but they’ll be tweaked to better fit our new little family. And that’s what we’ll do this year – tweak our New Year’s Eve traditions to allot for all the life changes we’ve made in the past six weeks. Maybe we won’t host or attend a giant game night complete with a full cocktail menu, but we can still have a small group of family or friends over a game or two. And while I may not make a big batch of brandy slush to ring in the new year, I can certainly make a bowl of orange green tea mocktail punch that our alcohol-drinking friends can spike with some brandy.

Cheers to the holiday season and ever-changing traditions!