New Year

Or 'The Survivors'

For the past couple of years I've done a fairly unplanned haphazard 'survivors' photo of everyone who makes it past midnight, the dinner cleanup, the games and the couple of hours of madness, or ceilidh dancing as it's also known, which usually gets us to 3 a.m.

Rather than try and explain all the madness I'm just going to go through who's who in the photo (from left to right):

Me - the only Riley still awake (excluding my sister, because it was 11 a.m. for her!)
The Legendary Uncle Chris - the guy behind our New Year's holiday every year.
Legendary Little Chris - one of only two people to beat me at table tennis this year!
Pat - like me, the only one representing his family beyond midnight.
Hannah & Abby at the front - Lorraine's kids
Kris & Clive at the back - co-creators and leaders of the legendary 'Wycherley Walks'
Oliver & Jessica - the oldest Dilley kids, ably dancing the night away!
Alice (up top) - Uncle Chris's daughter and second most dangerous dancer.
Lorraine (in between) - there to teach her kids how it's done!
Matt (up top) & Vicki (in orange) - like me making sure the family gets repped!
Megan (in between) - and again, dancing because the folks were abed!
Karl - celebrating the last day/night in the UK for a while!
Louise - repping the Dobbo clan after her brother went early (fighting his traditional cold!)
Caroline - unleashing her patented version of merry hell on the dance floor!
Callum - representing Senga & Kev because they left a minute too soon!
AJ (up top) - Uncle Chris's son and total groove machine.
Auntie Kay - proving that sometimes we get the Aussies, love her to bits!
Paul & Shirley - whose dancing skills prove that experience is everything.
Sharon (up top) and DJ (on the end) - our South African dancing team.

And I'm going to explain a bit more about Sharon and DJ (who is in fact another Dave). Dave isn't South African, he's a Brit, but he lives and works over there at the moment as part of the 'Hands at Work' charity, he met Sharon out there this year and she came over to share Christmas with his family and New Year with the rest of us.

Now it's getting late and I still need to do more back-Blipping tomorrow, but here's a list of what's been covered besides today's entry:
Old Friends
Arenig Fawr
Eve of the New Year

Watch out for me catching up on comments as well over the next few days!