Tradition

I like traditions.  It's nice to know what to expect and to remember previous occurrences through traditions.  John and I have a New Year's Eve tradition that we celebrated for the 5th time this year.  Every New Years Eve / New Year's Day that we've known each other, we've been at Cafe Brazil for midnight.

Cafe Brazil doesn't have any special New Year's Festivities, but they have a TV that's watching the ball in New York, and most of the restaurant participates in a pretty subdued count-down for the last 10 seconds of the year.

The first time I came to Dallas to visit John we ate at Cafe Brazil for dinner because it was one of only a few places open after the game we went to.  Then for our 1st New Year's celebration a few months later, we went to Cafe Brazil because it was open and we had enough time to get there after John finished working on the evening news.  We had wanted to go to one of the big New Year's parties in town, but it would have been a logistics nightmare by the time John got back from work. 

We eat at Cafe Brazil throughout the year because we like it, but I guess the Cafe Brazil tradition started because we were settling for something to do at the New Year.  It turned out to be perfect for us.  We're not much for the crowd of strangers party scene.  So, ringing in 2012 was our 5th New Year together, and we were at Cafe Brazil, just like 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011.