"I can't believe you're standing in my living room, Eddie. I never thought the day would come."

This is what New Year's Eve looked like at the Tolman household:

It's practically the exact same sight every year! Gideon, Josh, and Malachi are on their laptops. Edward is manning the radio. Kathy is writing information down. Josh is perusing the big book of Billboard Hits. All for one purpose: to win the radio station's annual montage contest.

There is only one radio station in Salmon, and on New Year's Eve every year, the station has an Oldies Music Contest. Every half hour, they play a montage of short excerpts of twelve songs in a row, and you have to guess the song title and artist for each song. And to make it more fun, every year there's a different "theme" to the songs, and if you can figure out the theme, it's helpful in figuring out all the songs titles and/or artists too. Themes in the past have included: women's names, football teams, deck of cards, cartoon characters, states in the USA, and numbers, just to name a few. This year's theme was "Old and Young". With the musical knowledge that Ed & Kathy have, and the help of looking up lyrics online, and looking through the big book for songs and artists that would be included in the theme, we have won the radio contest several times. The winner receives $20. It is a fun activity, and I love how the family works together to achieve the goal of winning! It took 7 of us working on it this year for 5 hours, but we figured out every single song title and every single artist, and we won the contest again!!!

In addition to the contest, trivia about Oldies songs is announced all night long, and if you can call in fast enough and get the answer right, you can win items donated by local businesses! It is always so much fun! While we listened to the radio, we put together a 500 piece puzzle, ate food, and played games.

Once we figured out the entire montage, and finished the puzzle, we relaxed, and enjoyed visiting the rest of the night together! We actually went home a little early, and were all in bed by midnight. It was a pleasant and calm night together, and the crowd was smaller than usual at the Tolman house...Grandma & Grandma T., Uncle Tim & Barb, neighbor Frank & his daughter Becky, Gideon & Alyssa, Malachi, and our family.