This is the Ben and Ashley I Almost Famous podcast with iHeartRadio.

Hey guys, welcome to the Almost Famous podcast.

Today is one of those episodes.

Are Ben and I are just doing a little chat.

We want to talk to you guys about the new Year.

I hope you guys have a very safe and happy New Year.

And now Ben and I will reveal how we are spending our New year.

Ben, I don't ever make plans for New Year's Eve.

I don't remember when I ever had a plan for New Year's Eve.

The best New Year's Eve I've ever had, besides ones of like my childhood teen years, which is like always fun with your friends and doing crazy things like going into Times Square at eleven thirty pm and getting let in by coops and seeing the Jonas brothers and all that when I was nineteen.

It's great new Year's put it as an adult New Year's My favorite ones I've probably just been with a few close friends in sweats playing games.

What about you?

You know how I know I'm lame.

You've never seen it back into Times Square at eleven thirty pm.

Well, no, I've definitely never done that.

I I'm lame because in my twenties.

Oh you fell asleep.

You always fall asleep.

I really tried hard.

There was two New Year's distinctively that I remember.

I tried hard going into him, being like I'm going to party, Like I'm getting out there on the town.

I'm gonna like kind of get dressed up.

We're gonna go to a nice dinner, and then we're gonna go to the clubs or the bars or whatever.

We're gonna like, I'm gonna put down the money, We're gonna buy a table.

We're gonna like do it up right.

Yeah, those are two of the worst like night memories I have in my life.

It sucks.

It's awful.

Everything's so expensive, it's packed.

It's like butt to hump throughout the whole bar.

You can't get a drink, you can't get food.

Everybody is like either like mad that they're there or going one thousand miles per hour forward.

It's busy.

And here's the part that just drives me crazy.

You the party doesn't start till that ball drops.

Really, this is how much I've gone out on New Year's.

It's like it picks up.

I guess that when the ball drops.

If you're not like getting like it'd be.

I think both those nights, you're coming in at like three o'clock in the morning, which is just outrageous to me.

And it's been outrageous to me, not because I'm thirty six years old.

When I was twenty one years old, it was outrageous to me that that was a thing in this world where you would give up a whole next day of your life for a three hours of more like whatever.

I don't even want to call it fun because it's not fun to me.

Uh So, here's what we're gonna do, which what we've done.

Jessica and I have both very similar in this manner.

We're going to go or cook in or go out to a great dinner.

We're gonna have a drink, and we're gonna talk about the year.

And this is one of the traditions that we have.

We also on New Year's we have this thing that I've talked about before where we share our top five favorite meals from the year.

Those can only be two meals that have been cooked at home.

The other three have to be out like at a dinner.

And they are not based on the best food, but they're based on not only good food, but the good vibe and memory and feeling that we had around them.

But we don't share them with each other until we sit down at dinner.

You don't make it.

You just remember the meals.

No, we don't make them.

We remember them and we do our top five and she makes hers and I make mine, and then we share them with each other.

And so sometimes the two of them align.

Sometimes we have crossovers.

Sometimes we don't.

How do you hide each other from the kitchen?

No, we don't make them.

These are like meals that we had previously throughout the year.

This could be a dinner in New York City that we had in February of this year.

This could be the dinner but we had before the night before Whennie was born.

And we write down, like, oh, this is one of my top five meals from the year, and we just talk about the meal.

We don't remake it.

You just talk about it.

Okay, we talk about it.

Something I could never do with Jared because he does not care about food this much.

I would love to do it now.

I'm thinking about it time.

And it's fun because we've done it since two thousand and eighteen, and so we have this list that goes back since twenty eighteen of all of our best meals from the year.

Yeah, my parents do it.

It's fun, it's enjoyable, and it gives us these memories to look back on, Like a lot of those meals were in Italy when Jess's parents and my parents and Jess and I went to Italy and that one year we can look back and say, oh, my goodness, like remember that dinner and remember that time, and maybe one day we can go back to that restaurant when we're visiting, if we're ever visiting that certain area.

So that's what we do on New Year's and then we go to bed.

We watch the ball drop on the East Coast and we say, hey, happy New Year, I love you, good night.

And that is the best way to do New Year's.

I like it, you know what I do that.

This will be my third year.

This is our tradition.

Dawson and I.

We get burger king and we sit and we watch people do the what's the dip?

You know when people are crazy like you would be, they run in the water the ocean.

Oh, the polar plunge.

The polar plunge.

Yeah, we get burger king and we watch people do the polar plunge from the car.

Oh you don't New.

Year's Day, that's New Year's Day.

No, I'm doing it.

I could see Jared doing it.

I could see Jared doing it too, but this has just been Dawson in my tradition thus far.

Okay, and then Jared.

Loves the jaw the ball drop.

He just loves Ryan Zeacress rocke Andy.

Heves like that is his classic nostalgic thing.

So we will probably usually do like dinner out to We'll go out to dinner but early, be home by nine, nine thirty.

And then last year we stayed up with we had both boys up at midnight.

Don't know how that happened with Hayden and Dawson.

I don't know how that happened with Dawson, but there they were in bed with us and it was kind of adorable and I don't hate it.

I don't know that we'll do that again this year, but you know, if they happened to be up, then they happen to be up, and that's totally fine.

I think there's special Like I don't want to say New Year's is like terrible, because I think there's a really special ways to do it, and I enjoy my New Year's now because Jessica knows that if any of her friends or any of my friends say, hey, we're throwing a New Year's party, it's just a no, like we're not.

Really.

If it was a friend's house, I would totally do it, but not like a New Year's Eve party, but more like a New Year's Eve get together where you can we're you don't have to wear a skin by sparklay dress because the thing is it's too cold for a sparklay dress.

It just is Ashley, I'll be honest with you.

This time of the year is so wonderful for so many reasons.

There's celebrations, there's gatherings, there's work commitments where people get together to party.

All these things and they're wonderful things.

I don't want to not say they're wonderful.

I am an advocate for getting together with people and connecting with people and sitting with people in person.

I think they're fantastic.

However, there is a line where I become over socialized because most of my life is being out with people at events and conferences and gatherings.

So that's my whole year.

All I want for a day off for me where I know nobody's working and I'm not going to get any emails and I'm not going to have to make any phone calls.

All I want at some point in the year is for there to be no expectations for me to have to be around anybody other than my family, because it just doesn't happen very often.

So for me, New Year's is always that excuse where I'm like, everybody's going to be hungover, everybody's going to be tired, everybody's getting together.

What does that mean for me?

I don't have to.

Do you get mad Sunday scaries like I do after New Year's is over because you had the whole week off, and really you and I will have days off for sure, but like a whole straight week where there's no work coming up because it's all kind of closed.

Yeah, it's a little different for me because I work the weekends during the holidays because of Generous it's a big time for us, and so I don't get it.

Yeah, my break is the break after like the first week of January is when I can out take a break, and yeah, I definitely will, but I look forward to it, so that's how I utilize it.

It's kind of those it's like the It's one of those moments for me where I'm like, I'm going to treat myself and I'm going to do nothing because that just sounds good, and I know it sounds good every year.

Call me lame Ashley.

No, it's not lame at all.

Like I wouldn't.

I would absolutely do it too.

It works.

You guys should figure out how to have your favorite meals during your little tradition too.

I'd be good.

Some of these are like Michelin Star restaurants.

I don't know how to do that.

Besides that, i'd be smart, though.

It'd be fun.

Spend the whole day just cooking up cool, cool stuff.

I am it will be Funhi, it is a wonderful New Year's We wish you the best in twenty twenty six.

Make sure you go out there and grab your three month gym memberships that you'll use twice.

Make sure that you make all of your plans for healthy eating.

I'm not a New Year's resolution guy because I.

Just don't keep on Nope, nope, nope.

But here's something fun.

Here's my only thing this is what I do and I don't know yet.

Every year I pick a new word.

This year's word was connection, and twenty twenty six will be a different word, and I'll kind of pray over it, think about it, look back at some of my journaling and writing from the year, and say, okay, what in twenty twenty six is one word that when I wake up in the morning, I say it.

I don't know what it's going to be, but that's what I do.

And then every I try to keep it, you know, on top of mind for the whole year.

I think mine, when you asked me last year, was present or like enjoying the moment that you're living in.

Yeah, I have been more thoughtful about it, for sure.

Hey, you have been because you've had a big year.

Twenty twenty five has been a big year for you, full of a lot of different balls tossing in the air.

Yet you are still saying.

Ashley, thanks, I think so.

I think that's a good job.

I've told you when I think you're not clicking thanks, Ben, you're crushing it.

Yeah.

So I don't know what am I going to do this this year?

Yeah, let me think about it.

I'll get back to you in the New Year on that and you do the same with me and your word and all that.

Hey, Ben, before we go, I do want to say, remember the one New Year's where we kind of spend it together the New Year's Eve or we had to wake up at like four point thirty in the morning on New Year's Day to be in the Rose Bowl parade together.

That was That was awesome.

Oh.

I got to send.

Her our producer pictures of that.

That is so cute, such a good memory.

I just thought, you know, I was like, oh my god, I'm on a float with Ben Higgins.

Ben Higgins is so cool and such a celebrity, and I can't believe I've included with this guy.

Yeah, that's I mean, that was a wildly fun day.

It is a day I'll never forget because it was so magical.

Turn twenty sixty.

It was turning twenty sixteen.

Right, probably twenty seventeen.

No, I don't know you were about to be the twenty sixteen Bachelor.

Oh it was pre bachelor.

Yeah, okay, that makes sense.

Well, Ben, look at this, Oh send it.

Do you know what that means?

That'll be ten years this New Year's Day it's been ten years.

My goosh, oh my god, Ashley.

Goodness, Ben, and that's so crazy.

You've been friends for ten years, for real, for real, Look good us.

Now we're still doing.

It anyway, keep going on and on.

You know we're gonna bore the audience because they weren't there.

We'll make sure to post this picture.

Happy New Year to everybody.

Happy twenty twenty six and there are great things ahead, believe it.

Until next time, I've been Ben.

I've been Ashley.

See you, guys, Love you.

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