Happy New Year! I'm back, now. I know I don't usually update this quickly, but I was thinking earlier on about New Year rituals and routines and for some reason this idea came to me. It could be considered a head canon.

Not really a traditional plot I'll be honest, more of an extended drabble I think. Hope you enjoy it.

Thank you to BakaClara + Datninjaturtle for reviewing the last chapter.

Mikey rocked himself back and forth as he stared at the clock in hidden glee.

Click

23:59:00

He rubbed his hands together and when the clock got to the last thirty seconds he counted under his breath. "10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1- Happy New Year!" He clapped his hands silently, mindful of the fact his brothers were sleeping [or trying to sleep in Leo's case] in their own rooms.

No time to waste, Mikey thought swinging himself out of bed. Time to start the tradition.

Since he was old enough to understand the concept of a new year, Mikey had been drawing a celebratory picture of his family. It was always in the same pose. Left to right, Leo, Raph, Splinter, Donnie and finally Mikey himself.

They were occasionally doing different things. One year he'd drew them all wearing Christmas hats. Another, when Raph had discovered the hidden world of knitting, Orange had drawn them all wearing the jumpers Red had worked so hard to knit for them. Of course it had been his first attempt so they were all lumpy, misshapen and generally awful.

But of course they'd all told him they loved them and wore them anyway. [Donnie only complied after Splinter shot him a truly epic death-glare]

That had been seven years ago. Raph had come on in leaps and bounds since then.

Mikey grinned as he fished his pens out and started sketching. Of course once they met April he'd adjusted it slightly, adding her in next to him. Really, he supposed, if he was doing it properly, he should have her next to Donnie; as there was no denying the human girl was particularly close to him, but Mikey couldn't bring himself to do that. Donnie was his brother at the end of the day – not hers.

He blinked, hand stopping just as he was about to start on Raph. Wow. Where did that come from? He shook his head and carried on in silence, not breaking concentration till the pencil sketch was completely done.

Now for the permanent outline. He grinned slightly remembering last year. Now that had been good. They'd had a party – at Leon's insistence – and of course they had invited April as par for the course.

Well…Mikey chuckled at the memory. She was quite hyper to say the least. She brought over a docking station [which Donnie couldn't understand why as he had one] put her IPod on and they spent a good couple of hours dancing.

Eventually as the clock struck midnight Donnie [The only one who was not completely hyper by that stage – and yes that's including Splinter] wrestled them all in front of the TV and they counted down the minutes to the beginning of 2018. Ah, good times.

By now he was coulering the outlines in. Good job they were all green. It was slightly less time consuming.

Splinter still had all of his past pictures, each one signed by him and with the year on. They had their own box on that big shelf of his along with Raphael's numerous knitted garments, Leo past pictures of Space Hero's and Donnie past test papers. [There were at least three boxes of those. Donnie got through a LOT of test papers]

Hopefully he'd be around to do a lot more of these. He might have to think of ways to make them slightly more exciting though. Maybe different poses and stuff? Eh…he'd think about it.

He finished of the last strokes of his own mask and grinned.

Happy 2019.