New Year

A lot has happened since I last posted, and here it is - 2015.

We had a lovely, quiet Christmas Day.  We enjoyed our semi-annual beef tenderloin for dinner with my parents.

My brother and his family joined us after Christmas.  We had a very nice visit!

L turned 9 years old!  She requested a Tres Leches cake for her birthday.  She will have a party with her friends sometime this month.

We also visited the Natural History Museum at her request.

We invited the girls' friend over for a movie marathon, culminating in watching the ball drop in New York at midnight on New Year's Eve.

Today is the day where we finish up the being lazy bit, and transition into the back to school and activities bit.  We have had such a nice time being home, and without any deadlines.  JP was off work all but 1 day of the girls' vacation!  We did a lot of fun and relaxing things.  JP and I also cut and stacked a bunch of wood for the wood burner, hoping to keep ahead of the game this year.  I exercised about half of the days, which is something that I have NOT done in the past.

As I am slowly starting to take down the Christmas decorations (saving the tree for tomorrow when the girls are not around), I have been thinking about this whole, big year that stretches in front of me.  While I am not big on making New Year's Resolutions that I am sure to not keep, I have wondered what will be different this year.

Will this be the year that I finally finish reading "A Team of Rivals", or get on Facebook?  What will evolve from the 2 partial jobs that I am currently working?  Is it this year that we finally add more animals to Poplar Ridge farm, or actually harvest fruit from our puny orchard?

Above all, I hope this is the year when I can finally tame the yelling, and bring more peace to our family.  It's a huge job, but I think I'm up for the challenge!

Happy New Year to all of you!

Back on the Treadmill

Well, back to the Elliptical Machine anyway!

After nearly 2 weeks of sleeping until 9:00, eating cookies and chocolates, it's time this morning to head back to the exercise and to school.  When the alarm went off at 6:30 this morning, it was a rude awakening!  J and JP got off to school and work ok, and I actually spent 20 minutes or so on the Elliptical.  When I checked the scale later, I found that I only put on 2 1/2 pounds in the past 2 weeks, fewer than I expected.  Those couple pounds will take a couple of months to come back off though, I reckon.

The slogging through the snow to bring unfrozen water to the chickens was a repeat of every day lately, although I brought it to them a few hours earlier...lucky birds!  I have to change it several times a day when the temps stay below freezing.  What was I thinking?  Why did I want chickens again, remind me?

I did manage to finish the scrap booking by Dec 31st.  Now my desk looks like this:

I'm sure it won't stay like that for long, as it tends to be the dumping zone for anyone coming in through either our front door or from the garage.  However, I will really try to keep it more tidy.

I also gave the girls each a journal for New Year's Day.  I read (in my Family Fun magazine, of course) about a mother who wrote notes back and forth in journals with her daughters, and it became a really special tradition.  I'm merely hoping it will give us a chance to say some things to each other that may be otherwise hard to vocalize.  I'm not sure if this will last either or not, when life gets busy, it seems like it's the newer things that fall first.

While I made a big dent in my list of projects, there are a few things that I did not accomplish in 2012, or even over the Holiday Break:

- I did not yet replace my cell phone after running it through the washing machine, so I'm still not getting texts.  *SIGH*  We are thinking of ditching Verizon altogether and going with Track Phones or something...still trying to get more information.

- I did not get the back hatch of my van fixed, so the door keeps falling down on my head when I'm trying to put bags of groceries in.  We did buy the new lifts, and I did read the instructions, but I haven't decided yet whether or not this is a project that I can tackle myself.  In the meantime, the van now needs a new catalytic converter to the tune of about $1000.  *MORE SIGHING*

- I did not eat all of the Christmas cookies yet, or even make much of a dent in the chocolate...still working on that one!

- I did not have the girls practice their instruments every day during vacation, although I did find that buying J a new violin book made a big difference in her willingness to practice!  I found her a book of Christmas music, and we even played a couple of songs together - she on the violin, and me on the keyboard.

- The tree house is still not finished.  JP and I need to get the flooring put in, and then Dad says he will install the trim, which I have already painted.  It snowed or rained almost every day of the holiday, and JP was reluctant to run extension cords out there for power tools in the wet weather.  I need to read the instructions for installation for that as well, my dad feels that it is something that I could do myself!

There are more things, I'm sure there are, I am just tired of dwelling on my failings.  One more look at that clean desk:

Ahhhh...that's more like it, success and accomplishment!

Here's hoping that you all are off to a splendid start yourselves in 2013!

2009...the year of the HOUSE

2009 slipped in somehow when I wasn't looking. So did these I-beams for the floor joists. Now, if the house would just get finished that quickly...I'll turn my back for a while, and then: ta-da it will be done!!! They are calling for "winter mix" this week, a form of precipitation which encompasses all other forms except drought and maybe tornado. All in all, not nice weather to work in. But this is the year that we move to our new house, it's getting more palpable with the calendar change!