Ringing in 2010

I haven't kept up with blogging over my holiday break that has included 9 or 10 hours of sleep a night - love it, so this post will be rather lengthy, but the pictures should outnumber the the words.

I will start with Christmas Eve which was spent at my parents' house. We had a relaxing and enjoyable evening after what was a whirlwind day at our house. We had served at church that afternoon and Andy had worked. The day escaped us quickly.

Gotcha!!! My dad does not allow people to take his picture. He absolutely hates it! He thought he was safe when the camera was in Julia's hands. The camera is almost as big as her. HaHa Little did he know what a budding photographer we have!
opening the gifts...Wyatt was beside himself awaiting the moment when the gifts would be opened. He had to wait for dinner and then birthday cake for Jesus. Julia was so cute when we sang Happy Birthday to Jesus as the song concluded, she announced "and Happy New Year!"

Mom, Jonathan and Tony

Savannah

Julia asked for Bendaroos and a Polly Pocket swim playset. Christmas Eve is the big time around here as my siblings and parents go all out for the kids. On Christmas morning they get their stockings and one gift from Santa along with two gifts from Andy and me. Sometimes Zach and Savannah splurge from their allowances and buy gifts as well.

Moving along to Christmas morning...Andy reads the Christmas story before opening gifts.

Christmas at our house was quiet and relaxing. We enjoyed a ham dinner which had been voted on by the entire family and played with new toys all day.

This year marks our second Christmas with Wyatt, and it is so funny how much he remembers last Christmas and how much he assumes our activities are traditions. Last year he visited Santa because his school held a breakfast with Santa. It is not normally our tradition to visit Santa, but as that was supposedly an annual event at his school, we had every intention of attending this year. However, they did not have the breakfast. I have no idea why not, so Wyatt was quite unhappy that we did not visit Santa. For a couple of years, we also made gingerbread houses. We skipped that this year as well, and Wyatt let me know about it.

We did do one thing differently though. I splurged and took Savannah, Wyatt, and Julia to a paint-your-own-pottery place and allowed them to paint ornaments. I love, love, love collecting ornaments especially ornaments with sentiment attached, and I thought these would be nice keepsakes. Because Zach and Savannah used to get ornaments in their stockings every year and they got ornaments from any place my mother or I travelled, they both have a nice collection. Julia's collection is on its way, but Wyatt's is rather sad, so I used this as an opportunity to help him out. We painted the ornaments the Monday before Christmas and picked them up the Tuesday after Christmas. Unfortunately, they never made it to the tree this year as we chucked another tradition. Normally, I take all of our Christmas decor down today (New Year's Day), but Shiloh and the tree kept going to war, and the tree was losing, so I took everything down earlier this week. We still have our wreaths hanging on the windows and doors, and our nativity is still out, but I am actually glad that everything else is put away and that I took this more gradually this year.

New Year's Eve at last!

We almost forgot on New Year's Eve that Julia had gymnastics, so she was a few minutes late. Oops! However, it was important that she attend this class because she is moving up to the developmental program, and this was her last class with our fave instructor, Miss Denise. Miss Denise expresses excitement for Julia. After all, it was her recommendation that got Julia to this point, but she also states that she will really miss Julia.

I am always amazed by how muscular Julia is. When we brought her home, I got the biggest kick out of the fat rolls on her legs. I had never had a child with fat rolls, and who knew I would get one from China? Those fat rolls are now all muscle. Amazing!

After gymnastics we went to my brother's house. (This happens to be our former house... a much loved house, I might add) to celebrate the new year. We played our version of Catch Phrase which is simply to pass the game around and have everyone guess the phrase from our clues. We don't keep score, but we have a lot of fun.

My sister in law, Danielle outdid herself. The food was unbelievable. Wow, oh Wow!!! My stomach is still full. I could not get enough. We had appetizers so there was no meal. A friend recently told her that she missed her calling as she is trying to get a job teaching middle school. I think Patrick is right. She may need to go into catering.

Savannah loves board games. Unfortunately, I do not. Here she is with Tara offering clues.

Joshua

Danielle and Tara

my three sisters -something is cracking them up

This is how Wyatt rang in the new year. He would not join us to watch the ball drop. He wanted to play on the Cartoon Network website. Wyatt told me that we had Cartoon Network before he joined the family, and that it is not fair to him that we no longer have it because it is the only place you can watch Bakugan. Cable got too pricey, so we switched to Netflix. Sorry Bud, but that isn't going to change.

Hello 2010!

Apparently Logan is too cool to smile.

Thoughts on 2010

2009 was a better year for us than 2008. We saw my brother get married, and we are all crazy about my new sister in law. It was a beautiful wedding with a nice vacation that followed immediately.

We did face heartache in 2008 as we also said goodbye to the dog that had been part of our family for 13 years. We lost her the same day as the wedding, and having the wedding was a very nice distraction.

I saw a colleague and friend suffer through a loss as her sister battled cancer and lost that battle just before Thanksgiving. So much suffering also occured in Zach's class.

For our family 2009 was a nice year. We were not struggling through the difficult school decisions of 2008. Everyone was settled and doing well in school. Wyatt really molded into our family, and he and Julia brought us many laughs. Financially, we also seem to be getting back on our feet though some changes such as giving up cable do seem to be permanent for this family.

2010 starts with uncertainty. I guess in reality all years do. We ended 2009 facing medical testing for my mom. On the Friday before Christmas, she went through a full day of diagnostic testing with good news coming to us on the Tuesday before Christmas as the pathology test came out negative. However, she returned for a needle biopsy on the Monday after Christmas, and they found cancer. Mom will now start the new year with major surgery followed by chemo. While more testing will probably follow, we are hopeful as the doctors believe they caught this early and her prognosis is good. Mom had major back surgery in 2009, so we hope 2010 will bring her a full restoration to health.

My resolution for the new year is to simply have a family over for dinner once a month. I will be honest that this will not start immediately as our kitchen table and chairs are badly in need of replacement, and we will have to await our tax return to address that. However, I have been in this cocoon since we adopted Wyatt, and it is lonely here. I have struggled to pull a workable schedule together to maintain our home, so we do lots of crisis cleaning. That probably won't change as our schedule varies from day to day The very disappointing part of this Christmas break is that we have not had any of the kids' friends over. Savannah really struggles with this as Zach has still been with his friends for wrestling. Therefore, I plan to have a family over each month for dinner and really try to connect with the people in our circles...especially the families of our children's best friends.

Andy and I started a monthly date night in September. We missed our December date, but if you count Christmas shopping, we got some time out together. We plan to pick that back up and would love to double date sometimes, so we may try that as well.

I also hope for myself and my entire family that we will continue to draw closer to God. That's really what it is all about. I may try and read a book or two as well. I am trying to read Heaven by Randy Alcorn right now. It is a great book, but it is huge and provokes so much thought that I have to take it in small doses.

Happy New Year Everyone! May you be richly blessed in 2010!