Good bye 2012

December 31st is here already.  How did that happen?  2012 has flown by and I'm worried that 2013 is going to do the same!  It's been a good year - we've made lots of memories with our family and friends.  We've camped, spent time in Virginia, had 2 nieces crowned as queens, watched basketball at all levels, B hit a milestone birthday, and just a few days before Christmas we had part of a tree in our yard fall on our house!  Yes it's been a full, busy year.

2013 promises more of the same.  I'm the one hitting the milestone birthday.  We hope to do a little traveling, and a lot of spending time with family and friends.   No matter what happens in the coming months, we will make the best and most of it together. 

We had a wonderful Christmas season with our family.  I hope to keep spending quality and quantity time with all of them in the next 12 months. 

So, out with the old year and in with the new!  Happy New Year!

It was windy!

We had a little excitement tonite.  B had been home for about 5 minutes and we heard a big bang.  We both ran to the kitchen, determined we were ok and then began looking for the source of the noise.  In the blackness of the evening, we saw tree branches pressed up against our windows.  Several of our windows.  And when we turned on the deck lights we saw a huge piece of our tree on our deck and hot top.  The good news is that it didn't happen 5 minutes earlier when B was walking in.  No windows were broken and we have wonderful family coming tomorrow morning to help clean it up.

I will try to post pics tomorrow!  Stay safe and stay out of the wind!

Tis the season

Tis the season to spend time with family.  Last night we went out to eat and to celebrate my brother-in-law's birthday. We all ended up back at our house, played some cards and laughed and enjoyed each others company.    Tonight we are heading to B's Cousin Christmas Party.  I'm not sure how many years in a row they have had this, but when they first started most of them weren't married and some of them were still in high school. The next generation has started to attend (they get invited when they turn 16).   It's a wonderful tradition - we draw names and exchange gifts.  Eat lots, of course and just enjoy each others company.   I look forward to it every year.

Tomorrow B and his sister are going to the airport to pick up their mom.  She flies home from Florida for the holidays every year.  I'm hoping to do some wrapping and relaxing. 

This week is going to fly by and then it will be the weekend before Christmas, with more parties, our annual PJ breakfast, Christmas Eve with B's family and more.

We will head to my side of the family late Christmas eve and spend Christmas day and several days after with them.  I'm looking forward to spending time with all of them.  We will eat too much, talk to loud and play lots of card games.  Most of all, we will make memories.

I'm so blessed to have wonderful family on both ends of the State.  The gifts are fun, the food is great...but the time spent together is priceless.

Through all of this, my thoughts will not be far from those families in Connecticut that lost so much yesterday. 

Calendar Mania!

Several years ago, we had the bright idea to make calendars for our parents for Christmas.  My side of the family had all taken a vacation to Florida - so we made it all Florida pics.  We always have tons of pics from B's side of the family, so it was easy to put one together.  We even put a pic of the person on their birthday, or couple on their anniversary.  When the calendars were opened Christmas morning, they were passed around and our siblings wanted to know where theirs were.  We ordered them copies and so a tradition was born.

Here we are in 2012...throwing the annual calendar together.  I worked over 5 hours yesterday on B's family calendar and another 5 on my families today.  They have been ordered, and are set to be delivered before by the middle of next week.  They aren't pretty, some pics are down right awful.  But for some reason, we just didn't have the number of pics this year that we usually do.  I'm not sure if it's because B and I have smart phones that we use to take most of our pics now and those don't come out as great?   Or maybe it's that my family hates having their pics taken (or at least some of them do) and therefore hide their face, stick out their tongue or something to make the pic unusable.  Well, the joke's on them!  I used some of those awful pics.  Bet they'll smile for us in 2013!

Now, I need to make a calendar for us that combines our families and shows every one's birthdays and anniversaries.  I don't care if I don't get it by Christmas.  All I know is that after I make this last one, I don't want to make another calendar for at least 12 months!

O Christmas Tree

It's up, it's short, it's pretty...it's the 2012 version of our Christmas Tree.  We don't have a very large living room, so we don't have tons of room for a fat tree, we could have tall, but it's not easy to find a tall skinny tree.  So we went with the pretty, little well-shaped tree. 

We have peppered our little tree with ornaments from our past.  I love opening the box where they are stored and remembering where we were when we bought them or who gave them to us.  This is our 10th Christmas together as a couple and we've made sure to pick up something for our tree whenever we have traveled.  We have an ornament from Disney celebrating our first trip in 2003 and one from Hershey Park from our honeymoon in 2004.  There is a glass ball filled with sand from Jamaica that we picked up in 2009 when B's brother got married there.  This year we got a buoy ornament from Boothbay Harbor during our summer vacation. We also have little bride and groom ornaments that my friend Jan gave us as part of our wedding gift, and a Tinkerbell that my beautiful niece got us on one of her trips to Florida.  

Our ornament box is also full of special items that my mom and dad gave me over the years.  A little wooden piano, a Goofy with moving ears.  I even have a tiny angel made from a nut that my aunt and uncle brought me from Germany many, many years ago.

I treasure this yearly opening of the ornament box.  Each one holds a special place in my heart and I'm going to enjoy visiting with them for the next little while.