It’s a new year! What does January mean to you? Are you jotting down goals for the year to come? Are ideas for this year’s vacation floating through your mind? I love January because it’s a great time to start something new. People are making resolutions and finding ways to better themselves. The gyms become a little more crowded, but I don’t mind, I think it’s great that people are trying to make their lives healthier. You see more people getting out of their house for a jog or riding their bike. If I’m driving down the road and pass one, my family in the car says a little cheer for them! Anyone that has the self discipline to get set aside part of their day to exercise deserves someone cheering for them on the sideline! Oh, and if you’ve never run a race and had people standing on the sideline to cheer for you, I recommend you give it a try! It’s fun! Hey, that could be your New Year’s resolution; go outside for a run! “Go You!” (That’s me cheering for you!)

Courtney

Holidays are over, the decorations are packed away and 2011 has begun. We have snow again today and I think this will be a day of recharging my battery!

It seems I go “full speed ahead” every day, all day long. Guess it is in my DNA! My grandmother was in constant motion. She got up early (I have trouble sleeping in too) she cooked, cleaned her house, did her laundry and liked everything clean and neat.

Mamaw had a favorite chair by the window so she could see the cars pass down their country road. She loved to watch for friends and family to stop in for a visit. However, she barely sat down in her chair before she was jumping up to do something that she felt had to be done right then and now. Yep, that’s me alright! It’s got to be that DNA thing. I can hear Papaw saying “Pearl, you just sat down” as she was off to the kitchen or bedroom, pretending to ignore his often heard comment!

I really try to do all the things that pop into my head before I sit down for the evening with my husband. I love being able to sit and talk about the events of his day and mine, and share a laugh or concern. However, it never fails that as soon as I sit down; I am up again tending to some little something that in all honesty, wouldn’t make a difference to anyone else but me!

2011 I think will be the year for recharging my battery. I am going to give myself permission to sit down and relax without jumping up to do that all important task that just can’t wait. OOPS, wait a minute, guess I better cut this writing short. There is something I must attend to right this minute. . . on second thought, maybe I need to start by “refreshing” my battery during the day and work up the a full “charge”!

Janet

Every January I clean out everything in the house.  I clean all the closets, cabinets, toys, clothes, file cabinets, school closet (I homeschool my daughter so we collect a lot of curriculum)  etc…   It is such an overwhelming process once I start, but after finishing our life becomes almost clutter free again.  It is such a good feeling!  I have now finished the task and I feel like we can accomplish anything we set our minds to.  There were moments during the process that I thought we would never be able to dig our way out of our piles.  Sometimes we wondered as a family where all this stuff could have come from.  Surely it wasn’t from us. Could another family be sharing our house with us?  Well, absolutely not.  It really was us. We have decided we will try and keep up the cleaning out process on a regular basis.  Living clutter free allows us to spend a lot more family time together which is always one of our important goals for the New Year.

Happy January!!!

Diane

My husband’s company had a family event recently at a ranch nearby.  It was the perfect day to be outside having fun with the kids!  Just crisp enough to need a little bundling, but sunny and beautiful!  We spent the first part of the afternoon fishing which was what the kids (and my husband) had been looking forward to the most! I’m definitely more of an indoors girl but love watching the kids get excited about all of their new adventures. 

The night before, we took them both out to buy their own fishing poles, and they each got a tackle box.  Funny that they had to have so much gear to catch a few perch!  But one thing about my husband is that he is going to be overly prepared for any situation!  Anna Kate chose a pink Dora the Explorer pole, and Connor chose Toy Story.  Daddy was in charge of baiting all hooks because I’m not too fond of squeezing a wriggling worm onto a hook.  The kids were fascinated and were catching fish before we knew it!  I was happy to be behind the camera capturing all of the fun! 

One thing I love about the kids’ ages is the fact that they’re so happy for each other’s accomplishments; I hope it stays that way.  Since they are so close in age, we’ve never really had any jealousy issues because they don’t know life without one another.  It makes parenting much simpler…for now, at least! 

After the magic of fishing began to wear off, we went for a hayride before the dinner was ready.  Upon returning from the hayride, we found a fantastic BBQ dinner prepared for all of us. 

To wrap up a really special day, we had a huge campfire, and the kids got to roast marshmallows and make s’mores…yum! 

I love being with my family no matter where we are, but it’s always so special to do new things with them.  Watching the kids learn and discover fills my heart with joy!

We took our one-year-old son to Disney last month. He had never met a character before. We knew he was either going to love them, or be totally scared of the larger-than-life sized characters. Our little guy is pretty outgoing and enjoys being around people, so we decided to take a chance and stand in line to meet Mickey Mouse. Minnie Mouse happened to be there also, and he absolutely loved them both! Here is a picture of him meeting them.

-Courtney

Have you ever attended a Cookie Swap before? I had not, but I’m a huge fan of cookies so I decided to host a swap at my house. There were tons of yummy cookies; some were healthy, some were recipes passed down through generations, some were as easy as premade store-bought cookie dough. All of them were delicious! There were about 15 women that attended, and each baked a large batch of cookies. Each person took about 5 cookies from each batch home with them. You do the math! We all ate too many cookies that week. But hey, it’s the holidays! You’re allowed to eat sweets for breakfast, lunch, and dinner!

-Courtney

Christmas with a one year old is pretty exciting. They really have no concept of what the day is and why there is so much new stuff. My son was very excited to see family as they arrived for the holiday. We knew the idea of gifts would probably be overwhelming to him, but figured that he may enjoy playing with the wrapping paper? The first gift he opened was a set of baby keys that made a noise. That was it. He didn’t care about another present for hours! So we opened the gifts for him, tried to show him what others bought for him, but he just glanced our way and continued to play with his set of keys. Ha! Thankfully the day ended up being warm enough for him to wear his new Strasburg Christmas Bubble outfit. It was really nice since he is just learning to walk, and often trips over the legs of his pants, the bubble allows for him to move around freely. I love the gorgeous details on this outfit also!

-Courtney

What a wonderful Christmas we have had. This year our church had a live nativity. It was the first year we have done this and it turned out very well. The planning started last July. Live animals were “booked” and to everyone’s surprise we had a live camel, along with sheep, a donkey, goat and a miniature cow. We had adults and children from our church dressed as Mary, Joseph, shepherds and kings. Many children participated and it was very touching to see the children get so involved. The live nativity was held on the 22^nd and 23^rd of December, for two hours and it was our church’s gift to our community. The weather was chilly but not too bad!

Christmas Eve about 5 p.m., it began to snow and we had the most beautiful snowfall I think I have ever seen. It was one of those perfect snows that covered everything but the streets and driveways. Thank goodness our road department had pre treated the streets and highways and that helped. We ended up with about 4 inches of snow for Christmas Day.

My parents, our children and grandchildren were all at our house for Christmas this year. Our tradition is church on Christmas Eve, and on Christmas day, we have brunch and then open presents. I gave up wrapping gifts a few years ago. Everyone has a Santa bag and their gifts go in there. Looks good under the tree and a lot easier on me!

The two youngest grandchildren really made this Christmas fun! They were so excited about everything. Especially the empty boxes and tearing the paper off their gifts and helping others with theirs! It was a picture perfect day!

We are almost ready to say good bye to 2010 and hello to 2011. I wish all of you good health and much happiness in the coming year.

Janet

I have heard that statement many times during my life. The attached photos of our two youngest grandchildren Jathen and Ella Grace ,says it all. Wishing all of you a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from Kentucky.

Janet

This year marks my daughter’s third Christmas.  She is starting to understand more about the holiday this year and knows that we celebrate Baby Jesus’ birthday and that “Ho Ho” (in her words) comes and leaves us some presents.  We’ve been trying to teach her the spirit of giving, and she recently brought some new toys to a toy drive at the church where she goes to playgroup.  We’ve been reading stories about the holiday and the spirit of Christmas.  She is mesmerized with the Christmas tree this year and loves to walk around it and look at all the different ornaments (and sometimes take them off and play with them.) 

It is fun to watch her discover the joys of this season and this has got me thinking about all the different types of activities/traditions I’d like to incorporate into our family preparation for Christmas each year.  Here is a list I’ve started of some things we’ve done this year:

Make an Advent chain to count down the days until Christmas.
Read a meditation each day of Advent.
Decorate the house.
Hang Candy Canes on the tree.
Put up nativity scene without the baby Jesus.
Do some crafts.
Participate in a toy drive.
Send cards to friends and family.
Listen to Christmas carols.
Read Christmas stories.
Put out shoes on the eve of December 6 for St. Nicholas Day.
Make a visit to Santa.

Here are more things we plan to do this year:

Make Christmas cookies to give to friends and family.
Wrap presents.

Some things I’ve done in the past that I’ve really enjoyed:
Go to the Nutcracker.
Go to a performance of The Messiah.
Work in a soup kitchen.
Visit the tree at Rockefeller Center.
Go ice-skating.

If you celebrate Christmas, how do you make the holiday fun and meaningful for your family?