I hope everyone has a wonderful year. I know I am excited about the next year. This blog has been exciting for me. It is fun to write. Before I started I was worried about running out of ideas and instead my list of ideas has grown longer and longer. I think that is a good sign of things to come.

I wish everyone a healthy and prosperous new year!

Have a Merry Christmas! I hope everyone is on Santa’s good list.

The weekend before Christmas is always full of great events. Our neighbors had a fun party on Friday night. We have a great neighborhood and know a lot of people but now I was able to meet some new friends.

On Saturday evening we took our boys to a basketball clinic at our school held by the University of Louisville Women’s Basketball team. Very random since we do not live in Kentucky but they were in town to play a local school and did a clinic at our school. My boys had a lot of fun.

My boys are in a stage where they tell me they don’t want to do anything. I told them about the clinic and they fussed and carried on, saying they weren’t going. They only want to go to things where they know they have friends at the same event. I need to constantly tell myself not to listen to them and to push them to do things like this because they always end up having so much fun.

I have family that works at University of Louisville so that is another connection we had to the school.

Then last evening we hosted a work party for my husband. It was a good time and very nice to meet some of the people he works with on a daily basis. I don’t really get to meet a lot of his coworkers since they work on a secure site so I can’t go visit him there. They are all great people, no duds in the bunch. 🙂 It was also a great reason to use our Christmas china. I can’t even remember the last time we used it.

The next couple days are crunch time. I have a couple more gifts to get for a few people on the list. I have never had such an issue with gifts. Some people this year are very difficult to come up with ideas.

I had better get moving and get some of my to do list accomplished.

Last night we went to our local Christmas parade. I forgot what going to a parade with a 4-year-old is like. It was a blast. She loved everything about it. The lights, the candy and especially waving at everyone was so much fun to my little girl. We had debated whether or not we were even going to go and everything fell into place that we did it and I am so glad.

Does everyone else feel like this week is crunch time? I feel like everything has to be done by this Friday. I am starting to have so many lists in my head that I am forgetting things.

Last weeks goals:

Family

1. Borrow some new books at the library for the boys. They are about done with the current stack. Done, plus I checked out a book for myself and read it in 2 nights. It was a quick read and I am too embarrassed to say what it was. It was written by a reality tv person.

House/Home

1. Deep clean the bathtubs upstairs. They need a major scrubbing and toy clean-out. Some of the toys need to be secretly thrown away. I only think of it when my little girl is taking a bath so I can’t do it in front of her. – FAIL. My husband has decided to have some people who work for him over for a Christmas party on Saturday so I will be busting my tail getting this house together this week.

Blog

1. Link up with 6 Blog Hops.
2. Research where I should be storing my photos to help my site run fast. I am just downloading them from my computer to the Media tag in WP but am not sure if that is what I am supposed to be doing. Still need to do this.

This weeks goals:

2 Huge Tasks that I have to FOCUS on completing!

1. Clean the house for my husbands Christmas party.
2. Finish Christmas shopping.

What I really want to be doing is working on planning our trip to Napa next summer. I need to stay off the Napa info until after Christmas but I keep procrastinating.

I am proud to say that I finished reading a book! I want to say that I love reading but after having kids I realized that I am not a good book reader and Mom. My problem is that I get completely involved with reading and hate to put the book down so I end up staying up half the night to read just “one more chapter”. Anyone with me?? 🙂 Then I wake up the next morning and am cranky and have no patience.

With all the traveling I did last week I took a book with me (plus my Grandmother’s house has no internet). I read The Girl on the Train.

Such a good book. I am usually a romance reader but love a good thriller occasionally.

Let’s catch up. My Grandmother passed away last week. I am super sad and trying to deal with it so can’t even write about it yet. My in-laws did a fantastic job watching the kids. I am so thankful they could watch them.

Let’s talk about Goals for the week, I am not even going to go over last weeks goals since I didn’t even look at them since I was away from internet. I did get most of the Christmas Cards complete.

Let’s go with a fresh start.

This weeks goals:

Family

1. Borrow some new books at the library for the boys. They are about done with the current stack.

House/Home

1. Deep clean the bathtubs upstairs. They need a major scrubbing and toy clean-out. Some of the toys need to be secretly thrown away. I only think of it when my little girl is taking a bath so I can’t do it in front of her.

Blog

1. Link up with 6 Blog Hops.
2. Research where I should be storing my photos to help my site run fast. I am just downloading them from my computer to the Media tag in WP but am not sure if that is what I am supposed to be doing.

My beautiful Grandmother went to heaven yesterday. I know she will go straight to heaven as there is no one I know who is more faithful and obedient to the Lord than her. She is going to be terribly missed. She has 9 children and 25 grandchildren and even more great grandchildren. What a strong woman. My Granddaddy died when they were in their late 40’s so she has raised our family all by herself. Amazing.

I will be on a blog break for the rest of the week to be fully present with my family during these tough times.