Monday, January 25, 2010

Happy New Year!Bulleted List
It's been a good one for us so far (I'm knocking on wood) and I'm feeling pretty lucky. After all the craziness with buying this house and starting two new jobs, I'm finally starting to feel like I'm in the groove of things, and this month has seemed a little easier than the past few. Hopefully it keeps up through the year, and 2010 is good to us.

This is the first year (I think) that I haven't had any resolutions - which I'm finding to be a nice break. Maybe it comes with age - like knowing "yeah right, I'm never going to follow through with that"- but resolutions just seemed so bogus to me this year. I couldn't think of anything that I wanted to start doing on January first that I'm not already doing. So instead of resolutions, it's just moving deeper into things I'm already passionate about and working towards. It seems more realistic. Definitely more honest.

Anyway...

After our trip down to Philly, which for some reason flipped a "happy" switch in me, we unpacked, did some laundry, and packed up again to head down to our winter vacation in Holyoke! Yee-haw! We actually house/cat-sitted for some friends who were lucky enough to take a real vacation in California, while we enjoyed the urban (ha ha) life for a while.

It was really nice to get away from our house for a while, and just be able to relax in the evening (and watch as many of the movies in their amazing collection as we could) instead of doing projects. The kids got to play with lots of new toys, and everyone was happy!

We are also thinking about getting a cat, so it was nice to test the waters. And after cleaning up vomit, and cleaning out litter boxes and being in cat hair, do we really want to have a cat? It's a unanimous YES!


The best part about going away is always coming home. Sometimes it takes going away for a bit to appreciate how nice it is to be in your own space. And although everyone thought it was totally crazy for an entire family to house-sit ("isn't that usually a job for transients?") it was pure cleansing. Now we are totally motivated to get stuff done around here. Well, at least we were last week....


We have had one major change in our house though. We completely cleaned out the basement and are all sleeping down there now! Matty mentioned it as a possibility around Christmas, as a way for us to save on heat, and to get some stuff done upstairs while the kids are sleeping. He never thought we could get it done, but I ran with it, and here we are! Now we can turn the stove way down at night, and we don't have to worry about heating the bedrooms at all during the day. It was a little hard to get used to the light at first - even thought it's a glowing flame. I like dark! But other than that - and the fact that sometimes we're a little TOO warm at night - things are going well. But like Holyoke, this is good for the here and now, but it will be nice to move upstairs again in the spring.


Other than that, I've just been feeling really thankful for winter and all the fun that brings (even though it was 54 and raining today) and for all the friends we have here in the valley. Tree burning, night sledding, ice sculpting, dinner party with friends. We just feel so blessed to live in the place we do, and to have met the people we know.


And as a un-resolution, I resolve to be better about blogging from here on out. It's so much more enjoyable for me to write every week. Catch up is so quick and boring! (Unless it's catching up with our new walker/climber. Nothing boring about that!)


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