More Joy, Beauty and Gratitude

Some beautiful water lilies

After increasing my post frequency in November and December, I feel compelled to post every day. A bit of an OCD reaction, I am sure, which may or may not pass as time goes on. Or it could be that magical 28 day thing - you know, it takes 28 days to solidify an task into a habit, so the habit of blogging every day is now formed in the recesses of my brain.

Enough rambling - I did have a purpose today - to share the Joy, Beauty and Gratefulness I have experienced over the past several days.

Joy - snuggling with my kids right before bedtime - a ritual we started when they moved to their big kid beds. Erica doesn't allow me to snuggle with her every night, so every chance I get is so nice.

Beauty - The sunrise across the winter prairie - I've got to find a time / place to capture this on my camera. The best views are along the highway into work, but it's not that safe to stop, even in the breakdown lane.

Gratefulness - The days are getting longer - I didn't have to drive Erica to Horse riding in the dark!

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Guest photographer - My sister, Michele

My sister Michele has a great eye for photography. She and her husband live across the pond in Europe, splitting their time between Copenhagen and London. They visited my parents in Florida this Christmas season, and she just posted the pictures from that trip on her Flickr Photostream. We weren't able to join them and my other sister, but with her pictures, I can imagine being there.

Here are some of my favorites:
Cousin Matty:


And Zachary:

Trees in Lover's Key


Funny, because this is exactly what I do..... (written by Teresa)


Michele's Photostream is in my Sidebar, so that you may also enjoy!

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New Beginnings? Nope - just the same old, same old

The kids re-started school today after 2 1/2 weeks off. Their Winter vacation started a day early due to an ice storm. I don't know why they didn't go back yesterday like the rest of the world, but I guess that gives them a 4 day week to ease back into things.

Bright and shiny kids for the New Year? Nope:


And I even made cinnamon buns for breakfast!


Here's to the "real" start of 2009!

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What will I work on in 09?

Not a list of Resolutions, but rather Projects I hope to work on in 2009.

Get 'er done:
Project 365 - a Photo a Day, which will be posted at my Flickr account and my new blog, Behind the Lens (see the sidebar for updates). Maybe I'll publish the pictures in my own Blurb book.

Use up my Scrapbooking Stash - I attempted this last year, but still spent more than my goal of $50. Let's see if I can do better this year. For more details, check out Cyn's Blog devoted to this topic.

Continue to:
Work on The Word - Balance - [perhaps this means I don't spend as much time on-line trying to increase my Scramble score].

Keep up with the neighborhood Book Club. This month, I get to host, and we are reading A Separate Peace by John Knowles.

Keep up with my running - I had a little setback in December with a nasty cold.

Participate in 12 on 12 - 12 pictures on the 12th of each month.

Whew, I think that is enough for now. Maybe we'll re-visit things in a couple of months to see how we're progressing.....

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First Project of the Year - Complete!

After spending several hours on the computer in PSE, I am happy to declare Project 2009 Calendar complete. These are 8x10 photo composites / digital scrapbook pages I will upload to Kodak Gallery to create 2009 wall calendars. I have 4 copies printed out - one for me, one for Scott, one for my mother and the last one for Scott's mother.

This pretty much completes my Digital scrapbooking requirement for the year! I did find several great Digi-Scrap free stuff at the following links:
IkeaGoddess
Digi-Free
The Digital Scrapbook Place

Here are a couple of the pages I created - not too terribly complicated, but they get the job done and are nicer than the templates available at Kodak Gallery.

August:

May:


The calendars are 35% off through January 8 - so I need to start uploading!

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Bike Riding on New Year's

With Christmas money and a bit of additional funding from Scott, Brian is no longer bike-less (we sold his old bike in June's garage sale), so he and Erica decided today would be a great day to go for a bike ride. At first, Brian didn't wear any gloves, and soon declared it was too cold to ride and put his bike away.


After I handed him my gloves, he was back out and Erica soon joined him. She wanted to try out his new bike (a trick bike, none the less):


While they were out racing around, the sound of quacking filled the air, and several Canada geese flew overhead. I have no idea what caused so many of them to be flying around, but I caught some of them overhead:



A nice way to start off 2009!

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Choosing Joy - New Year's Eve Shin-Dig

My friend, Jill, never ceases to amaze me with her hospitality - I received a call from her yesterday afternoon as I was trying to concentrate on work (somewhat challenging around the Holidays). She was coordinating an impromptu New Year's Eve get together with friends.
It turned out to be quite the Shin Dig - food, streamers, balloons, champagne, sparkling juice, noise makers and games. Each person had to write down a New Year's Resolution and place it in the basket. Jill then read off each paper and we had to guess who had written it. Brian's was "Play more Wii games and skip school". What a goof-ball!

Jill reads off one of the New Year's Resolutions and Will starts to make some noise:


Brian is coiled and excited to ring in the New Year:


The kids are poised with their noisemakers as we count down to the New Year - in Santiago, Chile (that's 9pm Central Standard Time).


And it didn't bother the kids that it wasn't "our" New Year - they had a blast making noise, throwing streamers and drinking their "bubbly".

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