Brand New Year

Happy 2011!

I figure that anyone who received a Christmas card and wanted to look at the blog has done so by now, so I’m back in real time.  I hope that everyone had a great Christmas and is looking forward to a brand new year.

Our 2010 was good, so I was a bit nostalgic to see it roll away, in the sense that time just seems to pass far too quickly.  I look at my daughter and then at my younger son and shake my head!  By this time next year, she will  probably be as tall as I am, and I cannot believe that she used to be the one hauled around in my arms.  She turns 11 this year, which really does not seem possible.

I’ll use this post to hit the highlights since my Christmas letter and then, with the interesting stuff, post in more detail later.

Christmas 2010 definitely did not follow the plan!  I’m getting better at being flexible, but my flexibility was definitely tested this year.  The original plan was a great one, if I do say so myself.  We were going to have Wilkes family Christmas in Tennessee the second weekend in December, have our family Christmas at home with just the five of us, and then my brother, sister-in-law, and niece were to come for a few days on December 26.

What actually happened was that Jeff went to Thailand the second weekend in December, so Wilkes family Christmas was pushed off to the following weekend.  Here we all are.

On Christmas Day, my Dad called and asked if he could come over for the rest of the day and spend the night.  Why not?  So he joined us midafternoon for Christmas dinner and then watched Jeremy so we could take the older two kids to see the movie Tangled, which, by the way, is the BEST animated film that Disney has put out in YEARS.

Also on Christmas Day, we found out that my brother Thad, who lives in New Jersey, was coming to Michigan for New Year’s.  As we had not seen him since our trip to Washington D.C. last Christmas, we quickly decided that we would go to Michigan for a quick trip on New Year’s Eve.

Well, with our going to Michigan, it didn’t make much sense for my other brother and his family to come our way, so we called and reconfigured all of that.  Now, Zech and Alyse would host Hoyt family Christmas and New Year’s Eve.

Whew.  Here is the Hoyt family.

So, we ended up traveling a bit more than we had anticipated this holiday, but it was good.  I’ll probably post more about all of this later.

Some other holiday activities included sledding, before the snow all melted, shopping some sales, and relaxing.

And now, on to the New Year!  I’m not a big one for making resolutions, but I do have a couple this year.  I am planning to train for another half marathon in April with my women’s group from church.  And I would like to read through the Bible in the first 90 days of the new year.

I’ll let you know if these work for me!

And tomorrow, we are back to work and school, as time marches on.

Have a great evening!