Happy New Year 2010!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Happy New Year! We have sure enjoyed our Christmas break. Unfortunately, it is ending too soon. It's times like this I really cherish. We all had a great Christmas. Michael and Jacob got all the Lego's a child could ever want. Steven got money mostly(what else do you get a guy who has it all?) And I didn't have any expectations so I didn't have my heart set on anything. But I got plenty of cool things including a knitting kit (don't expect a sweater or potholder anytime soon). But Steven is teaching me how. Steven has so many talents! And lots of patience!

It has been so nice to sleep in most mornings until 9 or 10am. That will be a real kicker when January 4th, at 6am, comes. It has been great to veg out and do whatever we wanted for the most part. Michael and Jacob had friends over to play. No strict schedule has been enforced but will start again tomorrow night, the 2th.

While everyone has been home, we have been doing some cleaning and everyone has been jumping into help. And for the most part, without any complaint. That's a nice treat! We have had a family movie night and watched the new, "Star Trek". Yeh, we are a boring family. We did go to Burlington Mall on the 28th, and had Chick-Fil-A, for dinner and went to the Lego store. That was a real treat for us. Chick-Fil-A is a restaurant that we had in Georgia. It serves the best chicken strips, soups, sandwiches, cheesecake, and ice milk ice cream.

For New Years Eve, we just stayed home and watched the ball drop on TV, from NYC. There is no way we even wanted to be out in a crowd of a million people and in the frigid cold, not even in Boston or Worcester. The boys were happy to be on the Wii, making noise with the noise makers, and eating wonderful ribs sent from Steven's brother, Ryan, from Cincinnati. If you have never tasted Montgomery Inn ribs with their famous sauce, you are missing out on a lot. Even Jacob tried the ribs (without the sauce) and said they were so good. They were also happy to be eating Laffy Taffy's and telling jokes that came from the wrappers.

Tonight, the 1st, at church, we had a fun night with Jacob meeting his new teacher for his Pri-
mary class this year. He is in the 9 year old class. Still the same classmates, just a new teacher and new lessons. There was pizza, veggies w/ dip, and cookies for dinner there. On December 9th, his birthday, Jacob earned his Wolf rank in Cub Scouts. Jacob has grown so tall this past year. He is in heaven with his Lego's.



Michael is no longer in Primary. He turned 12 in October and is Young Men's now. It seems so weird this year not seeing Michael move up in Primary. Michael earned his Tenderfoot rank in Boy Scouts, on December 30th. Makes me know the boys are growing up so fast. It won't be long until Michael is taller than I am. Michael is doing so well playing the alto sax in the school band. He still wants to play the drums.


The Christmas decorations come down tomorrow, the 2nd. Had enough of green and red around the house. We are tired of all the boxes of lights, and ornaments hanging around. It's time to have a house looking clean and get rid of the clutter. I will start working on that tomorrow. I worked on more of the organization of things today. The coupon binder used weekly was in need of some cleaning up so when Steven went to the store, he wouldn't be ambushed with expired coupons. I also put tabs in the binder so it is easier for him to find the categories. I also found more recipes for my recipe box. I love collecting recipes. I got new cookbooks for Christmas. And have already tried a fun recipe out of one of the books. One of my hopes this new year is to cook more from scratch and be better at not going out to eat so much. That is one of my downfalls.

I'm looking forward to the new lessons at church this year. The book in Relief Society is more on the gospel principles and I'm excited to see what the new theme of our Relief Society is this year. I'm excited to help the boys learn more on the lesson from the new Primary theme this year, "I Feel My Savior's Love". With that theme, I am excited with the format of the book to teach Family Home Evening lesson from it.

I don't know if we will travel much this year. That won't be happening until this spring anyway. But there is so much to see up here in New England. Michael and Jacob often ask about going to the ocean, especially up in Maine. Maine is such a beautiful state. We are definitely going back to Scituate and Plymouth. Gotta go to Cupcake Charlie's for their wonderful cupcakes. With the family sort of homebodies, we are bound to be found here painting the inside of the house and fixing things up around there. The outside light fixtures are rusted shut so they must be replaced. There will be new garden beds, new plants, and hopefully we can get the brown hive of bees up and going again. And hopefully honey from our hives this year.

May you all have a prosperous New Year!